With social media booming, a smart restaurant embraces the new technologies and joins the conversations going on – which is going on with or without you listening, by the way.
In our SEO + Social Media for Restaurants package, we offer five main social media services (Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare & Gowalla) plus several additional services (blogging, email newsletters, photography and web video) if you want to take it a step further.
SEO + Social Media Package for Restaurants
A new and exciting client of ours is a restaurant owner who was looking to get in touch with his customers, after he read a bad review of his restaurant on Yelp.
We’ve taken to the streets with Yelp, Twitter, Facebook in addition to the most popular geolocation applications, FourSquare and Gowalla to get as connected as possible to every person who walks in their door.
Since we started our campaigns, word of mouth has been booming. He’s been interviewed for local magazines and websites, business has quadrupled, and even a few famous chefs have come in to see what all the hype is about!
Since we’re all foodies in the BuzzFarmers office, we’re going to tell you right here and now, that more restaurant clients are a good thing.
Let’s get into exactly what this package includes:
Yelp for Restaurants
Sites like Yelp.com can make or break a business. Some businesses have actually tried to sue Yelp because of negative reviews that are left on the site. Other times restaurant owners have downright lost their minds and cyber-stalked reviewers and gotten in trouble for harassing customers about their bad reviews.
Yelp.com is the #1 website and iPhone app that people use to find nearby restaurants and reviews. When potential customers are looking for a place to eat in their own city, and when they’re on vacation, Yelp.com is their go-to site for finding ratings and reviews.
It’s not uncommon for a restaurant to contact someone who has left a bad review on Yelp and offer them a credit for their next meal. This sort of act leaves an excellent impression on reviewers, which in turn will generally encourage them to come back to your restaurant with a positive mind, and update their review. From this point it’s up to you to make a better impression.
If you think a review is harmless, don’t be mistaken. The millions of people on Yelp trust each other, and just like word of mouth can make or break someone’s decision to come to your restaurant, so can a Yelp review.
Yelp – What’s included in the SEO + Social Media for Restaurants package:
- Maintenance: Keep track of your Yelp reviews and contact negative reviewers with whatever message you’d like to send to them. If you want to offer them a free meal, so be it. If you want to inquire more information about their experience, we can do that too.
- Participation: We’ll post any upcoming events on Yelp, participate in communities on your behalf and set you up with a restaurant account.
- Training: If you decide that you’re ready to take over your Yelp account, we’ll provide you with training so that you’re ready for the front lines of engaging one on one with your customers.
Take a second now to look on Yelp.com and see what people are saying about you. Remember, Yelp.com often comes up first in Google when someone searches for a review of a restaurant.
Take a look: http://www.yelp.com.
Twitter for Restaurants
Are you on Twitter? If you’re on there, are you tweeting? Twitter is such a close-knit community that often times a night out is inspired by a restaurant that someone tweets about. It can also be a downfall if someone has a bad experience and tweets negatively about you.
Go ahead, look for the name of your restaurant right now on Search.Twitter.com. Is anyone talking about you? Yes? Great.. have you responded to them? Have you used their tweet as a testimonial on your website? How can you make more money by using these tweets? How can you make an unhappy customer a happy one?
If no one is tweeting about you, that’s OK too. You need to get into the scene. You need to be tweeting about your specials, taking pictures of your food, answering questions about food, and in general, just being a part of the community. When you’re on Twitter, it allows someone to talk about you and link to your Twitter page. This will drive more website traffic to your Twitter page and website, plus more foot traffic in your doors.
You’ll be a part of a community that you weren’t before. Just ask @cheesematt, @chezpascal and @nicksonbroadway (and yes, lots more – and yes, your competitors are on Twitter).
Twitter – What’s included in the SEO + Social Media for Restaurants package:
As your social media strategist we’ll have a brief meeting to discuss your goals of using Twitter and brainstorm ideas for meeting those goals.
- Setup: Your Twittter account will be launched or re-launched following all best practices for a bio, picture, and background. Twitter page will be branded and personalized.
- Monitoring: You will get regular notifications from us anytime someone mentions your restaurant. Any testimonials will be forwarded for you to use.
