Category Archives: Blog Marketing

5 Lessons Your Restaurant Can Learn from a True Story of The “Coca-Cola” Fan Page on Facebook.

Posted on December 9, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 4 Comments

I had heard the story about Coca-Cola Fan Page but never had a chance to see the video.
With less time and more videos on Youtube only the best one gets my attention. As I was browsing Youtube, I came across this video. I would not have bothered to watch it if it was not the title that got my attention. The title was The “Coca-Cola” Fan Page on FACEBOOK. (A True Story).

Since I am writing blog posts about Facebook I thought there might be something that I can
learn from those two creators of Coca-Cola Facebook Fan Page.After all it is about one
of the BIG brand Coca-Cola that is very successful on Facebook.

The interesting thing about this story is that Coca-Cola Fan Page on Facebook was created not because the company asked them to create one for them.The act of creating Fan Page by two creators – Dusty and Michael J was purely based on their interest and passion over their favorite drink Coke. Facebook was kind of new then at least to the corporate world that was getting popular, penetrating into the main stream.You can watch their full story with visual effect giving us the sense of what it looked like when they just got started. It is funny and inspirational at the same time. As you can see and hear from them that when they tried to find the fan page for Coke they didn’t see any that really looked official. So they decided to create
one themselves. Today Coca-Cola is one brand that has one of the most successful Fan Page on Facebook that is maintained by not some marketing agency but real die hard fans. I want to point out the difference
between a Fan Page run by some marketing agency and real fans. Commercial Marketing Agency might not
have as much passion as the real fans. In your case you are the real fan that represents your restaurant on Facebook. Also they might not have in depth knowledge about the product or
customers to really connect with them. Coke was smart enough to figure out this. So instead of going
with a high end marketing agency to create their Fan Page, they decided to have the two real fans to
take care of their Fan Page.

After watching this inspirational video about Coca-Cola Fan page created by these two simple guys
Dusty and Michael J there are certain valuable lessons that any one can learn. Hopefully these lessons
will help you get started on creating your own Facebook Fan Page for your restaurant if you have not
created one. For those who have already created one, hope it will inspire you to work even harder to attract and engage more fans to your fan page.

Here are the following 5 lessons that I learnt and hope your restaurant can learn too.

1. Start and you will discover the possibilities
2. Passion is the driving force that will keep you going to build a remarkable restaurant and Fan Page
3. Have Patience. Success doesn’t come overnight
4. Power of Facebook
5. The art of telling a story

Start and you will discover the possibilities

First thing is that one has to START. Even if creating Fan Page of your restaurant on Facebook
seems hard or simply if you think social media is too much to keep up with apart from operating
your restaurant, you have to start the journey of marketing your restaurant in social media somewhere.
As you can see on the video both the creator never knew in the beginning, where creating a fan page would
take them to. Now you know where they are. Obviosly it is not going to be easy but also not that hard if
you keep on doing something and learn new facebook marketing ideas every day.

Passion is the driving force that will keep you going to build a remarkable restaurant and Fan Page

Another important aspect of making your restaurant marketing success is to have a passion for your business. If you don’t love
what you do, then probably creating a fan page is not for you. Because your updates and activities
are clearly visible on your Fan Page. It is an extension of who you are and what your restaurant represents.
You have to love food and people in order to succeed.Like Dusty and Michael J the creator of Coke Fan Page
you have to be passionate about your product, what you represent and love..love..love..(did I stress enough) what you do.

Have Patience. Success doesn’t come overnight.

Another important thing you require is patience. Nothing happens over night. You will have to win hearts and minds of your fans one at a time. Even for Dusty and Michael J it didn’t happen right away. They just kept on
doing different things attracting and engaging them to finally reach thousands and may be a million of fans before Coca-Cola called
them to Atlanta.One thing I have noticed on Facebook is that there are so many Fan Pages created by restaurant owners but they sit idle on Facebook. You need to be patient and try several strategies to get to the point where your fans themselves will start promoting your restaurant. So please have patience, you will get there of course with hard work.

Power of Facebook

In just over two years or so they have over 4 millions fans. This is huge. You might argue that their fan page is backed by Coca-Cola.To begin with they were not. Even with out the backing of Coke they were able to attract several thousands of fans with very few resources than Coke. So what it proves is that if you really combine your passion with creativity it doesn’t require huge marketing budgets to make this happen.This is the power of Facebook if you can harness it’s potential.

