PLAN YOUR For your social media marketing to have the greatest impact, you need a strategy.
• How much of your marketing budget will be allocated to social media? On which networks? Why?
• Who is your current social media audience? • What new audience are you trying to reach? • What is your core brand message, mission or vision?
• Who will respond to customer questions or complaints?
SET GOALS Without goals, it’s hard to tell whether you’re making an impact. Setting goals help judge the ROI of the time, energy and money you’re investing. The goals you set will influence how you allocate your resources, and will give direction to every post and comment. Many restaurants approach their digital identity with the same broad goals: new customer acquisition, strengthening online reputation, increasing guest frequency, and making more money. But to quantify your social media impact, these big ideas need to be refined into specific, measurable goals, such as:
☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐
• Who will take photos? Or write your tweets? Or determine the content of your next e-mail blast?
FOLLOW ME
Your customers can’t interact with you online if they don’t know where to find you. Use your menu, in-store signage, check-stuffers, posters, table tents, e-mail blasts and verbal reminders from your staff to inform customers about which social media networks you use, and ask them to like you, follow you, and continue the conversation online.
KNOW YOUR LIMITS
Get 100 new Likes on our Facebook page
Overreaching will diminish your impact.
Launch our Instagram account by end of month
Don’t try to maintain more networks than you have adequate staff to update. It takes time, creativity and dedication to manage your social media sites, and it’s better to do one site extremely well than five sites half-heartedly.
Have a non-boosted Facebook post shared 15 times Get 15 new TripAdvisor reviews Incorporate gift card sales into our website Upload 20 new photos to our Yelp review page Ask my kids to show me how to use SnapChat
Whether your goals are @mentions, retweets, coupon redemption, or a full star increase in your TripAdvisor rating average, they will guide your day-to-day social media marketing efforts, determining how you craft your message and giving your posts purpose.
YOUR WAY
Social media best practices and strategies may differ from restaurant to restaurant, even within the same market. There’s no one right way to use social media, but there is a common goal: engaging with your customer.
6
OVER THE PAST MONTHS... What was your most liked social media post? Most shared post? The one that got the most comments? What made these so popular? How can you connect with your customers more frequently in a similarly engaging way?
CONTENT SCHEDULING Google “Social Media Content Calendar” and you’ll find a variety of free templates designed to help you get an overview of your content. Plan all your posts across one big spreadsheet or create different calendars for each of your networks. You can log engagement numbers so you have an easily accessible record of what connected with your audience and what didn’t.
TRACK
If multiple members of your team share posting responsibilities, calendars help keep everyone organized and working together.
YOUR IMPACT
Most networks offer free tools to help track user engagement so you can better understand what content is working. Twitter has the Tweet Activity Dashboard, Facebook has Ad Reporting and Page Insights (with improved video metrics), while Pinterest, Google and YouTube all have detailed Analytics pages. Instagram doesn’t offer a native analytics tool, but Iconosquare is a popular thirdparty alternative.
(clockwise from top left) Analytics from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Google
SOCIAL PROMOTIONS To encourage additional customer reviews: Offer a $100 gift card to the first member of your staff who gets 10 positive reviews on Yelp or TripAdvisor in which they are mentioned by name. To increase organic reach: “Share this post and be entered into a drawing for a free t-shirt.” Ideally, that post should include a share-worthy photo and just a tiny amount of text. To cross promote new social networks/accounts: One of our Instagram followers will be randomly selected to receive a free entrée each week for the next month!
E-MAIL MATTERS AGAIN
Notice how all the chain restaurant websites are desperate to collect your e-mail address? That’s because non-paid organic reach of social media is very limited now. Cultivate your customer e-mail list and create branded messaging with Constant Contact, Fishbowl or other e-mail marketers.
Social Media Management dashboard tools such as HootSuite, Sprout Social, Agora Pulse, TweetDeck and Buffer can help you pre-schedule posts and generate performance reports. Some of these tools offer free versions, and some can be accessed via mobile app. One may be right for you!
MAXIMIZE YOUR There are several ways you can make a first impression on a prospective customer. Your restaurant’s curb appeal is still vitally important, but today, most new customers will discover and research you online before they walk through your door. In many cases, your digital identity becomes their crucial FIRST IMPRESSION of your restaurant.
Maybe they’ll see your website first, probably on their smartphone. Or possibly your Facebook or Instagram page. Their first contact may even be your Yelp review page! You need to manage all these potential First Impression points every way you possibly can to brand your business and persuade new customers to give you a try.
