How Restaurants Can Use Social Media to Grow Their Clientele

May 4, 2009 By

fionnmaccoolsrealA lot of restaurants are jumping on the social media bandwagon with great results. Some people are paying professionals to run their social media campaigns, others, like Fionn MacCool’s in Fishers, Indiana, are doing it on their own.

The formula is pretty much the same:

  1. Get a Facebook page. Find as many local people as you can, and invite them.
  2. Get on Twitter. Get your regulars to follow you, send out daily specials and news, and participate in conversations with them.
  3. Put your listing on Google Local. It’s really just Google Maps, but as the restaurant owner or manager, you can add your listing, location, photos, and solicit reviews.
  4. Start a text club for restaurants. Send out announcements for lunch and dinner specials or who’s playing this weekend.

Of course, most of this involves you doing all of the work. You’re the one on Facebook, you’re monitoring Twitter, and you’re the one composing the special announcements. And while it only takes 30 minutes a day –– spread throughout the day, of course –– to make this successful, this doesn’t let you do any big push for Facebook friends or Twitter followers. That’s going to take some time and energy. And as a restaurant manager, you already know if you have time and energy at the end of the day, you’re not doing something right.

So what if you let your regulars do the work for you?

Here are a few tips you can use to tap into your regulars’ social networks and bring guests to your restaurant.

  • Give 2 free lunch passes to 5 of your regulars. One is for them, and one is to give to a friend, but it’s only good for 1 month. They have to give the pass away to a friend, and the other is a thank you for doing it. Repeat this procedure with 5 new regulars each month.
  • Host a Tweetup. Find some regulars who are on Twitter, keep an eye on the Twitterverse for tweetups, and then offer to host them. Make your place Tweetup-friendly. Several of us meet at the Hubbard & Cravens in Indianapolis for Tweetups, because they like having us there.
  • Take a page from Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point. He identifies Connectors (people who know a lot of people), Mavens (people who know a lot of stuff), and Salesmen (people who know a lot of people and stuff) — check out the chapter on The Law of the Few at Google Books, page. 30). Find the Connectors and Salesmen (and Saleswomen, of course) –– especially in the social media circles –– in your area, and invite them to your restaurant. Give them two free lunch coupons, and invite them out. Get to know them, and make sure they enjoy themselves. They’re going to tell their social networks about the great time they had, and recommend your restaurant to their friends.
  • Encourage people to leave online reviews for your restaurant at Google Local, Yelp, and city restaurant guides. Hold a contest for anyone who leaves a review on a restaurant site and emails you about it. If you get a bad review, don’t worry about it. You’ll have plenty of people giving you good reviews to balance it out. (And if you get a bunch of bad reviews, you need to look at what’s going on inside the kitchen anyway.)

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    Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : How Restaurants Can Use Social Media to Grow Their Clientele  •  Keywords : restaurants, Social Media, social networking  • 
    Filed Under: Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter Tagged With: , ,
    About Erik Deckers

    Erik Deckers is the VP of Creative Services for Professional Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1997, and has been a published writer for more than 24 years. He is a newspaper humor columnist, appearing in 10 papers around Indiana, and in The American Reporter. Erik co-authored No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing in August 2011, and Branding Yourself: How to use social media to invent or reinvent yourself, in December 2010 with Pearson. Erik frequently speaks about blogging and social media marketing.

    Comments

    1. Thomas Fjordside says:
      May 11, 2009 at 2:29 pm
      514

      Really basic but interesting and often overlooked ideas. There are still way to many small business’ out there that doesn’t get how their online presence can help them. Thanks for sharing, I have a friend that needs to see this.

      Thomas Fjordside’s last blog post..Designing and Coding with Webstandards