If I was a Restaurant...How Would I Use Social Media?

A Social Service

One of the industries that was expected to be hit the hardest by the recession was the eating out/restaurant sector. There were fears that consumers would cut out eating out altogether, however although they failed to materialise the industry has been through some tough times.

• US Restaurant industry trends


• Brits choosing pubs over restaurants

There is a change in consumer behavior that has and will continue to affect how people communicate with brands, what they spend money on, who they trust and what they value. Ogilvy produced a great report which makes for some interesting reading called Eyes Wide Open, Wallet Half Shut (pdf). One of the underlying themes that fits to eating out is how important family and community have become.

Restaurants are local and have an opportunity to facilitate peoples social experiences and by doing this develop a loayl customer following.

It is about being passionate about creating a difference, being an experience and building a community around the business

The Balancing Act

Restaurants have had to balance offering value for money without falling into the trap of over-discounting. Generally restaurants are having to work harder to capture customers spend and that means gettting smarter at marketing.

Restaurants have to create a clear and distinct experience and use innovative ways to create customer experiences: marketing, menus, branding...and of course menus to excite them. Our recent blog focused on the idea of value: value = benefit - cost and the need to tip the balance by focusing on customer benefits rather than cost.

Restaurants can now use new and exciting  technologies as well as social networks to interact with and engage customers. By building a community they can develop more sustainable and loyal customer base - a tribe.

Some Case Studies

In the US restaurants have recognized the importance of social media and are now focusing on utlising in their marketing.

• Infographic - how social are US restaurants on Facebook


• 2011 Most Influential Restaurants in the US
  

Notable case studies:

• Flimé – The Cannibal Restaurant Case Study


• AJ Bombers and Foursquare


• How Social Media Drives New Business: Six Case Studies (4 are restaurant / food related)


• Why Buffalo Wild Wings Takes Geo-Social Seriously


• Restaurant using ipads as menus (MenuPad)

If I was a Restaurant How I Would Use Social Media

Learn

• Review how successful restaurants use social media and understand what Social Media ‘Tools they use and how


• Have a look at successful chefs/restaurants actively engage with their community with advice and resources e.g. Celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito, Rick Bayless , La Casa , UnoChicagoGrill

I would listen to my customers/community

Look and listen first: who is talking about you and what is being said?

• 9 reasons why hotels and restaurants should monitor social media and customer reviews


• The Best Free Tools For Making A Social Monitoring Dashboard


• Best Social Media Monitoring Tools to Enhance Business

Match my brand to my target audience 

• I would develop my brand and understand what experience I was offering to my customers.


• Here is an excellent review of how restaurants need to focus their websites on simplicity of design (pdf).

Get my menu into high quality digital pictures

• use high quality for show on website


• Put menu items on Flickr to share easily

Setup my social sites

• Develop a Facebook page


• I could have a Gallery of recipes and get a table booking app used directly within your Facebook  page – why because it is easy for people to connect, book a table and develop word of mouth marketing (interested in this then contact us)


• Twitter – use some tantalizing photos of your menu as background. Tweet regularly but about trends in the community, other people, new menu items, seasonal changes, get feedback…not just about the restaurant. I would also use Twitter to engage with other influencers in the community and ask them questions listen to conversations (you can use Twellow for this)


• Integrate the social network sites with my website e.g. Facebook/Twitter


• Have an email capture on your website for people to subscribe to a newsletter. Create a monthly email-Newsletter with the latest happenings, announcements, new menu items, entertainment news, recipe of the month etc.

Blog

• I would develop a blog. As a start point I would identify a series of articles I could write about e.g. ideas on menus for my target client audience - e.g. I could focus on quick healthy and convenient ideas for moms.


• I would hold an event and invite some people in for lessons on new menu items/recipes. Take photos and blog about the experience, people locally will share and join in creating great word of mouth marketing.


• I would have an RSS feed on my blog that people could subscribe to

Local Guides

• Make sure your restaurant can be searched and reviewed through local business guides such as Yelp.com, Urbanspoon.com, TripAdvisor.com and FoodSpotting.

Be Mobile

• Increasingly people are using their mobiles to find out information and contact restaurants. If they come across a difficult to navigate website then the chances are they will click away. Remember that Google takes into account locality on mobile searches. Get a mobile website.