THE EXPERIENCE
Offering a consistent, excellent customer experience is always top priority, far more important than any social media marketing. But Millennials consider taking photos part of the restaurant experience, so pay attention to appearances: • curb appeal • decor • lighting • food plating
• menu design • uniforms • staff grooming • logoed items
• cleanliness - dishware - restroom - windows
• signage • carry out packaging
Anything can be photographed and posted online, so be photogenic every day!
DIGITAL HOSPITALITY The first impression your digital identity makes, whether it’s on your website or any social media network, should create a feeling of welcome. This is often achieved with large, appetizing food photos, enticing visitors to linger and browse. On your website, clear organization and ease of use contribute to that sense of hospitality. Are you making it easy for customers to find the information they need, such as your hours, address and phone number? How many clicks does it take to get to your menu listings? Is your site mobile optimized, with streamlined navigation for smartphones?
NO WEAK
On social media, the tone you post in plays a huge role in communicating your personality and making customers feel welcome. Especially in an election year, when our personal feeds have a higher ratio of controversy and negativity, keep your posts professional, positive, friendly and fun.
PureBread Deli’s website feels friendly right away (see above). Clear navigation, bright colors, appetizing food photos, and their optimistic mission statement, along with proud, smiling staff and their dog theme efficiently conveys a warm, welcoming brand.
LINKS
If your Instagram is beautiful, but your Yelp scores are rotten, it makes a bad first impression on any customer who discovers you via your Yelp page. If you have decent reviews, but there are no food photos on your website and you haven’t posted to your Facebook page in months, those are missed opportunities to make a great first impression, and may cost you new customers.
USP YOUR
The first impression you make online should be tied to your Unique Selling Proposition – the quality that makes your restaurant special and differentiates you from your competition in the minds of your customer. What do you do that nobody else does? Or what do you do BETTER than anyone else? Why should a customer choose you instead of the many other restaurants they could patronize?
If you could tell a potential new customer ONE thing about your restaurant to try and convince them to dine with you, what would it be? Do you have the best ribs in town? Or the best view? A Chipotle-like mission that will win their hearts? Whatever it is that makes you YOU, communicate it quickly and persuasively anywhere you have a presence online.
WATCH THE CHAINS One of the great thing about social media is that you can see exactly what the competition is doing, totally free. You can learn best practices by watching what kind of cover photos they use, how often they post videos, how long their tweets are, how many hashtags they use, which kind of content their audiences engage with on which network, etc. Notice how they always maximize the first impression they make, whether it’s on Facebook or in an e-mail, and how well their mobile sites balance visual simplicity and branding.
TRY, TRY AGAIN
(L-R) Cheesecake Factory on Twitter Joe’s Crab Shack on YouTube California Tortilla’s web site Chick-fil-A’s mobile web site Outback Steakhouse’s e-mail coupon
Test different ad content to see what resonates with your customers. When you notice something not working, change the headline, photo, call to action, or the target audience parameters and track engagement to find what works best. Some networks allow you to create ad sets, so you can do A/B testing of your promoted content. E-mail marketing platforms allow you to easily switch out subject lines if your customers aren’t opening your e-mails.
SPREAD THE LOVE
Keep an open mind and tweak as necessary.
Cross-promote all the networks you use online. Drive traffic from your website to Twitter, from Facebook to Instagram, from your blog to your YouTube page back to your website. This keeps fans and regulars engaged within your branded ecosystem and lets you make repeated first impressions. All that linking and traffic also organically increases your Google search rankings! But you’ll need to create unique content for each network or you’ll bore your audience.
A good first impression can work wonders. - J.K. Rowling
KNOW YOUR This very basic advice is actually the key to maximizing your social media impact. You think of Facebook, Twitter, etc. as marketing tools, but your customers see them as ways to stay in touch with their friends. They see ads as a necessary evil, and don’t want to feel like they’re being sold something every time they check their feed.
Be social! Become part of their daily conversation. Be one of the friends they’re excited to interact with every day. Your social media marketing will have a greater impact if you’re talking with your customers, instead of advertising at them.
NETWORK ETIQUETTE One of the quickest ways to irritate your customers and demonstrate that you’re out of touch is by using social media wrong. Each network has its own unofficial rules for what and how to post, and if you disregard them, it’s a red flag that you’re only there to advertise, and not a genuine participant.
FACEBOOK 1.59 Billion Monthly Users
INSTAGRAM 430 Million Users
What to Post: Almost anything. Personal photos, memes, trending news of the day – Facebook is a catch-all of shared social media content.
