Trick or Treat
There is a unique opportunity for businesses involved in hospitality and service to embed social media into their marketing efforts. And yet, so many restaurants resist. In my consulting business, I routinely speak with business owners, chefs, proprietors and managers. Every single one of them knows they need to ramp up their social media presence. They say this because they recognize, intuitively, how important social media will be in the months and years going forward. The reason that social media will be more important to the restaurant business than many, though certainly not all, industries, is precisely because restaurants, and by extension, hotels, spas, etc. are one of the last bastions where we connect with people offline. It is where we go to get away from our offices, our laptops, the responsibilities of the kitchen sink. It’s where we go to relax and enjoy with the important people in our life.
Something’s Gotta Give
What I see is happening around New York City is a lot of restaurants mashing together various bits and pieces of social media engagement. They hear “Twitter” and they start twittering, without a moment of thought to what twitter is, how to use it best, what not to do. They are trying to make social media fit their pre-established skill set. Restaurants get PR. They get message broadcasting.
They are fabulously failing at social media…
What is so stunning to me is that the very things that make restaurants so wonderful are the same things that can inform their social media profiles. The fact that they are are a community, a group of people, all with different roles, who subsume their egos to produce something bigger than the sum of its constituent parts.
Well guess what restaurants?
That is precisely what social media is. Isn’t Twitter or Facebook bigger and more important than the individual users?
Word to the Wise
If you aren’t prepared to sit down and think about a complete social media strategy, don’t do it at all. You are unwittingly hurting your brand. The social media community is a sophisticated, highly educated, affluent group. They aren’t fooled and they aren’t impressed. So stop trying.
Take a step back, devote some real time and resources to this world, and let your creativity emerge. If you do, if you engage honestly and authentically, if you prove that you are involving yourself in social media ‘for realz’ you are going to find some amazing ambassadors for your brand and your business.
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A complete social media strategy – absolutely. I get facebook posts and emails from a slew of wineries, restaurants, B&Bs. Many of them are completely clueless. They post messages like “another beautiful day at the winery” or “our wine is great . . buy some” . They offer me nothing. They obviously have not integrated social media into their marketing plan (if they have a marketing plan – but that’s another story.) Yes, many of them are unwittingly hurting their brand. Initially I had no opinion of them, now I have an unfavorable opinion of them. It appears that some businesses throw the job of communicating via social media to completely unqualified individuals. They leave communication up to anyone in the office able to post a picutre with a caption, or send out an email blast, giving no thought to the actual content they are putting out there. With so much good information available, messages without content just become annoying which is really counterproductive.
Great article and well said (both Zachary and Janet). The inherent problem with social media marketing tools is that they’re easily available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. Other more traditional forms of marketing (advertising, direct mail, email opt-in, etc.) have too many barriers of entry for the typical business owner to assume on their own (without the help of either an inside/outside marketing staff/firm). This, coupled with the fact that social media can be utilized for both personal AND business gives these tools the stigma that they may not be a serious tool.
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