Put your Restaurant & Hotel Association Memberships to good use.

Posted on 09. Apr, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Social Media Marketing

Member of a Restaurant or Hotel Association? Great, we have a something for you.

We are offering special VIP pricing for the Restaurant & Social Media Bootcamp being held in St. Louis on April 26, 27th. to any state, city or national restaurant or hotel association.

Restaurant & Hotel Association VIP pricing ends on Sunday April 11th. Reserve your space now.

Be sure to select the VIP pricing when selecting your ticket option.

For more information about the Restaurant & Social Media Bootcamp Click Here!

Restaurant & Hospitality Social Media Bootcamp

Posted on 21. Mar, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Social Media Marketing

If you haven’t registered for the Restaurant & Hospitality Social Media Bootcamp in St. Louis- Do it now!

Space is limited and we only have a handful of spaces left. If it a must attend event for managers, operators, and owners.

Click here for Bootcamp related information.

Taking Restaurant Social Media By Storm

Posted on 18. Mar, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Social Media Marketing

On April 26th & 27th. we will be kicking off our Restaurant & Hospitality Social Media Bootcamp smack dab in the middle of the country in beautiful St. Louis.

Space is limited and is filling up quickly. Take advantage of the “early bird pricing” and save!

Additional bootcamp information can be found at www.RestaurantSocialMedia.com


Social Media Bootcamp- STL –

How A Social Media Manager Can Help Your Business

Posted on 06. Mar, 2010 by Kate Buck jr in Social Media Marketing

If you’re looking to bring your company or product into the social media sphere, you’ve already recognized that there are new opportunities in this playing field. You probably understand that social media can offer so much more than an additional channel for your marketing message, but you may not know how—or have the time—to best take advantage of those opportunities.

Social media provides the opportunity to create and execute an overall communications strategy that can engender long-term customer loyalty, streamline customer service, and increase sales.  A qualified social media manager can help you create and execute your strategy, nurture your brand affinity, and create lasting customer relationships.

  1. Create your strategy. What are your goals? Do you want to focus primarily on capturing leads or the long-term building of your brand and reputation? A social media manager can help you zero in on your objectives and recommend the platforms that will best suit your needs. Determine if you will personally be “listening”, responding, writing, and engaging online or if you plan to empower your social media manager to do this on your behalf. Either way, you will scope out the tone and style of the online “you”.
  2. Execute your strategy. Once you’ve determined the platforms that best suit your business needs, you will create your online identities. A few examples include: signing up for Twitter and building a following, creating a Facebook page and/or company page on LinkedIn, or starting a blog…  Your social media manager can set up these online identities and link them together for you. Some examples might include, setting up your twitter status to automatically update your Facebook status; signing up for Twitterfeed and linking your blog to it. Your social media manager can also join groups and networks related to your business and begin contributing content and connecting with others on your behalf.
  3. Nurture brand affinity and customer relationships. Your online identities are established and linked, you’ve joined groups and networks, and have followers and other connections – now what? The key to ongoing success is participating routinely to maintain relevance, listening, and being responsive.

A social media manager can work with you to engage on a consistent basis. Engagement may include posting blogs, tweets, and other comments regularly—being a brand evangelist—and it also includes listening to what’s being said about your company and responding to customer inquiries and comments. If someone has taken the time to write something about your product or service, taking the time to write back will enhance your company’s reputation. A social media manager who really understands your product and your business can be invaluable in deepening these affinities and this helps reduce other customer service costs.

Are you ready to get your feet wet? With the right social media strategy, your social media presence can quickly become a greater return on investment than your offline strategies. Remember, you don’t have to do it alone. The right social media manager can help you “stop selling” and “start building relationships and helping people buy”.

Twitteraunts: How Restaurants Can Successfully Engage With Social Media

Posted on 24. Feb, 2010 by Jeffrey Summers in Social Media Marketing

New Research Shows Guests Are Influenced More By Online Media

Posted on 24. Feb, 2010 by Jeffrey Summers in Social Media Marketing

Traditional media influenced more than 30 percent of recently surveyed pizza consumers, while online media like restaurant Web sites were the most influential for restaurant-goers.  The Ad-ology Research study also found 61 percent of U.S. consumers surveyed said they had visited “a restaurant they had not visited before” in the last year.

Of traditional media types, direct mail had the most influence on pizza ordering/delivery, with nearly 28 percent of consumers overall and more than 36 percent of 35 to 44 year olds influenced by direct mail.  Quality ingredients and fast delivery time were the biggest factor in pizza delivery.

Online media influenced 40 percent of recent restaurant visitors, with restaurant Web sites having the most influence.  Traditional media proved more effective than social media for these consumers.  Twenty-seven percent were influenced by newspaper, and 25.4 percent said the same for direct mail.