What to Post: Beautiful photos that you took, yourself, with several hashtags. It’s meant to be the world as seen through your eyes.
When to Post: 3-5 times per week. Engagement is highest from 1pm - 4 pm, but depends on your specific audience.
When to Post: Once a day. Engagement spikes near 5 pm.
What’s New: Reactions, the emoji-based update to the LIKE button, debuts in the U.S. soon. Improved video metrics. Updated organic optimization settings when you post.
What’s New: Brands can post 60-second videos. Video tally counts. Boomerang, a video app that creates a looping onesecond video (comparable to Apple’s Live Photos.) A new controversial algorithm that determines what users see.
What Not to Post: Adult content. Hashtags. Political rants. Natively uploaded videos perform better than links.
What Not to Post: Text. Stories. Anything that looks like ads. Any of the trending content you find on Facebook.
What to post: 140 characters or less, plus photos/video. Twitter is a micro-blog, appropriate for sharing random, passing thoughts. If something is going on right now, Twitter is the place to talk about it.
What to Pin: It’s all about visuals. Start with 10 themed boards and pin photos, especially food photos, linking to your website and other your social media pages. Repin photos from other users linking to relevant content (recipes, reviews, food blogs, community, etc.) Optimize your pin descriptions to be more discoverable.
TWITTER 325 Million Active Users
When to post: All day, every day. Engagement is highest from 1pm - 3 pm, but users expect updates very frequently. What’s New: Their user base is not growing in the U.S., leading to four key executives resigning. May expand 140 character limit to 10,000 and continue tweaking display algorithm. New first view video ads appear in top spot of user timelines. Stay tuned for more changes this year. What Not to Post: Anything auto-posted from another social media network. Twitter users are very proud of their individuality, so don’t cross-post links to your Facebook or Instagram content. Create original content, instead, and post it natively on Twitter.
PINTEREST 110 Million Users
Note: 70% of Pinterest users are female. Pinterest bills itself as “The visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save creative ideas.” So there’s a great emphasis on creatively planning for future projects and events. When to post: Pinterest pins have a much longer shelf life than a Facebook post or a tweet. The search algorithm returns high quality pins and related pins, rather than favoring recent pinning, so time of day isn’t as important. What Not to Pin: Low-resolution images. Links to poorly designed websites or sites with content that could reflect badly on your business.
AWARENESS 72% of customers who complain on Twitter expect a response within 60 minutes.
YELP & TRIPADVISOR
Your digital identity is a 24/7 responsibility. You need to be aware of what’s being said about your business across all the various social networks so you can address problems immediately. Setting Google Alerts can help, as can many of the dashboard-based monitoring tools (see page 3). But the more networks you’re on, the more alert you need to be.
You have to claim your Yelp and TripAdvisor pages as an owner/manager before you can reply to customer reviews and questions, which you should do publicly on the site. This is free and takes just a minute or two - do it now. When replying to reviews online, even negative ones, be sincere. Don’t copy and paste the same canned response. Treat each customer as an individual, and be respectful of their comments, even if you disagree. This demonstrates to anyone researching reviews of your restaurant that you care.
NEVER GO QUIET
Even if you’re a seasonal business, never stop posting on your social media accounts. You may be closed, but your fans are still out there, and they’d like to hear what you’re doing! If you stop posting for weeks or months at a time, you lose momentum and any connection you’ve forged. Your organic reach will drop. When prospective customers visit your Facebook or Twitter page, they’ll wonder if you’ve gone out of business. Months of silence make a bad first impression. It’s better to have no page at all than a deserted ghost town.
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. - Ernest Hemingway
THE ART OF LISTENING
KEEP UP
YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?
Social Media Today Socialmediatoday.com and its corresponding pages at YouTube, Facebook, etc. offer breaking news and practical advice for social media marketers at every skill level.
If you’re not paying attention, you may miss a rare chance to become part of the conversation and capitalize on social media attention. Just ask Red Lobster, who have been roundly criticized for how they responded to a mention in Beyonce’s new single, Formation. They waited in silence until the next day before responding on Twitter. In the world of social media, eight hours may as well be an eternity.
Turn on the Direct Messaging option in Facebook, so your customers can contact you directly via a personal message. This makes your restaurant feel more down to earth, more human and approachable, than if you only let them contact you by filling out an impersonal form on your website.
DEALING WITH TROLLS
In online terms, a troll is a person who intentionally tries to cause trouble, start arguments and generally upset others. It’s best to ignore them. (Don’t fight with them on any public website – that’s what they want, and it only makes you look bad.) If necessary, you can ban someone on Facebook or block them from following your Twitter account.
