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Tip: Consistently Communicate with Customers

Marketing a restaurant is a game of consistency, you can’t post/email thirty two things in the next 15 minutes and then take two months off. You know that. Yet it is still likely the case that you find yourself with gaps in your communications, lapses in the connection with your customers that helps drive business through your door. What you need is a plan, a system that helps you simplify, and I have one for you. 

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See What I do on Instagram and Twitter by following @spirocks on both. 

Restaurant Marketing Simplification System:

First you need a base that you control, a place where you can guarantee the rules won’t change and affect all the work you have put in. That is your website/blog, and I spelled out the reasons here: ( Don’t Just Rent Your Friends ) If your restaurant website does not have a blog section, you should make that project number 1.

  1. Create a Blog on your website: Your blog is going to be the place where you create the content that is spread throughout your social networks and email lists.
  2. Create a Mailchimp Account. Great news; they are free up to 2000 contacts so you can try this out with no risk. Mailchimp allows you to send RSS campaigns, which means that once you publish a blog post you have Mailchimp automatically create an email from it and email it out when you want, like say 10am on Friday. That’s it, email campaign done. 
  3. Decide the frequency with which you wish to contact your email list. Once you have that plan, all you need to do is create a post before the date and time (give it an hour early) you set in Mailchimp and you are done. Most people find creating a blog post a less cumbersome process than creating an email and best of all you kill two birds with one stone. 
  4. Social Network integration via Mailchimp allows you to connect your restaurant social accounts and post to them at the same time.

So there you have it a simple way to create great content once, on a platform you control, and get it distributed free to everywhere it needs to be.

How frequently to post to your social networks:

In addition to the above, I suggest having a plan for social media only posts, as you should post to them more frequently than you email. So say you have a new special every Tuesday, share a picture of that with a simple one line description.

One great place to do this is through instagram, where you can take a photo of a special appetizer for example and share it to not only instagram, but also facebook, twitter, flickr, and tumblr all at the same time. Maybe I will write another post on that if you are interested.

Got any tips on how you streamline your restaurant’s online marketing? I would love to hear.

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Don’t just rent your friends from Facebook

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Too many business owners have an online strategy which relies on garnering as many likes as possible for their Facebook page. This is wrought with peril and here is why:

At any time, and they do it often, Facebook alters how you connect with these people to further their goals. Which all revolve around making money off of these connections. They want you to rent your friends, plain and simple.

So as time changes, the investment you have made in those connections is adjusted, filtered, and rearranged to become more profitable for Facebook. Recently they altered how many of your business posts people who liked your page see if you don’t pay to promote them.  Its time to focus on making connections with these friends and followers as permanent as possible.

The answer for most of you: Build your email list. Start today, make it worth their while. How much should you invest in time and money? Answer one question: What is a permanent connection to your customers worth to you?

Writing a Professional Realtor Bio

A Realtor needs to maintain an online bio in several places, here are five tips to help you execute one that works for you, not against you.

1. Its an old journalism saying: Show, don’t Tell.

Explaining what you have done is better than telling them what your title is. You will see a lot of ninjas, enthusiasts, philosophers, and worst of all gurus on people’s social media profiles. Wouldn’t it be better if they told you how they grew sales, orchestrated their teams to produce more ideas, and led change in their organizations?

The “show, don’t tell” rule results in focusing on what things you actually make happen, not who you say you are. Phrasing this way means using words like these:

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These are doing words, action verbs that give a sense of what you get done. That is key, this is the value you bring to those that hire you. Remember that.

 2. Make sure you use keywords that speak to the people you are targeting.

What are you an expert at? Specifically. That should be in your bio using the keywords that describe the skills and expertise that you hold. They will be searched for and increase the likelihood that your bio will help you get found. So how do you come up with these keywords? Think about what the client you are targeting would be looking for, and then how they would type that into Google. Those are your keywords.

3. Don’t get lazy and decide to use the current buzzwords:

Like we mentioned above, there are words we see over and over. I for one do not want to hire a social media guru any more than I want to hire a marketing ninja. Those words say nothing other than the fact that you think you are either smarter or cooler (or both0 than the reader. Trust me this is not a good approach.