“People are still eating out and ordering out, but want to make sure they’re spending their money wisely,” said C. Lee Smith, president and CEO of Ad-ology Research.  “Restaurant Web sites can really drive traffic by providing menus and prices, plus details like hours and location so consumers feel like they have all the information they need,” Smith said.

Other key findings:

  • 14% of restaurant visitors said they were influenced by search results
  • Half of consumers over 55 said senior discount programs are important as they chose a restaurant
  • Cleanliness was the most important overall factor in restaurant choice; quality of ingredients was most important in pizza delivery choice

The Media Influence on Consumer Choice survey is conducted throughout the year by Ad-ology Research to study online, traditional, and social media influence on buying decisions.

Both reports: Media Influence on Consumer Choice: Restaurants and Media Influence on Consumer Choice: Pizza Delivery are available for purchase and immediate download through Ad-ology.com. Each report includes 24 data charts, consumer-spending estimates by market, and additional marketing insights.

About Ad-ology Research

Ad-ology Research analyzes key marketing and advertising trends in over 440 industries and what motivates end-customers. The company’s research is used by over 2,000 advertising agencies, media properties and product marketing departments across the United States. Ad-ology Research is a division of Sales Development Services (SDS), Inc. – a Westerville, Ohio firm founded in 1989.

Methodology

Ad-ology Research surveyed an online consumer panel of 1,154 adults in a manner that is 98% representative of the adult population of the United States from July 17-18, 2009. The margin of error for this survey is +/- 2.9 percentage points.

Why Your Business Should Not Engage In Social Media – Yet!

Posted on 24. Feb, 2010 by Jeffrey Summers in Social Media Marketing

Since launching our new Social Media Marketing Programs for restaurant operators, we have been inundated with comments about how their current program isn’t working or how they have heard from ‘a friend’ that social media is this or that but probably isn’t for them. I tell some after listening to them talk about their business, that they’re right. Social Media isn’t for you because your business isn’t ready for it. “Why do you say that?” they ask. Well here’s why…

Two Major Social Media Execution Gaps

1. Social Media Is More About The Social But Your Business Culture Isn’t.

Just as creating and executing a great promotion to bring in lots of traffic can kill a bad business which has operational problems, i.e. out-of-stock issues, bad service, short staffed, etc… If someone wants to become a guest of yours, walks in and has an experience totally different than what you portray on your website, Facebook fan page or Twitter stream or other SM channel, you will lose them and create negative Word-Of-Mouth. It’s another type of ‘experience gap’ or the difference between what you promise (the guest’s dream date) and what you deliver (the guest’s nightmare) in terms of your social media efforts.

If your service model is broken, yet you talk about how great and engaging you are online, you are setting yourself up for failure. And if you can’t get other guests to talk about how great your service is instead of you, then you don’t have great service anyway!

So don’t start blaming SM for your execution problems.

SM is about engaging with people on a more personal level. It’s about building relationships with your guests – developing trust and ultimately loyalty. It’s not about continuing to treat every guest as a transaction or every employee as a number using a “take-it-or-leave-it” set of expectations. This is partially what we mean when we talk about being authentic or transparent. It has to be a “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” set of expectations being set and then met or exceeded. This takes a different skill and experience set than you used or cultivated to market your business and yourself just a short while ago.

So if you’re not the engaging type or your business is a direct reflection of your inability to be engaging, don’t jump into a Social Media Marketing effort until you and your business is. And no, you can’t outsource engagement!

2. The Pieces Just Don’t Seem To Fit

You felt you and your business could use social media to drive your business to the next level. You understood you didn’t have the first problem talked about above. So you eagerly hired someone from that marketing company of that social media website you’re always on, who has had that cool looking page on that really popular website for months now. Only to not understand what they are doing, why they are saying the things they are saying or what they are promising on your behalf. Why do you have one of everything? And where are the results? Why isn’t anything being measured? Where’s the ROI?

This is because your “guru” doesn’t understand your business and how it fits into social media. Are your guests on Facebook or MySpace? LinkedIn? Do they post reviews on Yelp or CitySearch or another local review site? Do they tweet? Do they prefer email, direct mail or no mail at all? How about text messages? Online ordering? Do they subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed? Do you have a blog? What the heck is an RSS feed? Do you even have a dedicated website? What’s a marketing hub? The list is seemingly endless. Then there are the questions of the right combinations of all these things and more given your guest’s online and offline profiles as well as their existing relationship with your business.

So given all of this, how come the “guru” didn’t ask you any questions about what you do? How you do it? What your story is? What your business goals are? Not to mention if they know the difference between drop-off catering and takeout.

A social media strategy won’t do you any good if you cannot or have not already defined your target market and the means by which they prefer to get their information and communication from you – not to mention how their differing emotional attachments to your brand means different messages in different forms at different times. Are they relatively new guests who need more educating about who you are and what you offer or are they loyal, raving fans who need more relationship support?

It makes all the difference in the world when you’re trying to get your story out.

What other gaps or disconnects have you seen or identified?