Today’s hottest social media trends are yesterday’s old news. When you’re relying on these tools as a primary way of staying in touch with your customers, how do you keep up with where your customers are and what they’re doing?
Lynda.com Recently purchased by LinkedIn, Lynda.com remains the best-in-class tutorial website for learning new technology and business skills. They offer thousands of classes, updated regularly, many dealing with social media marketing. Nation’s Restaurant News nrn.com has a page devoted to social media news, and you can follow columnist Bret Thorn on Twitter @foodwriterdiary Barry Chandler on Twitter @barry_chandler Follow the former Bar Blogger, who spun his success in the hospitality industry into a full brand consultancy agency. Restaurant-Hospitality.com Featuring frequent articles on marketing and social media.
AIM FOR This kind of engagement is the ultimate social media goal, indicating that your content is so compelling, so interesting, newsworthy or entertaining that others want to share it with their own networks. Within your audience, the curators, tastemakers and influencers sharing your content could have a direct effect on your online reputation and business.
Shares, retweets and reposts are more valuable than LIKES because they’re earning you increased organic reach, putting your content in front of new prospective customers without incurring any advertising cost. Every time you get ready to post something on social media, you should ask yourself if it’s share-worthy. If not, make it better, then post!
WHAT MAKES A POST SHAREABLE? The qualities that make content share-worthy differ for each network (see page 6), but there are some reliable guidelines: Use great photos. Use videos, but keep them short. No long paragraphs of text. Be newsworthy. Be friendly. Be funny. Be persuasive. Don’t be boring. Don’t look or sound like an advertisement. Don’t repost the same content repeatedly.
YOUR VISUAL TOOLKIT
There are many easy-to-use tools to make your posts look professional, appetizing and visually interesting.
PEOPLE LOVE PHOTOS SnapChat users share 760 million photos each day. WhatsApp users share 700 million photos each day. Facebook users share 350 million photos each day.
GRAPHIC DESIGN Canva.com is an amazing, template-based design site that will have you cranking out beautiful social media posts in minutes. Also try Pablo by Buffer at buffer.com/pablo and Adobe’s new mobile app for iOS, Adobe Post.
Even back in 2014, we uploaded 657 Billion photos to social media, a number projected to double each year.
PHOTO EDITING Picmonkey.com, Pixlr.com, Befunky.com, Apple Photos and the classic Adobe Photoshop Elements. Mobile Apps: Adobe Lightroom Mobile, Snapseed, Enlight, Instagram Layout, LiveCollage
There are over 178 million photos on Instagram tagged #Food and over 56 million tagged #foodporn.
ANIMATED GIF and SLIDESHOW CREATION Giphy.com, Animoto.com, Stupeflix.com, Photodex.com VIDEO EDITING Apple iMovie, Adobe Premiere Elements VIDEO HOSTING YouTube.com, Vimeo.com, Wistia.com BETTER CAMERA APPS VSCO Cam, Open Camera, Camera+, Camera360Ultimate
PEOPLE LOVE FOOD PHOTOS PEOPLE LOVE VIDEOS Facebook users watch 100 Million Hours of video each day. YouTube users watch 4 Billion videos each day, equating to 6 billion hours of video each month.
UTILIZE YOUR EMPLOYEES
Your staff are in the best position to photograph the cool stuff happening in your restaurant. If they’re not permitted to use their phones on the clock, provide a shared camera!
New product announcements or limited time offerings are newsworthy and very shareable! This Butterscotch Latte post earned Starbucks 2,600 retweets!
Volunteer work or involvement with charities, especially at the local level, is share-worthy. This post about OG’s hunger-relief efforts got 161 shares.
Your signature dishes and unique items are great for building your brand. These Buffalitos got 189 retweets!
This post about a light-hearted ‘holiday’ paired with a mouth-watering photo earned 2,324 shares! Wow!
A short, entertaining clip about guacamole preparation got over 20,000 views and over 4,000 shares.
Applebee’s knows everyone loves bacon. And 1,292 of their fans love it enough to share this appetizing post.
Shareability works both ways! To introduce their re-developed ‘Clean’ Broccoli Cheddar Soup recipe, Panera Bread is running a promotion that shares direct quotations from customers’ social media reviews about the soup into a 35-minute long (and counting) video on their website. Each reviewer is recognized by their social media handle, and Panera even includes reviews from people who preferred their previous Broccoli Cheddar Soup recipe. When it’s appropriate, consider sharing or retweeting posts from your customers.