The art of telling a story

As kids we have grown to learn by listening to stories. I can still remember the stories my high school teachers told us back when I was in school. It is that powerful. When you as a small restaurant have limited resources and money you have to tell your story hopefully a compelling one to the world.Tell your story to the world if your restaurant business is involved in a local community charity that helps poor people get education to alleviate from poverty, or if your restaurant cares about environment and use environmentally friendly materials in the restaurant or any thing that is remarkable about your restaurant that is worth making a remark about. People who really cares about
those issue will be attracted to your restaurant. I can tell you now for sure that you will make one of the best friendship with these group of people and consequently also loyal customers for years to come.

There are several other things that one can learn from this one simple video. I just presented the main ones that I felt are important. If you see some other please feel free to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment. May be some readers might get some new ideas or learn something new and get started on Social Media using Facebook and many others. I would highly appreciate your comments.Thanks.

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Facebook Search-How To Find Customers For Your Restaurant Using Search Feature on Facebook?

Posted on December 7, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

What is Facebook Search ?

Facebook Search is feature on Facebook that allows any one to make queries     about any thing and get the answer based on the status updates made by your friends or all other Facebook users outside of your Facebook friends network who have opted to make their updates public for any one to view.

It  gives you an overall glance into the conversations or any updates made by your friends who might be looking for your type of restaurants or Live Jazz music that the band might be playing at your restaurant.To use this you type your query in the search box and select “Posts by Friends”.

There is also other option “Posts by Everyone”, which gives you a broad view of all the conversations and updates that are made by those who you don’t even know. I believe this is a huge advantage for you as a restaurant operator. You have some valuable information right infront of you which you can analyze it and make some smart decisions to grow your restaurant business.

Why Facebook Search Feature will be more important in the future?

Facebook recently introduced this search feature. So this is fairly new. Very few restaurants are using this features to their advantage. While it is new and no body is using this in your area, why don’t you jump into this and try to get all those Facebook users who might be potential customers. If you go and get them first before your competitor, you will win in this new race of social media marketing.Hope fully you will make friends and provide them delicious food with great service and turn them to loyal customers for years to come.

There are several  people on Facebook who have set their private settings to public. In essence they have made their decision to make their updates and conversation to be viewed by any one in the world. I predict that more people will be open and make their updates public in the future.This is the goal of Facebook. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview that he wants to make the world as open as possible. More and more people as they get used to social networking site like Facebook, they will for sure make their updates public.

Though the food review sites are popular now, I see that the trend of looking the reviews of restaurants on Facebook will grow. WHY?

Because when I go to review sites there are reviews but the problem is that I don’t know them. They might be fake reviews which could be even paid for. The level of trust is not that high with that kind of recommendation. Where as when the name of the restaurant is mentioned on the updates on Facebook by your own friends then you trust your friends than the strangers at those restaurant review sites. I would chose to take the recommendation of my friends. I’m sure you or any one would do the same.

Imagine a friend of yours from England came to your city New york. He wants to visit an Italian restaurant.He doesn’t know which restaurant to visit. He then takes out his iPhone and use the Facebook search to see if his friends have any recommendation. Since he has several New York friends including you chances are that they have bragged about their favorite restaurants. His query gives him some of the finest Italian restaurants that his couple of friends have visited already that month. He would definitely go to that restaurant that his friends on Facebook had recommended rather than an unknown restaurant that he has no clue about.This is a new trend that I predict will grow. I want you to make all the strategic marketing moves to take advantage of this new way of getting discovered on Facebook.

Advantages of using Facebook Search Feature?

  1. Locate potential local customers.
  2. Monitor your brand on Facebook

Locate potential local customers.

Facebook Search feature will help you to locate local customers who might be looking for your restaurant or catering service. Sometimes it can be even customers from different State or country who are coming to your city for business or pleasure.  When I typed in “restaurant in Atlanta” there appeared one update which said “craving for Greek Food”. Now if your restaurant served a Greek Food, you had a great chance to offer her an  incentive to try out even if she had never dined in your restaurant before. This is just one example of how you can locate your potential customers.