- Recycling: Any time you get a good review anywhere on the web, we’ll tweet it from your account.
- Building Followers: Regularly build followers, create lists and engage with customers on your behalf.
- Tweeting: We will tweet every day at regular intervals (content: specials, links, pictures).
- Customer Service: Will provide customer service to anyone who asks a question (contacting you first for an answer). Will refer traffic to your website.
- Training: If you decide that you’re ready to take over your Twitter account once it’s been running smoothly, we’ll provide you with training so that you’re ready for the front lines of engaging one on one with your customers.
Facebook for Restaurants
Facebook is the #1 social network on the internet. People are sharing photos, joining groups, sharing experiences and more importantly… interacting with companies and restaurants in ways they never could before. Many restaurants do feature articles on their chefs, post short blogs, post picturs of their food, interact with people who leave comments, post their menu and do lots of things that eventually send you more foot traffic and money in your cash registers.
Facebook – What’s included in the SEO + Social Media for Restaurants package:
- Build your Facebook following
- Post pictures for you (professional photography services also available)
- Do interviews with your chefs and staff
- Maintain the feed of comments on Facebook including responses
- Post promotions and facilitate contests
- Create custom tabs
Creating a tab for your menu gives people an easy route to finding out more about you. We’ll work with you on copy and on anything else you want to cook up.
FourSquare + Gowalla for Restaurants
Geolocation applications have gone from an experimental industry to a well-funded multi-million dollar industry. If you’re unfamilliar with Gowalla and Foursquare, then you might be surprised to know that there are people who “check in” at your restaurant on a daily basis. With Foursquare, when someone is a regular at a certain location, they become the “mayor” of that place.
Many restaurants are now embracing these services by awarding mayors with free food and discounts. When people “check in” using these applications, they’re posting where they are on both Facebook and Twitter, telling everyone where they are, how the food is, and even posting pictures.
This can be the ultimate word of mouth – in both good ways and bad ways. The best way to take advantage of the medium is to be a part of the community and encourage positive experiences when someone checks in to your location.
Foursquare + Gowalla – What’s included in the SEO + Social Media for Restaurants package:
In this package, you will become the TRUE mayor of your restaurant. Here’s what we’ll do:
- Set up vendor accounts, so that you can track your visitors and check-ins (FourSquare & Gowalla)
- Set up discounts/promotions for visitors (FourSquare & Gowalla)
- Set up any promotions for “mayors” (FourSquare)
- Set up “shouts” that send a message when someone checks in nearby (Foursquare)
- Post pictures at your restaurant (Gowalla), so that people get a sense of your restaurant
So how does this all work?
We’ll come to your restaurant/deli/bar/pizza place to meet with you. We’ll brainstorm the types of things you want posted on your Twitter, Facebook and Gowalla, plus how you want negative Yelp reviews to be handled. We’ll take some pictures of the venue, some dishes you offer and anyone on your staff that you’d like. We’ll add those to Facebook and on occasion, distributed through Twitter and Gowalla.
Additional Services:
Blogging
If you want to start a blog, we’ve got food bloggers. Oh, do we have food bloggers. You might call the BuzzFarmers office the foodie capital of New England. Our writers currently write for nationally syndicated websites and have both the skillsets and experience to help you create content for your blog.
By creating a blog, you might offer restaurant recipes, specials, information about events and the food you cook (Check out the blog of Matt Jennings from La Laiterie as an example). If you’re cool with writing your blog, but don’t have one set up, we can build one for you.
Online Video & Photography
We’ve added a talented videographer to our team that also co-owns a video production company based out of Pawtucket, RI. If you’d like to create web videos for your website, Facebook, Twitter, or anything else (including commercials), we can work that into your package.
Our videographer is fantastic at helping companies brainstorm ideas for their web videos and has created many of the local TV commercials for restaurants and bars that you see in Rhode Island. He also has experience shooting food and dishes from restaurants and come with the lighting kits required for food photography, people and ambiance.
Email Newsletters
We can create branded, information-packed email newsletters to be sent out every month. These newsletters can both promotional and editorial depending on your goals and the content you’re creating for your website.