Linkedin which is pretty much the greatest authority on professional web profiles presented this slideshow on the most overused words of 2013. If these are in your bio it is time to change it up.

4. Always include what is in it for your prospective client or employer.

Ahhh the Value proposition, you must include this. Accomplishments demonstrate ability but they are the past, your bio is speaking to people who want to know what they get from working with you; in the future. This is essential to answer: what can these readers expect from you? What value do you add to the equation?

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5. Revisit often (More than Every Ten Years)

Stale bios are the old headshots of the digital age, now not only do we get to see your old headshot when bangs were big, but we get to read about where you were in your career in 2001. Let’s go, ge tit up to date. Make a note in your calendar of choice (Google is mine) to remind you to read and edit your bio every three months. That way you can tout your recent developments and expunge things that no longer apply.

Instagram for Restaurant Marketing

So you know instagram, land of self centered duck faced ‘selfies’ and look where I am rub in your face pics from your connections.

But you know what it works great for?

Food.

Its simple really, when people see food they want to eat it, and when they see a restaurant consistently post food pics that they want, it leads to them visiting.

Tips:

Be passionate about your food, pictures of poor food will have poor results.

Be pragmatic about how much you share, five dishes a week is one thing five in a hour is another.

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Find me on instagram or twitter (@spirocks)
To see how I am doing it for Andolinis and Sauce in Andover Ma.

Your Facebook Page Sucks, Here is What to Do about it.

Great, you have a Facebook page. Guess what, so does everyone else. You don’t have many people that have ‘liked it’, so your messages are seen by a very few people. It is disheartening, frustrating, and makes you question whether or not it is worth the little time you spend on it.

You Are Not Alone.

Data from recommend.ly suggests that after studying 1.7 million Facebook Pages: Half of Facebook Pages have less than 256 fans and 31% have less than 32 fans

 

What gives?

Well there are a few characteristics of Facebook pages that lead to the issue:

  1. Facebook does not allow you to proactively contact new people via your page.
  2. Facebook is closed to web search, so people looking on google for your business won’t find you. (Google+ it)
  3. Your content on your page probably does not appeal to people, or make them want to share it. \
  4. Everyone has a page so it is hard to stand out, and people are numb to it.
  5. Facebook wants you to buy ads, not get found organically.

So What Do You Do?

Then Look to Your Stakeholders

A stakeholder is anyone that has something to gain or lose based on the success of a business. Some of the most obvious are the owners, the owners family, the employees, the vendors who provide goods and services to the company, and anyone else who has a chip in the game.

These people should be asked to take part, to share the content your business publishes, it is easy and it is effective. Take a look:

This is a fairly average page based on the statistics we talked about earlier, and as you can see an average page has access to more than 105k people if each fan shared a particular post.

That is the crazy part of all this, basically each fan is on average a link to 427 people. So take your stake holders, count them up say you have 50 of them. That is 21,300+ people you can reach via your page if you get them to buy in.

Thats all for today, next week I am presenting these ideas to a group I am trying to get to buy in for a local company of 60+ employees, I am going to try and get it on video for you. If I do I will share it with you here. Subscribe to updates to get notified.

Why Facebook Complaints Miss the Point

By now you have heard of the Facebook changes coming, and seen the already implemented ones. If you have logged into Facebook today you have seen the complaints starting, and believe me they are just starting. Here is why complaining is pointless, and you either need to decide to ride the changes and find the benefit of the new service to you or simply disappear.

Facebook Complaints are Rampant Today

Facebook Complaints

Now these are my friends and they are each connected to hundreds if not thousands of people on Facebook, which is the reason they are speaking out. If it was not for those connections most of them would likely leave, cancel their accounts, or greatly curtail their Facebook activity. That is not the case however.

Most people see themselves as Facebook’s Customer.

The user is not Facebook’s Customer. Facebook provides access to their network without charging the users. Facebook is collecting Data, documenting your life, your connections, your marital status, your location, your dining preferences, the companies you like, where you travel, which brand of soap you use etc etc etc. They are doing this to sell that information to companies that wish to sell to you.

