Social MediaToss out everything you learned about marketing prior to last year. 

Even those with marketing degrees may be looking at how successful businesses today handle marketing while scratching their heads in confusion and wonder.  The internet has virtually done away with newspapers, quite literally in some markets.  Gone are the days of running expensive paper ads, mailing coupons in the mail and guessing which radio spots will work best for your restaurant.  Social media is all the buzz in all aspects of marketing today and the best part is that, for the most part, it is free!

Social media, according to Wikipedia, is “media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.”  What that means in plain English is it is a way to use the internet to reach your target audience directly with little more than a few strokes of your keyboard.

So how can social media marketing benefit your restaurant?  Easy.  It’s been proven by the National Restaurant Association that the bulk of your business will be repeat customers.  Someone comes into your establishment, enjoys a fine meal and comes back for more.  Tapping into their attention span while they are online reading their email, chatting with friends, or catching up on Facebook gives you an opportunity to directly place your restaurant into their mind.

The best way to start is to let your customer know you have an internet presence.  Give them incentive to accept you into their virtual world by handing out cards when they check out with your restaurants online information.  Your website, myspace profile, Facebook Fan Page and Twitter account should all be listed.  If you do not have these, or have no idea where to begin, you can likely get one of your internet savvy employees to happily set these up for you. Reward your customers for adding you to their network by offering frequent coupons or other incentives available only to your followers.

It is important not to cross the line between friendly reminders and spam.  Nothing will kill your marketing plan faster than continually advertising to your audience.  The key is to mix your direct advertising with fun little bits that keep your audience engaged.  A perfect example would be for a pizza restaurant to post about a printable coupon in the morning before people are thinking about where to go for lunch, then in the afternoon share with your fans the fact that “The world largest pizza was a round pizza 122 feet and 8 inches across. The ingredients were 9,920 lbs of flour, 198 lbs of salt, 3968 lbs of cheese and 1984 lbs of tomato puree.”  While fun, these type of statements will get your fans talking about and passing along your name to their friends, eventually adding to your customer count.