Marketing Restaurant Online

Why it is important for any restaurants to maintain a blog apart from regular website in this new digital age ?

Recently Dairy Queen has entered to the world of Blogs. Dairy Queen understands that it is very vital in this day and age of digital world, to connect with it’s customers with new medium like Blog. Dairy Queen, one of the prominent brand in the restaurant industry, starting a separate blog apart from it’s static website indicates that no more can any restaurant depend on just a regular website with no means to two way communication with it’s customers.

Time has changed a lot since the inception of internet. When restaurant used to have a flashy website, they did provide some contact information to directions and phone numbers but they were not able to engage with their customers at a deeper level. But today it is so easy that  any one can create blogs for their restaurant with a simple guidance or video tutorials. This has enabled restaurant business-small or big an opportunity to connect with it’s customers so close that it has never been able to do so in the past. Using widgets like Flickr restaurants can share the happy moments by uploading photos of their customers on the blog. They can even record the video of a birthday party of their customers and share with their own community of  loyal customers by embedding the You Tube video on their blog. This has given a life to the regular website which seemed dead with out the means of sharing those lively photos and videos on their blog.

Y2 Generation and Baby boomers, the two most socially aware groups in the world have changed their life style going digital maintaining their cyber homes at social sites like Face book and My Space. They are avid users of Twitter and never leaves their iPhones, gPhones and Black Berry. They are always in a rush and maintain a fast pace life. They are impatient and can’t wait long in lines to get their lunch. They would prefer ordering through mobile phones like iPhone and pay online with their credit card or pay pal account. They come straight to the Cash register, show their text order confirmation number and get their food and out they go. If restaurants can’t maintain the same level of speed of these new generations then they will leave your restaurant at a push of a button on their mobile phones.

These two groups are one of the most influential groups who has more money and digital power than any other group.So neglecting these group might not be at the best interest of any restaurant. Instead learning their styles and talking their language would be the best route for success by using blogs and communicating to them via twitter. Some of them maintain their own authority blogs who command a power to even thousands of follower under them. If you make them angry or provide bad service then with a click of mouse they would tell the whole world about it on their blog. So it is very critical for all the restaurants to understand this new time we are entering and need to change to evolve and manage your restaurant in a new way.

Dairy Queen has maintained their blog as a central point where they engage with their customers. Every now and then at an interval of days they post new information about the new products, game contests, sweet deals and many other thing that is related to the company and are useful to the customers. They also have a RSS -Really Simple Syndication that allows their customers to subscribe blog post automatically and also receive them via email. That keeps their customers updated with everything that is happening within Dairy Queen. I saw them releasing the You Tube video showing the back of the scenes videos which are not available to general customers. This gives a chance for their customers to see what goes behind the scene of making such a great blizzard or any other products. They also have used the survey on the blog to get the pulse of their customer’s food preferences. They also have integrated Twitter within the blog. Any body visiting the blog will have a chance to folow them on Twitter. By far this would be the most powerful communication tool that Dairy Queen is using in conjunction with the Blog. To check out their blog you can visit at http://blog.dairyqueen.com/