Monitor your restaurant’s brand on Facebook

It is also a great tool to monitor your restaurant’s reputation by  gazing at the conversations of your friends and others who are not in your Facebook friends network and who have made their status public available to the entire world.  Let’s say if your friends in Facebook network or outside of it made a comment-good or bad about your restaurant, then you would have an access to these conversations. If it was a good comment then you would thank him or her. Hoping to see them again soon. If the comments were complains about the food or service then you would be right on top of the problem and try to solve it as soon as possible. By knowing what went wrong with the food or service you would have a chance to correct it right then and there. This would avoid the problem to escalate and be a negative buzz for your restaurant. Instead you could turn this negative into positive by making those customers happy again. This would lead a great impression with the customers who would be surprised by the instant customer service. That might lead him to share the incident with his friends. But this time your restaurant would be viewed positively by him and his friends for being proactive and taking care of them. This might lead to friending on Facebook even if you had never been friends before.You never know.

What do you think about this new trend that people will be using Facebook Search more in the future to find out the restaurant they want to visit? Do you think restaurants are really using this Facebook Search feature effectively? Do you know some other benefits of using Facebook Search? Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment. Thanks!

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Starbucks VIA instant taste Challenge Day- Brilliant Marketing Strategy on Social Media by Starbucks.

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 2 Comments

How Starbucks attracted me into the Sales funnel and finally into their Store persuading me to buy their VIA instant coffee.

Starbucks VIA Instant coffee was the buzz last week every where from radio to Facebook, Twitter and every possible medias. I have to admit that I am impressed by their social media marketing strategy funneling a potential customer into buying the VIA instant coffee. Despite being a marketing guy and knowing how they were attracting me to their fish net, I was persuaded to finally buy their VIA instant coffee. Now allow me to share the process how they did it to me so it gives you an idea how a brilliant marketing can work. Please feel free to use some of their ideas for a similar product launch of your restaurant.

On Thursday October 1st I heard the buzz about Starbucks VIA instant coffee on the radio. They were talking so highly about it in a local radio that I even made a Facebook update wondering if it was really that good. What I essentially did was viral marketing for them at a push of an update on my Facebook informing all my friends about their new product VIA instant coffee. That is what I call a word of mouse advertising. It was purely on a voluntary basis. No one forced me to do that. I just did it because I like the coffee and I wanted to share with my friends. As this buzz was lingering in my mind, the next day when I opened Facebook, I saw the ads from Starbucks on my right hand side of the screen enticing me to RSVP. Sure enough I did it.

Now it was Saturday morning yesterday. I woke up and the first thing I wanted was a coffee. I would have gone to Dunkin Donuts or other Coffee place that morning. Since Starbucks was successful in engaging my mind with their new coffee product VIA instant coffee right from the middle of the week, I could not forget it and it just automatically prompted my mind to go to Starbucks yesterday morning.

I went to the Starbucks. Saw their promotional displays and also the sample of VIA instant coffee with two flavors- Columbia and Italian. I tried Columbia right away. Later I went to the cashier to buy a regular coffee but never had a desire to really buy the VIA instant coffee. She explained me in more details about the promotion and that I could buy the VIA instant coffee for $1.50 with $1 OFF on the 3 packets Italian flavor instant coffee.On top of that I would get my grande regular freshly brewed coffee for FREE. Now who would not want to take that offer. That is brilliant to me. Here is why? If that offer was not there then I would not have bought the VIA instant coffee. Their main strategy was to hand over the VIA instant coffee to every customers that walked into the store with the same FREE cup of coffee offer. Though they lost their money on that FREE cup of coffee I think they won in a long run. Now just take an example of me. Just because of that offer I got those VIA instant coffee. Now I will be trying that coffee. I might like it. The chances of me telling to my other friends is more as I enjoy the coffee. The chance of me buying more also increased dramatically. See how with one simple strategy Starbucks got me hooked into their sales funnel.

Starbucks Twitter Marketing Strategy

StarbucksVIA taste Challenge tweet

StarbucksVIA taste Challenge tweet

On Friday at 12:59 pm Starbucks tweeted about their Starbucks taste challenge day promotion with a link to their event link on Facebook. With one tweet Starbucks were able to broadcast their event to over 300 thousands followers. It was FREE. Imagine if they had to broadcast the same message on TV, it would cost them couple of thousands if not millions of dollars. Using twitter platform, it enabled Starbucks to inform about it’s VIA instant coffee product launch to potentially to everyone who ever were interested in Starbucks coffee. Once people got that tweet they were further drawn into Facebook to RSVP the  StarbucksVIA taste challenge day event.This is brilliant because when they RSVP the event then it is directing their mind subconsciously to attend that event. I am the perfect example. Saturday morning as I woke up, my subconscious mind told me to go to Starbucks.