• Pizza Express recently launched a mobile app that allows customers to pay directly from their phone


• Capture peoples mobile numbers for mobile marketing campaigns by using competitions and prize draws

Location apps

• How diners are using smartphones


• Foursquare - run a promotion based on Foursquare that offers discounts for checking in. For example, any bill over £25 receives an automatic £5 discount if the customer checks into Foursquare.


• Facebook deals - Facebook deals allows users to check-in to receive special offers/promotions

Build relationships with your audience/followers:

• Respond promptly to people


• Ask questions


• Develop conversations


• Host Tweetups for your Twitter community and Meetups for those that gather around topics via meetup.com

• Use Video…build a story
  
  
  
  • Video is the most natural and friendly way to promote the personality of your business. People like to connect with the thoughts and ideas that are part of how you create your meals – it becomes a story and a narrative that they tell to others
  
  
  • Use video to show people some freshly made dishes but don't stop their get some footage of people taking their first taste - that can tell people so much more than a static picture
  
  
  
  

Make your menu sharable or even liked

• Blend offline and online
  
  
  
  • Use tools like Facebook events to promote any specials/promotional events you have. Write a short piece on launch of a new menu people might like to come/ and try it. Twitter the event. Key is to make it sharable.
  
  
  • Invite local bloggers to your events
  
  
  
  


• Keywords and Hashtags
  
  
  
  • Identify keywords relvant to your target customer and restaurant
  
  
  • Use hashtags in Tweets
  
  
  
  

The Personality

Food is a social experience and the more you help and facilitate others experiences the more you will be remembered by your customers. There is a lot more I could cover but I hope this gives your a flavour (pun intended!) for what can be achieved. Of course it is important to tie it together and ensure that you do not attempt too much, spread yourself too thinly and miss out on building the relationships. Co-ordinating and developing your strategy first is time well spent.

 

Social Media - The Story of the Three Little Pigs

The Story So Far

We have all grown up with the famous story of the three little pigs (although I like the alternative 3 little wolfs variation as well). The moral of the story is obvious people who work hard, work smart, save money, think ahead, and help other people, will come out on top.

In marketing you wouldn't recommend a business to build their marketing solely on social media - it is just not good advice. Social media is just one part of the marketing mix.

Likewise the idea of solely being digital is not right for every business, it is important to recognise and use offline marketing (if it fits to your target customers). Again as a stand alone focus it will deliver results but be limited. Like the 3 little pigs using the right materials are vital to a solid marketing strategy.

Jeff Bullas wrote a good piece Social Media Marketing’s Biggest Myth that quite rightly argues the need to focus on being relevant and informative:

"The reality is that “social media” is based on self-interest. People on social sites are looking for materials which are useful to them.

Content defines the value to your customer - why people will either ignore it or share it. Content strategy is then a defining part of any online strategy. Here is a great presentation that drums home the importance of content for online marketing.

Content Strategy: The Future of Marketing

Mixing the Bricks and Mortar and Working Together

So if we return to the three little pigs story - our marketing should consist of mixing our marketing to produce a solid foundation and the people we invite to help us are our customers; because if they help you (and more importantly want to) you may develop a community.

We can't cover everything so I have focused on email - some people see email as an enemy of social media i.e. email vs. social media. The truth is, done well they should compliment each other (but it also depends on market/customers...).

Email Facts

• 72% of companies rate email as 'excellent' or 'good' for return on investment (EConsultancy)


• Email adoption high but lacking in best practice - the relevance, context and targetting (download pdf - Forrester) also support by MarketingSherpa 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report (download here)

Email is getting Social

• 6 Smart & Effective Email Marketing Tactics (Mashable)


• 7 Steps to Improve Your Email Marketing (Practical Commerce)


• Integrating the Facebook like Button into Mailchimp campaigns (Mailchimp)

Both Constant Contact and ExactTarget acquired businesses in the social arena, namely, NutshellMail and CoTweet. Why - well they recognise the value of social data and are looking to use this to build more precise targeting methods based on social data.

