The Top 5 Things Restaurants Misunderstand About Social Media

Whether you want to admit it or not, social media is here to stay.  Everyone (And I truly mean EVERYONE), needs to accept this fact and figure out how they want to incorporate social media into their marketing and advertising efforts.

When I'm in restaurants, meeting with the owners, discussing  their customer loyalty and marketing plans, I learn as much as I can about what they are up to.  Almost every restauranteur is somehow involved in one form of online advertising or another (Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, etc.), has a website, does some form of print marketing (Newspaper ads, magazine ads, etc.), and perhaps some TV spots.

Nine out of ten restaurants I meet with though have little or no social media marketing plans at all.  To be more specific, they know what social media is, they have a facebook account, twitter account, or blog, but they totally misunderstand the medium and might as well not be doing anything at all.

Here are the five most common misconceptions and mistakes I run across and my advice on how to avoid them:

1) I have social media sites, BUT I don't see any ROI from them, so I waste as little time as possible on them

This is a funny one that always seem to come up instantly, before I can even finish the sentence, "How are you handling your social media?"

The thing of it is though that not all things are supposed to be trackable and directly lead to revenue.  For instance, take your telephone.  Certainly, you aren't going to cancel your restaurant's phone service because you can't directly draw a line from it, to revenue. The phone is a tool that you use in your business.

Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and your blogs are exactly the same thing. These mediums give you exposure to the world.  They also give you access to people that hours of television spots and thousands of dollars of newspaper ads can't do.  Social media is the perfect platform to demonstrate your restaurant's  uniquness, your exquisite cuisine and the fantastic atmosphere a diner can expect, when coming to dine at your establishment.

2) I know newer restaurants are utilizing social media.  I don't get it, we've been around too long and we're going to "skip it".

Replace "social media" with "online ordering",  and "websites" and you have an objection that was around 10 years ago and even 10 years before that.  I cannot tell you how many restauranteurs told me, when the .com craze was at it's peak that they didn't understand the web, didn't see how they would get any ROI on a website and frankly were in the business too long and didn't need one. Guess what? Unless they got out of the business all together, every one of those restaurants has a website.

The same holds true with online ordering and online reservations.  Anyone that scoffed and tried to avoid it is using it.  It became the standard.

Social media is not going anywhere and therefore is going to be the exact same thing.  The best part about it though is that it's not difficult to learn.  Take some time to get familiar and comfortable with it.  Devote a chunk of time out of every day to work on it.  Take it one step at a time.  You don't have to launch a blog, facebook fan page and build a twitter following, all at once.  Pick one thing, build it up and then move to the next one.  Or, if you still think you better not get involved, look into hiring a company to help you.  A quick google search will show you hundreds of companies, that manage social media for people.

3) Social Media doesn't apply to Restaurants

This one honestly always has me scratching my head.  I think almost every person on the planet will agree with me when I assert that dining is a social experience. People go to restaurants to enjoy themselves and interact with their friends and family.  They also interact with the people working the front of house, the servers and sometimes even the chef.

If we can all agree on that, how could anyone find a better engine to give people an idea of what your restaurant is like and what they can expect when dining there,  than with social media?

4) I don't ever log into my social media sites.  I have automated feeds that take care of everything for me

Remember:  This medium is called edia.  People are very smart.  After a couple of posts, they are going to realize you are just feeding your blog, fan page or twitter account with automated stuff. This is going to turn them off and they will stop visiting your sites and stop paying attention to you and never dine at your restaurant.

You need to be social with people and you need to interact with people.  When interacting with your fans or followers, you'll get to know more about them and that will enable  you to share information that is pertinent and specific to the exact things they are interested in and needs that they have. There is no automated feed on the planet that can accomplish this for you.

5) I don't do social media anymore because I spent all my time making the perfect blog posting and then nobody commented on it, shared it or tweeted it out to anyone else.

This is an understandable objection. After all, if you spend hours making the "perfect blog posting" and nobody shares it or comments on it, what person wouldn't be upset?  The thing is though that it's the agent's fault this happened.

All is not lost though, because there is a very easy formula that will turn this right around:

Anyone that works on social media should spend 20% of their time creating content, and 80% of their time promoting it.

That's all it takes.  Once you create a blog post, video, or other piece of content in your social media marketing campaign, SHARE IT.  Share you content with other bloggers that have similar interest.  Offer your content to trade organizations and ask them to share or comment on it.  Find people on twitter that have similar interests to what you have produced and share it with them.  If someone else has a similar interest, they are very likely to comment on it, or share it with their followers.

This may sound difficult, but there are many great tools out there that are very inexpensive, or even free that you can use.  Things like HootSuite and TweetDeck tools will help you monitor your brand, mentions you get online, and even track down people that have interests similar to the things that you are publishing on your social media sites.

I hope you find these tips helpful.  No matter what your views are on social media, just remember that

1) It's not going anywhere, so you might as well dip your toe in the pool and get familiar with it.

2) Social media is a journey, not a race.  You don't have to have everything built out, and tons of followers all at once.  Just like your traditional marketing efforts, one of the keys to success is relentless consistency.  Start out with one thing, do it very consistently, and then build from there.