Starbucks Facebook Ad

Starbucks Facebook Ad

Starbucks VIA Taste Challenge

I have seen Starbucks as the leader in leveraging the social media to engage it’s customers making a great brand awareness. For this particular VIA instant taste challenge event they used the Facebook to promote and in my opinion they were successful. As of writing this article there were 211, 1184 confirmed guests already and we still have time till tomorrow-Monday 5th October up to 5pm. Starbucks might have bought Facebook ad for couple of spare change out of their coffee sales. That marketing expense would be like a drop out of the ocean. However the impact it had to attract targeted potential customers was huge. That is the power of Facebook targeted ad. Any restaurants can attract their customers based on their geographic location. Your restaurant pay only when the ad gets clicked. I feel it is better than any other ad as it is targeted specific to your own local area within your own city.

I hope you got an idea how Starbucks has leveraged social media like Facebook and Twitter to attract the potential customers and more importantly how to use some of those ideas into your restaurant business. If you also want to add some ideas that I might have left please feel free to add on the comment section. I would appreciate it and also other restaurants who are trying to figure this new social media thing would also be very thankful to you.

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Posted in Blog Marketing, Face Book Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Twitter Marketing, Viral Video Marketing, Youtube Marketing

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Why Blogging Is Vital To Your Success In Restaurant Marketing?

Posted on June 21, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 4 Comments

Blogging has definitely become one of the most powerful marketing tool for small businesses like restaurants. If blogging done properly, it can be powerful than tv, radio, newspapers, yellowpages all combined. Content is the king with the blogs. As a restaurant owners one has to think about their customers first. While creating contents for the blog one has to recognise what customers wants to read that would be valuable  and yet interesting enough to them with some some humour injected in them if possible. Don’t be boring. Most of the corporate blogs fail because there is no passion in the writings. Their corporate style of writing doesn’t resonate with their fun loving casual customers who likes casual conversations.

If it seems confusing and you would like to see the examples of other restaurant blogs, I would highly encourage you to do that first. May be even before you start a blog for your own restaurant,  it would be a great idea to follow couple of restaurant blogs. One that you could check out is kogibbq. The other ones are  Tyson chicken, Dairy Queen. Just by observing and engaging with the bloggers you learn a lot.

The key thing to remember is that you have to be ready to engage with your customers in a two way communication channels format. Join the converstation by replying back to your customers comments, answering your customers questions. That is how you build relationship and trust gradually. It is better if you yourself can do the blogging. If you are writing your content, opinions, expertise then it coming straight from you. So there is originality and authenticity. However if you are very busy then you could hire someone from your own company who is natural at blogging. If you don’t find some one in your company then it might be a good idea to look into a pool of your own customers. Who knows,there might be great fans with a passion for your restaurant’s products and service.

5 Reasons Why Blogging is Important to your success in Restaurant Marketing.

  1. Easily indexed by major search engines.
  2. Helps understand your customers problems.
  3. Helps in sharing valuable and interesting information relevant to your customers.
  4. Acts as a complete guide about your service or product and not as direct advertising.
  5. Is a great platform to create your own fan base tribe.

Easily indexed by Major Search Engines- One of the main reasons you want to blog is that it helps your restaurants to be found by major search engines like Google, Yahoo and many more on the internet. Now since this is a natural organic search results found by your prospective customers these are all free traffics that cost not a single dime to you. That means virtually the marketing expense is zero. Can you imagine when you don’t have to spend those thousands of dollars on tvs, radios, newspapapers and yellowpages. All that money now becomes a profit that you could put into your pocket instead of handing it over to those tv executives.

Helps understand your customers problems-When you write contents about your products, service or some useful information for your customers, then they have a chance to express their own opinion- good or bad and also problems of their concern. Once communication is made transparent through a blog, it is easier to understand customers real problem and solve it instantly rather than having to live in the darkness of unkown and building mistrust.

Helps in sharing valuable and interesting information relevant to your customers-Since blog is a medium of broadcasting, it helps you to share valuable information and yet interesting to your customers.The biggest mistake that one should not make that is worth repeating is not to be boring. Don’t present yourself as structured corporate officer. Rather be very casual, informal as you would talk to your friends and hopefully with humour you would be able to make your customers’ days.