MORE CREATIVE IDEAS! Looking for more ideas about how to use social media to market your restaurant? Ask your Sysco Marketing Associate for this great reference booklet: Stuff to Post on Social Media – 101 Things Besides Today’s Specials. It’s filled with real-world examples of what restaurants large and small are posting on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
ALWAYS Millennials are very skeptical of anything that looks or sounds like traditional advertising. Instead, they crave authentic interactions with authentic brands. For restaurants, this means being more open and communicative about your mission and vision, more transparent about your values and history, and more down to earth, in general.
YOUR STORY Your business doesn’t need a long history to have a compelling story. Your current customers support you because of the experience you’re providing, but if you open up and share your motivation and the reasons you love working (and working hard) in the hospitality industry, that message could establish a more personal connection and persuade a new customer to try your restaurant for the first time. Social media and your website are perfect for communicating your restaurant’s Mission and Vision (as seen on the following page.) These things are all unique to your business, and can help differentiate you from the competition.
Starbucks, Chick-Fil-A and Chipotle are leading the way by focusing not only on the quality of the customer experience, but on their employees, their culture and the communities they serve. Customers want great food from a company with integrity. Shake Shack’s blog is called ‘Stand for Something Good,’ and that’s a lesson we can all take to heart.
YOUR BRAND Your brand should be uniquely your own and an authentic representation of your personality. Craft all your social media posts (and all your marketing in general) in a consistent tone of voice that’s authentic to your company and that will ring true to your customers. Use graphic tools like Canva.com to incorporate your logo, your company colors, any custom photography, your brand personality and everything that makes your restaurant special. A great food photo can make a great post, but a great food photo that’s also well-branded with your logo and/or colors will work much harder to promote your restaurant and keep you at the forefront of your customer’s minds.
YOUR STAFF Your staff are your most underutilized marketing resource. They are a big part of what makes your restaurant unique, and featuring them on your web site and social media demonstrates that you’re proud of them, and makes your business feel more human and relatable. Encourage your staff to be brand ambassadors online and IRL (in real life). Use the photos and videos they take behind the scenes to give your fans insight into how your restaurant works. Host team-building events for your staff and take lots of photos to share later. Choose a different member of your staff each week to write a 5-word review of their favorite dish on your menu and post the ‘review’ on Facebook or Twitter, along with their photo, and/or a photo of the menu item!
“62% of Millennials say that if a brand engages with them on social networks, they are more likely to become a loyal customer. They expect brands to not only be on social networks, but to engage them.” - Forbes, January 2015
We Stand For Something Good in everything we do, which also means thoughtful and sustainable design of every Shack, community support through donations and programming, and hand-picked music played in each Shack (because a burger tastes a little better with good tunes). - from the Stand for Something Good blog at ShakeShack.com
Day after day, we’re committed... - To sourcing the very best ingredients we can find and preparing them by hand. - To vegetables grown in healthy soil, and pork from pigs allowed to freely root and roam outdoors or in deeply bedded barns. We’re committed because we understand the connection between how food is raised and prepared, and how it tastes. We do it for farmers, animals, the environment, dentists, crane operators, ribbon dancers, magicians, cartographers, and you. - From the Food With Integrity page at Chipotle.com
Our Heritage Every day, we go to work hoping to do two things: share great coffee with our friends and help make the world a little better. It was true when the first Starbucks opened in 1971, and it’s just as true today. - From the About Us page at Starbucks.com
Now, with over 1,900 bakery-cafes in the U.S. and Canada, we still pay attention to the important things. Like serving food that’s free of the artificial stuff (see our No No List) and making sure you have a great experience (have you tried online ordering?). All of this, what it all comes down to, is wanting for our guests exactly what we want for our own families. Simply: good food. - From the Our Beliefs page at PaneraBread.com
LOYALTY TO PEOPLE, COMMUNITY AND BUILDING AMERICA Since 1983, Jimmy has created 45,000 jobs across America. We add 210 new jobs per week. We have 1,500+ small business locations across America being supplied by and supported by thousands of small businesses: Local plumbers, electricians, contractors and repair companies are employed in store upkeep and maintenance. Locally purchased produce is brought into our stores, and fresh sliced daily. Local construction, electrician, plumbers and carpenters are used to build our JJ stores. We use local signage manufacturers and tile installers supporting small business across America. - From the Sustainability page at JimmyJohns.com
Ask your Sysco Marketing Associate for more information on building your digital identity.