What Social Media Are you Using At Your Restaurant? FohBoh Wants to Know

Hi all,

I am compiling a list of social media that operators are using now to manage their operations, manage their online reputation, promote to the "crowd" and drive traffic to the door. So, what are you using?

My sense is that once we have a list we can discuss their relative value and socialize the results.

Thanks for your help.

Michael

Tags: Restaurant, FohBuzz, FohMedia, media, social media, social media for restaurants

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Permalink Reply by Michael L. Atkinson on July 30, 2010 at 2:09pm

Hello Mr. Gibbs,

You bet. Great examples, thanks. Guest pulse is good example of a restaurant ready solution. Also, check out our own, FohBuzz. The reality is there are several monitoring solutions that you save time and help manage the flow like Radian6 and Meltwater. FohBoh offers operators a full service solution called FohMedia, that incorporates FohBuzz for those operators needing more help with strategy and execution.

Hope all is well.

Cheers!

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Permalink Reply by Piper Restaurant on June 11, 2009 at 12:55pm

We're just a small independant restaurant. Right now we have a Page on Facebook plus a fan page, and we're on Twitter. Fairly new to both. Hard to say if this is actually driving folks to the restaurant right now. But they are more familiar with us and hopefully will think of us when they want to eat at a special place.

Joined Boogami. It's pretty new and mostly European. Nice people though. Just trying to get our name out there. We have a Food Sensitivity Menu for those with Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free diets. We have had some attention from that from Grandma's Gluten-Free Baking and Cooking and other food allergy sites and networks. Not sure if this is what you had in mind.

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Permalink Reply by Annie Galebach on June 15, 2009 at 8:24am

Hi Mark,

I'm working for a fine dining restaurant in Boston and am currently building our Twitter fan base. Do you have any suggestions on how to find a target audience to follow and build a following with?

Thanks!
Annie Galebach

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Permalink Reply by Michael L. Atkinson on July 30, 2010 at 2:14pm

Great job!

There are a number of free social media tools to help tack where your customer are coming from like tweetdeck for Twitter mentions or Socialmention.com for more RSS feeds. There are also more sophisticated solutions that save time and allow you to interact and engage directly with those new and current customers. See fohbuzz for a solution that may help.

Also, try more open-ended conversation starters. Even simple questions on facebook like: "What's your favorite cookie at 3 PM" will generate a response and increased fans.

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Non-OperatorPermalink Reply by J. Stewart Singleton on June 12, 2009 at 10:08am

Hi Michael,

We use FohBoh, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter currently. I have found that Facebook is the one that gets the most activity right now.

Stewart

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Permalink Reply by Michael L. Atkinson on July 30, 2010 at 2:17pm

Facebook should...with 500 million users and counting. Truly amazing isn't it. But really, social media is greater than FB + T. Try sourcing other tools that work well in retail and restaurants like Four Square, Posterous, social mention, foodbuzz.

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Permalink Reply by Dan Harris on June 12, 2009 at 3:36pm

Hi Michael,

Here is an example of restaurant owner using a Social Media Network group called TasteCasting - The TasteCasting team uses their networks on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Viddler, TwitPic, Flickr and .Mac and Blogs among others and broadcasts/promotes the restaurants that invite them in.

From RunningRestaurants.com:
http://www.runningrestaurants.com/articles/social-media-tastecasting

From The SuisseShop:

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Permalink Reply by Michael L. Atkinson on July 30, 2010 at 2:17pm

Thanks! Tastecasting is awesome idea. Thanks for sharing

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Non-OperatorPermalink Reply by Paul Paz on June 15, 2009 at 8:26am

Mark...
Just out of curiosity.. What is your position at the Denny's restaurant you are promoting? If not, are you a customer of this Denny's location? Did your owners/managers ask you to do this? I ask you because I'm very interested in the role of hourly staff initiating, promoting, and running SM platforms to promote their restaurants.
Thanks!
Paul

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Permalink Reply by Erica McClenny on July 30, 2010 at 1:46pm

Paul, do you think hourly employees should help with SM? I just posted a discussion about that topic.

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Permalink Reply by Michael L. Atkinson on July 30, 2010 at 2:26pm

Erica, I do in most cases.

It seems to work well for Zappos. But then, training and a solid social media policy were in place before Tony opened up the doors to group participation. There are three type of influencers; peer, social and key. The key influencers are the most valuable but hardest to find and empower. Social are a little easier, but t still, this takes some time, digging and nurturing. Peer influencers, on the other hand, are (or should be) the obvious brand ambassadors. Peer influencers are employees, friends, family, customers and vendors. If you have happy, productive, involved and proud employees (and connected folks), let them brag about it and take some ownership of your brand and help with strategy.

We allow all FohBoh employees to contribute in SM because we are all (hopefully) rowing in the same direction.

Cheers!

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Permalink Reply by Annie Galebach on June 15, 2009 at 7:51am

Hi Michael,

I am working at Sel de la Terre in Boston. We currently are using Facebook,Twitter and are thinking of creating a blog to promote our Chef, however we haven't quite decided if this tool will help drive traffic to our restaurant.

In addition to social media, we run online promotions and events through Yelp.com, Eventful.com, and other sites as well.

We have seen positive results through Facebook and Twitter so far but still know there is a lot of work to be done using these platforms! I'm especially interested to learn how other restaurants use Twitter.

Annie Galebach