Acts as a complete guide about your service or product and not as direct advertising-Blog essentially acts as a ccomplete guide for your restaurant. It will provide all the information regarding menu, services, contact information, directions, opening closing hours to all imaginable informations to prospective customers. So instead of acting like direct advertising that we see on the television or newspapers that says like ” hey come to our restaurant. We have the best steak.” It displays what products or service can your restaurant provide to customers in non threatening environment at their control of time.

Is a great platform to create your own fan base tribe-I have seen so many Facebook fan pages of several restaurants that has several thousands of loyal fans. Blogs acts as a spring board to create loyal followers on to your blogs and turn them into loyal fans that you could continue building and nurturing your relationship. Possibly later you could take them even to Facebook via the Blog. So that means any one who would visit your blog would have a chance to join your Facebook Fanpage and become a fan. This would make conversations more dynamic as the social viral effect would be be compounding.

Looking at all the above benefits of blogging, if your restaurant doesn’t have a blog presence on the internet, hope it encourages you to start building one. If your restaurant does have a blog, I hope you can still take some ideas  and take your restaurant blog marketing to the next advanced level.

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4 Tips Before You Start A Blog For Your Business.

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

David  Meerman Scott is a blogger, great marketing & leadership speaker and an author of number of best selling books on Marketing Online. He helps business understand how to create an effective marketing using internet with a new approach discarding those old school style  of traditional marketing. His marketing philosophy is very relevant to today’s marketing world of Myspace, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Blogs, Twitter and many more.

Why starting a blog for your restaurant business is important?

Blog is one of the most common effective communication channel for small businesses like restaurant simply because it is a platform that provides means to communicate two ways with customers without paying hefty advertising fees to those mass media companies. Since blogs are controlled by the restaurant owners, managers or operators, it acts like a mini media empire where you get to advertise only about your restaurant unlike other advertising directories where your restaurant get buried with other thousands of restaurants and other businesses.

Blogs also get indexed by Google and if you write great articles and do article marketing, then you have virtually created free traffic which you don’t have to pay a single dime for the marketing. It is cool because you get to control the amount of traffic you want to bring at your blog and thus into your restaurant. No more do you have to depend at  the mercy of those televisions, radio or newspaper never knowing if they really work.

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4 things that you should consider before planning to start a blog for your business?

By any means Blog Marketing for your restaurant is not going to be easy and not complicated either. The key thing is you have to know what are the things you need to know before you jump into this new band wagon of blog marketing your restaurant. There are 4 things you need to keep in mind if you really want to get into blog marketing are:

  1. Monitor
  2. Comment
  3. Make Friends with other bloggers
  4. Start a blog

Monitor- Before doing any thing you have to know how blogs really work. So the way you find this is visit some of the popular restaurant blogs. One that I recommend you to check out is www.kogibbq.com just to get an idea how effective blog marketing can be for restaurants. You can also check out at technorati- a blogs directories which has collections of blogs that focuses on restaurants or healthy eating and other different kinds of food and so on. Once you find bunch of blogs that resonates to your style, stick to them and monitor how they do their blog posts, add YouTube video and upload photos on Flickr. Just by watching them over a period of few days and weeks you will learn a lot about blogs and blog marketing.

Comment- Once you feel comfortable about the blogs and how it works start participating on the blogs by making comments on them. You could simply visit a blog that focuses on healthy eating. You can go to the blog and use your knowledge to add value to the conversation on the blog. Don’t go in there as a restaurant owner. But go there as a regular guy who just happen to love the topic and want to join the conversation and help the users. That way once you build a strong relationship and they start trusting you, they will start trying to find more about you than you trying to forcefully introduce yourself or your business. It is always easier to sell when customers come to you than when you have to do cold calling and forcefully sell to the customers.

Make friends with other Bloggers- Start also making some friends with other top bloggers within the food industry. The reason you want to do is that these bloggers hold a great power. At a click of their mouse they can drive thousands of customers at your restaurant that you might not be able to handle.So make sure you have extra staffs to handle those flood of customers whenever those bloggers decided to write about your restaurants and your food. When you make powerful comments then the bloggers will also take a note of that. I would also suggest you to personally write emails inviting them to your restaurant for lunch or dinner just to get them taste of your restaurant and also tell them about your restaurant concepts.More importantly to start building friendships. If they like your restaurant concepts and your food then they might decide to write about it. You get hold of 4 or 5 of the influential bloggers. That might be the ticket to your ultimate marketing success. I promise you you will not have to be at the mercy of those televisions, radio and newspapers. From then onwards you can just focus on them. You can build stronger friendship and they will do all the wonderful marketing for you.