Putting the Story back into Marketing

So what is the role of social media within the marketing mix? Again this is big subject but here are a few reasons why it is an important part of any business now:

• people trust people (Source Nielsen) and therefore we look for what are friends or others say about brands/products and services


• brand communities can provide an ongoing development of a relationship with brand as opposed to a start stop approach (see blog post by Olivier Blanchard)


• brands can understand (and quickly) what their customers are saying - a dynamic feedback loop providing ways to improve your product or service


• researching customers (you can understand their online/offline behaviours and refine your marketing and provide value to them (this comes back then, to your content strategy)


• using tools to linkin with Facebooks open graph you can use the data to understand your 'followers'


• it is where you customers are spending their time online and hence where you can help them e.g. customer service

This is by no means an exhaustive list, it just meant to illustrate the opportunities and relevance of being social. In todays world we want the human connection as well. We can never underestimate the power of the human story, the connection we feel with it and the emotions that they evoke. Look at some of the highest ranked video's onYouTube and you will understand what I mean. When done well, social media builds as the brands facilitate the story of others as well as solving problems, communicating relevant messages and adding value it can also tell the stories of its people.

Video Marketing - Why Haven't You Got It Yet?

The Growth of Video Marketing

Are you doing any videos? Do you know that a YouTube channel is the equivalent of a Facebook profile? Do you know that online video, yes video can help with your SEO? In addition, as opposed to TV ads, online videos are trackable and can be viewed repeatedly attracting the “long-tail” viewers while allowing you to measure the exact impact of the video and participate around it in the comments section or on blogs.



 

Some of the Trends

Advertisers Using Online Video

Advertisers are becoming more confident in using online video advertising, due to factors such as standardisation of ad formats, online video advertising is going from strength to strength. A recent study from ComScore, found that just over 45% of users in America viewed at least one video ad over a month. You can watch a more detailed video here Comscore - The State of Online Video.

What is surprising is that only average 30% of Youtube ads are skipped, this came from a conference in Manchester, Bruce Daisley, sales director at Youtube & Google.

Streaming Films on the Up

In a huge coup for Netflix, a recent study found that 20% of peak time donwstream internet traffic was streaming video from their site. This is great news for Netflix, and perhaps not so great news for the DVD market.

 

Bigger Screens Promote Video

Resulting from what previous Nielsen analysis identifies as the iPad’s larger screen, iPad users show substantially higher download rates for video content than iPhone users. One-third (33%) of iPad users regularly access TV shows, three times the 11% of iPhone users who do so. And the 32% of iPad users who regularly access movies is virtually three times the 12% of iPhone users who regularly access movies.

Mobile Using Video On the Rise

This is probably quite obvious but the people over at Nielsen recently reported that mobile video is on the rise. As more people start using smartphones e.g. iPhone, Blackberries) this is only set to accelerate even faster. The main thing is, we now have clear idea on how big and fast video consumption is growing. According to their recent State of the Media report Americans consumed more video than any quarter prior on mobile devices.

 

Live Streaming Growth at Over 650%

Comscore announced that the amount of time American audiences spent watching video on live video channels (Justin.tv, Ustream, Livestream, LiveVideo, and Stickam) has grown 648% to more than 1.4 billion minutes. This phenomenal growth compares to a 68% increase in video views on Youtube.

Although this is still a small proportion of  the online video market, live streaming is growing in popularity and use. Many organisations are now enbracing this as way to extend their reach and engagement with employees. As people become more accustomed to this form of content growth will continue.

UStream are the dominant players in this, but Facebook is quickly developing its capabilities – recently introducing LiveStream integration with Facebook pages. This has the potential to hugely increase the live stream video market and see it really reach the mainstream.

Ways to Use Video for Your Business

Video is a powerful tool for marketing your business. If done well you can reach a large audience through a viral effect otherwise known as buzz marketing. Video can be distributed across multiple online platforms easily both as ads or for consumption across social channels. Video enhances response rates for other forms of marketing e.g. email, SEO, PPC…

Some ways video can be used for marketing:

• Product demonstrations


• Service testimonials


• Promotions


• Product launches


• Product training

Other ways you can use Video for your organisation:

• Business news


• Events/Keynote speeches


• Health and Safety


• Human resources (training/induction)

Some Tips

Social is just a label, the real challenge is figuring out how to deliver optimal customer experience that builds meaningful relationships between you and your customers and employees.

