Restaurants and Social Media: What works and what doesn’t?

According to a survey by the National Restaurant Association, Americans spend about 46 percent of their food dollar on food away from home. That means people are dining out more than ever. This adds up to about $2,400 annually for the typical American household, and the Bay Area is not your typical demographic — I would assume people are spending much more than that.

Along with this surge, we have seen a steady growth in the websites that promote food culture and inform the dining public. This rapid expansion of social media platforms over the last three years has had everyone scrambling to develop an online presence and find their online and individual hospitality identity.

As the sites have expanded, the content and access to the dining public has increased. Recently Google purchased the Zagat brand in an effort to move forward in the restaurant realm. Over the past several years, sites like OpenTable, Facebook and Twitter have developed a specialized restaurant presences for the dining public.

All these platforms allow restaurants to control our own content — to a certain extent. At the same time, most of these same sites allow postings by diners. So it is absolutely true that if someone has a bad experience, more people are going to hear about it than ever before. The only way to control that is to ensure that guests are happy when they leave.

Another thing that is certain is that there has also been overexposure for some owners and chefs who market everything from winemaker dinners to the special of the day. Using social media websites to promote restaurant brand identity is a tricky art and has become much like the nuisance it replaced: direct mail marketing. After a guest receives 200 postings a month on their Facebook account from one of the restaurants they follow, those folks are inclined to eliminate following your restaurant. Like any marketing concept or sales pitch, you can only go to the well so many times before it dries up.

You have to evaluate what works and what doesn’t work. For example, we promoted a biergarten event with a small oom-pah band recently at the Tavern at Lark Creek. We serve an assortment of bratwursts and pretzels along with German beer. We were able to use the social media platforms to get the message out and we had some of the local press pick it up. It is a successful series of events for us. In this case the social media worked. Not so in some other scenarios.

Using social media to market your business is smart and economical. In my mind it comes down to three things: your identity, the message and the delivery. How restaurants use social media to convey events and brand will be the key to success as we continue our development in our technology-driven society.

What do you think is the best approach to social media?

Original Article Posted by T.J. Jacobberger on insidescoopsf