Take Your Restaurant Social Series: Facebook

We’re kicking off something we’ve never done here at the Speedy Incorporation blog and that’s publishing a 4 part series of posts around a topic. This post is the first of four posts in our Take Your Restaurant Social series, each post focusing on a unique social medium and carefully covering some of the best strategies for engaging and growing your audience.

This series is for small businesses, new restaurants that don’t have the resources to spend thousands on a professional marketing campaign. Every strategy we list and share are things that you can do yourself with a bit of time and effort.

Use the links below to quickly navigate to the medium you’re interested in;

Part 1 – Facebook
Part 2 – Twitter
Part 3 – SMS/Mobile
Part 4 – Geo-Social

Facebook Marketing Strategies for Restaurants

1. Make a page, not a person. I wish this one went without saying but I still see restaurants sending out friend requests and every time I do a little part of me dies. Facebook has business pages for a reason and in order to take full advantage of the tools they offer you’ll need one.

2. Get started immediately. If your restaurant isn’t yet open, don’t discount the value of a Facebook page as a buzz generator. I’ve seen pages for restaurants that have yet to open but already have a following of over 500 people! Think of how much busier your first week will be with this foundation to build off of. Start by sending a personal message to 20 of your closest and local friends and family, ask them to recommend this page to 20 of their closest friends who might be interested. Who doesn’t love an opportunity to try a new restaurant?

3. Get your employees involved. I know this can be a scary ideas for a lot of owners and managers but when done properly it’s invaluable. Take 10 minutes out of your next staff meeting to address the social network and your goals, encourage participation but be very clear about what kinds of action you’d love to see from your staff. It could be as simple as visiting the Facebook page once a week and liking a few posts or pictures, perhaps commenting or answering questions. This puts out and communicates an open, fun and engaging community and atmosphere and customers recognize and are drawn to this. This is also a neat way to encourage employees to go above and beyond, so in that vein…

4. Publicly laud your employees that go above and beyond! Social networks are all about being social and the more individual people you can recognize the more eyeballs you’ll end up getting on your page. More eyeballs means more followers means better business. Don’t go over the top but make it regular and make sure your employees know how much you appreciate their efforts.

5. Talk to people! You’re going to end up having some fans post on your Facebook page, respond to every single one you can. If someone in your restaurant offered you a comment in person you’d respond right? Well it takes even more effort for them to remember to do so online.

6. Handle negative comments the right way. Don’t lash out, don’t be a jerk and don’t respond with emotion. Be nice! Every restaurant gets negative comments and some people are just out to get free stuff if they can but you can never forget the public nature of Facebook. Pretend the world is watching and handle the comment in a mature and reasonable way.

7. Give stuff away. Not big things. T-shirts, beer mugs, $5 gift certificates, people don’t really care but when we hear win something for free we just go nuts and get excited easily. This is one of the simplest ways to generate a bit of excitement about your restaurant or bar. Better yet, make them have to do something simple such as post a picture on your page (preferably of them at your location) and tag themselves in it. It takes 5 minutes and creates neat content for you.

8. Get pictures of your food and atmosphere out there! Is it a surprisingly busy evening at your location? Snap a photo and post it, people love crowds and going to popular places. If you’re posting photos of your food make sure the quality is good enough and that the food looks delicious. Don’t forget about drinks either (if you have a bar) lots of people love trying new drinks so build a special around one and promote it exclusively through Facebook.

9. Make videos. The great thing about short video clips are that you can share some really unique aspects of your restaurant with people who aren’t there. Most smart phones have fairly decent video recording capabilities and while the editing (if you need to edit at all) won’t be professional, you can surely come up with something passable. A short video of your chef sharing some tips while preparing a popular dish, maybe a 30 second clip of the live band that played last night or the dance floor when it was really packed. People eat this stuff up and it creates more excitement and buzz around your brand.

10. Look for unique opportunities to partner up with other restaurants or organizations. Success on social networks is all about leveraging social networks. You always want to be getting your business in front of new people and one way is to reach out to other businesses or a unique organization. For example, take a look at this facebook page “Top Melbourne Restaurants” and notice that more than 65,000 people like it. You can bet that any restaurant in Melbourne doing something newsworthy would love to get a mention on that page. How do you get that mention? You reach out and ask, it’s simple social networking and research and a bit of effort will get you results.

About the Author

Neil DuPaul is a Marketing Associate at Speedy Incorporation. He also enjoys the entrepreneurial lifestyle as a freelance web designer and SEO for local businesses. You can catch up and connect with him on twitter.