Just to get an idea of the importance of the Social Media to promote or damage the reputation of a business, we only need to look at this example.
In case that you are not familiar with this news, I will summarize them for you:
Two former employees of Domino's Pizza (they've been fired and now Domino's Pizza is pressing legal charges against them) posted a nasty video in YouTube showing how one of them, a man, thought to be an employee putting cheese up his nose and then passing wind on a sandwich. A woman’s voice, thought to be the other employee then says off camera:
In about five minutes it’ll be sent out on delivery where somebody will be eating these, yes, eating them, and little did they know that cheese was in his nose and that there was some lethal gas that ended up on their salami.
It looked like the video showed food that was being delivered and consumed by paying customers of Domino’s.
Of course, this video become viral (meaning that they spread very rapidly, just like a virus) very fast, and before Domino's could react and ask YouTube to remove it (don't bother to look for this video in YouTube anymore, it is not there), more than a million people had a chance to watch it.
Patrick Doyle, the president of Domino's USA had the presence of creating an apology video that he distributed in the same way (via YouTube) to restore the image of the Pizza chain. You can watch his apology video here:
So what can you learn from this unfortunately incident? Two things:
1.- How powerful is the power is Social Media to spread news (good and bad) about a place or event.
2.- How important is that you hire the best people you can afford and train them appropriately.
In these days of instantaneous communication is more important than ever to trust and rely in your people to do the right thing.
Disgruntled employees blog against their employers and tarnish the company's image. Unhappy customers post negative reviews of the restaurants or small business where they had a bad experience...
So what can you do to avoid negative comments against your restaurant? The only possible course of action is to always try to put your clients and employees as your number one priority. Having happy employees transforms into happy customers and great reviews in these sites.
You can't control what people post in the social networks but you can control how to treat your clients and your employees. Focus your energies on them and you'll get great reviews.
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriesco
http://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
Showing posts with label Restaurant Online Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Restaurant Online Marketing. Show all posts
Monday, April 20, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Promoting Your Restaurant in Twitter
Andy Lynes in his latest blog in Big-hospitality: www.bighospitality.co.uk talks about the success of some restaurants using Twitter to promote their businesses.
You can read his blog here: http://www.bighospitality.co.uk/item/3072/23/5/3
Twitter, with more than 6 million unique visitors (UV) a month is the fastest growing Social Network Site. In the attached table you can see how it grew from number 22 to number 3 in a year (and this data is 3 moths old!):
Although Twitter can't compete (yet) with Face-book or MySpace in the sheer number of users, it has an advantage that the other two social media sites don't have: immediacy
When you send a Tweet (a Tweet is a short Twitter message, up to 140 characters), your followers immediately receive it. This gives you a great opportunity to broadcast pertinent information to them.
For example, are you having a slow lunch day?
You can tweet your followers a message announcing that if they go to your restaurant within the next hour, and tell your servers that they saw this offer in Twitter, you will give them a free dessert, (or a 10% discount, or whatever attractive offer you want to make to attract people).
In this way, not only you can capture new customers in slow days/hours but you can also track Twitter's results. You will know how many of your new customers are coming because of Twitter, (they will tell you!).
And the best of all, it's that you will do all of this in a very inexpensive (Twitter is free to use so you'll only absorb the cost of the discount) and interactive way. It surely beats mailing coupons (with the high cost of printing and mailing) and gives you the freedom to totally adapt it to your hourly needs.
But Twitter is not just a US phenomena. Its popularity Worldwide is spreading very fast. In this chart you can see the breakdown of the top 10 countries. So if you restaurant is in any of these countries
you better start Twittering to them.
Some other useful information is to know who is using Twitter. This site: http://www.istrategylabs.com/twitter-2009-demographics-and-statistics/ shows very interesting Twitter statistics broke down by sex, age, ethnicity, kids/no kids households, and average income and education. Very interesting information if you use Twitter (or are planning to use it) to target your audience.
So my question to you is: Are you using Twitter to reach your clients (or followers) to promote your restaurant?
If not, you are missing a great a free tool. It totally makes sense that you use this tool to reach to your customers; after all, they are already using Twitter!
Since I know that technology can be sometimes intimidating, and there are so many ways to use Twitter (including many to waste an incredible amount of time with this tool), I am creating a report called: "How to Use Twitter to Promote Your Restaurant". In this report I explain step by step how to setup a Twitter account, how to use free tools to create a targeted list of followers, how to communicate with them and how to maximize the power of Twitter to promote your restaurant. I included lots of screen captures to help you with the whole process. I think you'll love it, and the best of all, it will be very inexpensive.
I will announce here when it's ready.
Have a great day,
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriesco
http://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
You can read his blog here: http://www.bighospitality.co.uk/item/3072/23/5/3
Twitter, with more than 6 million unique visitors (UV) a month is the fastest growing Social Network Site. In the attached table you can see how it grew from number 22 to number 3 in a year (and this data is 3 moths old!):
Although Twitter can't compete (yet) with Face-book or MySpace in the sheer number of users, it has an advantage that the other two social media sites don't have: immediacy
When you send a Tweet (a Tweet is a short Twitter message, up to 140 characters), your followers immediately receive it. This gives you a great opportunity to broadcast pertinent information to them.
For example, are you having a slow lunch day?
You can tweet your followers a message announcing that if they go to your restaurant within the next hour, and tell your servers that they saw this offer in Twitter, you will give them a free dessert, (or a 10% discount, or whatever attractive offer you want to make to attract people).
In this way, not only you can capture new customers in slow days/hours but you can also track Twitter's results. You will know how many of your new customers are coming because of Twitter, (they will tell you!).
And the best of all, it's that you will do all of this in a very inexpensive (Twitter is free to use so you'll only absorb the cost of the discount) and interactive way. It surely beats mailing coupons (with the high cost of printing and mailing) and gives you the freedom to totally adapt it to your hourly needs.
But Twitter is not just a US phenomena. Its popularity Worldwide is spreading very fast. In this chart you can see the breakdown of the top 10 countries. So if you restaurant is in any of these countries
you better start Twittering to them.
Some other useful information is to know who is using Twitter. This site: http://www.istrategylabs.com/twitter-2009-demographics-and-statistics/ shows very interesting Twitter statistics broke down by sex, age, ethnicity, kids/no kids households, and average income and education. Very interesting information if you use Twitter (or are planning to use it) to target your audience.
So my question to you is: Are you using Twitter to reach your clients (or followers) to promote your restaurant?
If not, you are missing a great a free tool. It totally makes sense that you use this tool to reach to your customers; after all, they are already using Twitter!
Since I know that technology can be sometimes intimidating, and there are so many ways to use Twitter (including many to waste an incredible amount of time with this tool), I am creating a report called: "How to Use Twitter to Promote Your Restaurant". In this report I explain step by step how to setup a Twitter account, how to use free tools to create a targeted list of followers, how to communicate with them and how to maximize the power of Twitter to promote your restaurant. I included lots of screen captures to help you with the whole process. I think you'll love it, and the best of all, it will be very inexpensive.
I will announce here when it's ready.
Have a great day,
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriesco
http://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
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