Remember this: The time that you invest in your facebook profile, the updates, and every other way you share, is the work that Facebook sells.

So what is the next move? You can make a choice as to how much of that information is OK to share, and adjust your usage. You and your significant other can decide that having Facebook aware of your relationship is not worth the marketing, or you can decide that it is.

You don’t have to use Facebook.

Shocking? Well it shouldn’t be.

Two examples of groups addicted to Facebook:

I understand the appeal of Facebook for adolescents. They are looking for their place in the pecking order and with the opposite sex, so it seems normal that they would be addicted to perfecting their profile picture and posting things that make them look ahead of the crowd and cool. Facebook provides that platform like no other.

Once you are an Adult is Facebook’s level of self centered-ness a healthy way to portray yourself? With the epidemic of divorce, those who are soul mate searching have a natural pre-disposition to use Facebook as a way to browse prospects and showcase themselves in the best light possible. It is a normal and powerful human urge that Facebook understands, and they profit off of the amount of information the 800 million users provide. Is that wrong? No the info is willingly provided.

To these groups it would be hard to stop using Facebook, which is exactly what they want. So they know they can continue to tweak their design, functionality, and data collection techniques to continue to make more and more money.

Mark Zuckerberg is worth 17.5 Billion Dollars, and they haven’t gone public yet.

Do you think it is ironic that most of the complaints about Facebook are conveyed with Facebook? Do you think that people making this much money doing what they are doing are going to change what they are doing as long as the people who complain about it are using Facebook to complain? There is only one way to go if you don’t like it…

The best complaint you can make is to leave.

If you do want to leave, and you have had enough of the childish games, and the amount of information about your personal life that they have collected and continue to find new ways to highlight, you can. There are several new services, the most promising of which is Google+, that take privacy very seriously. I love it there, and like everyone else, I just wish more of my friends were using it.

You can find me on facebook Here, on twitter Here, and on google+ Here.

Have a great day.

Facebook News Feed Changes

Interpret them to Market your Business Better.

Whether you are marketing a small business like a restaurant or a professional practice like a realtor you are likely heavily invested at least time wise in Facebook. So you need to stay on top of the developments as things are always changing there, but don’t worry, that’s what I am here for.

 

The changes to Facebook’s News feed:

Basically there are two major changes that have gone live starting Tuesday night that will impact your marketing efforts as they go live for everyone over the next few days.

1) Facebook will sort your News Feed in an attempt to make sure you see all the important news that happened since the last time you logged in, in their words: “News Feed will act more like your own personal newspaper,” Facebook says in a blog post. So for you that means one thing: Make sure your posts are deemed important by Facebook, and the way you do that is by engagement this update really just builds on what they were already doing. It is in fact another step in what is a long line of Facebook Changes that we have followed and adjusted to.

  •  You create engagement by sharing great information, asking good questions, and creating a conversation when people respond. Do it all in the comments of the post, and it will become must see news for your friends and those that like your page.
  • You create engagement by posting enough to remain top of mind but not too much to dilute your posts and create fatigue among those that may see them. For a long time the marketing company I own, GuestFeed, has used a ratio we created called the EFT ratio to manage how much to post and where. We do this to maximize the effectiveness of our marketing efforts, and you should too.
  • You create engagement by creating real relationships with your connections online, tagging those real relationships in posts and using the champions of your business to help you with the heavy lifting. A factor in social proof that can help lift the visibility of your business.
2) Facebook is giving more prominence to photos in the feed, increase both the frequency with which they are visible in your feed and their size. I have long thought that Facebook did a poor job with photos, and this seems like an attempt to improve the experience. Photos are incredible engaging and people love to look at them, they way you present them has a lot to do with how your business will be viewed.
  • Make sure you share great looking photos, well lit, and without distracting things in the background. You don’t see catalogs with horrible photos, so why should your business share them either?
  • Consider a professional photographer, and find out what it would cost to get some go to pro photos to share.
  • Get better at taking them, and make sure you value their impact on your business.

This is the beginning of Facebook’s Latest Changes

There are more coming soon, so if you like getting updates like this subscribe to them in the upper right, I would love to add you to my group of business owners and marketers. We have great conversations here.