Start with Understanding Behavior

Restaurant owners can no longer afford to ignore the shift in power from business to the consumer. It started the day the Internet was available to consumers. Now, control of your brand is in the hands of the many, who love to be honest, transparent and open about nearly everything. Advertising your business through traditional means is part of your strategy, but not the tactic of choice. You must take advantage of social media to outperform your competitors and engage with your customers and employees.

The foregoing seems obvious to many of us, in part, because social media is just so, well, restaurant. Customer-facing businesses, like restaurants, are naturally social. They are just used to doing this in person, not asynchronously.

The crown jewels of your social media strategy begin with understanding who your customer is. This starts with understanding behavior. Ask these five questions first:

1. How is your restaurant is positioned? (segment, sub-segment, pricing, service and staffing philosophy, etc.)
2. Who is your most loyal customer demographic? (Gender, age, ethnicity, etc.)
3. How do you define frequency?
4. Where does your customer consume media? (if you are sending out tweets at midnight and your customer is in bed, then, is that tactical?)
5. What motivates them to make their decision to dine at your restaurant over another?

Once you understand behavior, you can start crafting a strategy.