Sorry folks. But there just isn’t any discernible ROI for restaurants in social media. Does that mean that restaurants shouldn’t be using social media, or investing in their digital presence and strategy? Absolutely not, but let’s cut the crap and cease muddying the waters with terms like “return on investment”. Is that why you opened a restaurant? To get a healthy return on your friggin’ capital?

I think not, so let’s stop playing that game with one another and talk about what’s important.

What’s important is that your brand, your business be visible and in front of the most passionate and committed segment of your given cities dining community. You need to be where these people are, where they hang out: to chat, to gossip, to have fun, to gripe, to praise. These are the people who appreciate when restaurants engage with them and do so on the platforms they prefer.

What else do I mean?

• I mean conversing with customers and potential ones. I don’t mean tweeting out nothing but your daily specials once a day and peace-ing out back to the kitchen.
• I mean reading the blogs and tumblrs, testing out new apps and platforms. I don’t mean sticking your fingers in your hears and hoping it all goes away.
• I mean listening to your followers and friends and creating content that is relevant, humorous and helpful to them. I don’t mean soliciting or sucking up to people in hopes of getting a few more “likes”.
• I mean joining the community of other restaurants in your city and neighborhood and building them up as much as you should. That means get out of the kitchen, go meet the other chefs and restauranteurs, collaborate with them, work together to solve mutual problems or to create fun new opportunities. We are watching and we will reward those establishments that are proactive online and off.
• I mean involving yourself in the events, charities, opportunities, street fairs and markets where your customers hang, not just the ones that give you the promise of great press.
• I mean taking terms like strategy and analytics seriously.

Ultimately, I mean generating and executing a strategy that is line with those passionate principles you had when you started the business.

Just do me a favor, stop obfuscating, stop obstructing. There is a very healthy return to be had on Social Media. Stop looking for it in the wrong places and with the wrong terms.

What are you putting out into the world today? What are your plans for injecting society with a bit of yourself tomorrow and the next day?

Right now, at precisely the time when so many people are struggling, is the time to be giving something extra. In New Orleans, where I lived for many years, they had a name for this: Lagniappe. A little something extra, free of charge. In many ways, Lagniappe is the antithesis of New York, where everything has a firm price. We structure our lives here in New York around what we can and cannot afford. 2 Bedroom on the Upper West? It’s 2 million to even begin the discussion. And you know what they say! If you have to ask…

But it occurs to me that this forced rationing and reasoning that goes on in so much of our lives leaves out the things that cannot be calculated. What does a gift really cost you? And what do you get in return?

Look, I am not talking about karmic reputation or being mindlessly sacrificial because you have nothing else to do. And I am not talking about mentoring or volunteering. What I am talking about is giving something valuable away. Something that actually costs you something.

As long as I am an independent consultant, the most important commodity I possess is time. Time is money and as difficult as it is to earn a living for myself, not a week goes by that I am given the opportunity to give my time away to someone. Sometimes it is just an hour, sometimes its three weeks. And when I give that time away it means I have less to pitch new clients, to service as well as I would like my existing ones. But give it away I must.

And don’t get me wrong. It’s a struggle. Often the person or company I have to help is way down on my list. Someone or something I simply don’t want to deal with. Something that I anticipate will be, frankly, a pain in the ass. Someone who wants my help but won’t listen to it. Yes even that.

It seems silly to engage in this. But what I know is that I have the opportunity to shake up someone or some business’ life. I can rattle them. I can start the process of shaking them loose from the bonds and strictures that are hampering them from doing as well as they can, however they describe that. Because of our conditioning, for most people this comes down to how much money they are making. Everyone wants more. More More More More.

But I don’t think that is what they are really after. I think that is the only way they know how to express something they cannot articulate. By engaging them, the only thing that I can ever hope to achieve, since I ain’t getting paid!, is that I might provide them an introduction to a new vocabulary to think and talk about their lives and business with themselves. I won’t be around to see what happens whether. Whether I have an effect or not.

These are the gifts that I am giving. Every day, every week, every month. I am a few months shy of being in business for an entire year. It’s been the most instructive year of my life, because I am doing, everything is on me. And if I have learned one thing throughout this year, it is that you have to keep giving. Not because you get anything in return. Sometimes you simply don’t. But you have to keep giving, constantly, because it is the only way to shake up our measurement system for how we value our own lives. Screw with the formulas you’ve been taught. They are not as reasonable and rational as you believe them to be.

You want a takeaway?

Figure out what the most valuable thing you have to give away, and then make a plan for how you are going to start giving it away. Not all of it. Just some of it.

Image Courtestyof MarcinMoga / Lolek on Flickr