1. Move beyond using Twitter and Facebook - many businesses still only focus on these channels. Simple to add in a button to your website so that people can also find your YouTube channel.


2. Make sure you tag your videos with keywords that are relevant to the video but also are the ones you use for your SEO strategy


3. Make your YouTube channel a destination add it to your website as well as your Twitter and Facebook buttons. Name your YouTube Channel but put some thought into the name of your channel just as you would for the domain of a blog or website.


4. Take advantage of YouTube's advertising.  There are two types of advertising
   
   
   
   1. YouTube Search. They're the number two search engine out there. You can bid on the keywords people use when searching on YouTube just as you do on Google adwords (PPC). Instead of a text ad coming up on the right-hand side as it does on Google, you get a video and a thumbnail of a video. The cost is relatively low compared to Facebook or Google.
   
   
   2. Promoted Videos. This is just as the name says where you can promote a video you have uploaded. Once you have your video submitted as a Promoted Video, it then has the opportunity to run what are called 'CTA' ads. 'CTA' stands for 'call to action.'
   
   
   
   

A successful video marketing strategy focuses on attracting the right audience with a topic or theme that’s video-worthy and can be compelling! Get that right and you could dramatically increase your results.

 

3 Types of Video for Facebook Engagement | Social Business

Is Video is becoming more relevant?

Is video now less about advertising and more about sharing stories and experiences? Are brands now exploiting emotions or changing to more relevant experiences?  Here are some examples from Coca Cola and Nike.

Coca Cola



Nike



Entertainment and experiences will become a necessary part of marketing a brand, available where, when and how we want it e.g. mobile. But we are not yet there and still there are hurdles and barriers yet to cross.

John Winsor’s recently wrote a blog post in which he said:

"Sometimes you have to destroy something you love"




John's point is that the model and the business of marketing needs to change, must change. If the people within the industry embraced change the shift to being social and collaborative, it would be a catalyst for greater things. His agency, Victors and Spoils, is one of many (e.g. Blur) that’s applying crowdsourcing models to creativity.

As Clay Shirkey mentioned at SXSW:

"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution"

Brands now need to be in the experience industry, creating experience media that is innovative, inimitable and is sharable.

The future of video

As we have moved to a high speed world our love of video as a media both as creators and as consumers is astounding:

• As of Feb. 2011, YouTube has 490 million unique users worldwide that searched about 92 billion pages per month. It means that we spend around 2.9 billion hours (over 325,000 years) on YouTube in a month.


• Video accounts in 2011 will account for 60% of mobile web traffic (source HubSpot)

This is part of the reason for the predicted growth in online video advertising.



Engagement is equally a part of being of being relevant (a key point made by Brian Solis) as it is to do with quality content. The creative concept therefore has an equal part to play in making it relevant to the audience, interesting and hopefully shared.

One of the most effective media is video; why because we can convey so much using it...but it is the many new and interesting forms of video that now make this media simply amazing. This year we will start to see many of these new forms of video become more mainstream: animation, augmented video's and motion graphics.

As Facebook continues to change and evolve video will play an increasingly important role in how brands use Facebook; we will see more Facebook pages with video embedded on the landing pages. It is already easy to integrate it video into pages; imagine the powerful combination of video and Facebook stores (f-commerce).

But what makes a video engaging, here are some examples that we think work in these formats:

What do you think?

1. Animation

Animators vary both in style and methods but one thing they have in common is the ability to engage and entertain often putting over complex ideas in a simple way.

Here are two amazing examples:

a. Commoncraft label themselves quite rightly as being in the explanation business


Another great company is RSA - here is an example of their work


The costs have lowered for animation, driven in part by lower costs of software but also due to machines more able to cope with production.

2. Augmented Reality overlaid

As in our last blog the use of augmented reality in video will take off. The idea of augmented reality videos in Facebook takes it to a whole new level.

The best example is Youtique:


3. Motion graphics

Similar to animation but with real world video and graphics blended there are limitles possibilities in how this can be used. A partner of ours Fraser Davidson in his show reel demonstrates the superb possibilities in his showreel.



So How are you going to use video to engage your customers - for businesses now it is imagination that is the limiting factor not technology. How do you imagine your future business?