Start a blog- Now that you have understood the concept of blogs, and how it works and also built some strong friendship with other influential bloggers you are ready to start your own  blog of the restaurant. I would highly recommend you to use WordPress as your blogging platform as it is one of the standard and easiest platform there for blogs.You can just go to wordpress.com and set up your blog for FREE. Just start and play around with it  to get a feel about blogging. Just by playing around, you will know how to post articles and create pages. If you can write an email, then you can create your own blog. It is that easy if you understand and learn once. Later when you gain more confidence on it then you can transition to self hosted blogging where  you have to know little more technological stuff but you have more control over your blog.

I wish you all the best and hope you will implement the blog into your restaurant marketing effort even if you have a static website already or not.

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How Dairy Queen Is Using Blog As A New Medium To Reach Customers Of New Generation Like Facebook, My Space And Twitter.

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment
Dairy Queen

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/

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How Kogi-Korean BBQ Restaurant is leveraging Blog, Flickr,Twitter And Facebook to effectively market their Restaurant.

Posted on March 2, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

The video  is inspirational to many especially restaurant entrepreneurs who come to America with a dream to make it big in restaurant industry. Though it might seem overnight success, it is not. There is years of dedication in the art of food, passion for what Mark Manguera and Roy Choi believed in. Nothing derailed their conviction. Few months ago, when they were just starting, no body would want to try their food let alone buy the food. Mark even had to beg people to try the food. This was a humble begining unwilling to take “no” for answer. They were persistent and kept on moving ahead pushing hard. They introduced their food to new customers one at a time. Once they ate the food, they couldn’t believe it was that delicious. They couldn’t help but spread the words and  become their die hard fans.

Kogi Korean BBQ restaurant  is not a new thing in LA restaurant market space. After all there are so many similar restaurants all around LA. So the question is what did Kogi Korean BBQ do to  get so much attention from the media, press to die hard fans who would keep on chasing for the truck in the middle of the night. The answer to that is they stood out from the rest of the average restaurants to be one of the coolest mobile restaurant. They set the trend by being different and taking the restaurant to their customers and not the other way around.  They also had a remarkable product-fresh juicy burritos and tacos with unique authentic Korean and Mexican flavour. Once people ate it, people felt as if they died and gone to heaven. They couldn’t help but keep on talking to their friends and to every one they met. This started spreading like wild fire and even reached to the halls of LA times and many other Los Angeles media press.

In my opinion the most important factor to its quick success and  popularity is social media like blogs,Flickr and Twitter to name few. These new media has made it possible to any body  to spread their ideas quickly and gain success provided they understand the social media and use it effectively to their restaurant marketing advantage. Kogi  Korean BBQ has maintained a blog and within the blog they have incorporated Flickr  and also Twitter. Never before was it this easy for any small independent restaurant like Kogi to engage with it’s customer this closely sharing photos, videos and comments. Blog has made it possible for restaurants like Kogi to communicate back and forth with it’s customers and understand exactly what they like and dislike. They also have used Flickr to share the happy moments and may be some funny ones too with their  customers. Customers are given an opportunity to express their love of food. Once they capture them in their lenses they make  it available on their blog so they can cherish the moment even days, weeks, years later. They have taken this one step further. If picture is worth 1000 words then video is million words worth. They have used video to share some of their road trips with their die hard fans and displaying those mouth watering tacos and burritos not just to people in Los Angeles but virtually to the whole world. The fact that it was in LA times I also watched the video though I am not in the vicinity.However since the video has a great impact on me, when I visit LA I will definitely be one of them chasing Kogi Korean BBQ in the middle of the night after my night club social time.

Lastly the most powerful tool they have leveraged in communicating with their customers is Twitter and Facebook. Considering that it has to fight all the heavy traffic through LA while moving from one place to another, the timings can be off from the schedules. This is the time when Twitter and Facebook come in handy. They can tweet on Twitter or make an updates on Facebook about their situation whether they are in traffic or anything that is causing delay. That way at least customers can be well informed and wait there for the juicy tacos even if the wait is for 2 hours. Twitter and Facebook also allow them to broadcast the specials of the day or any new menu updates. Twitter and Facebook is freely available tool on the internet and they have used it effectively to their advantage.

When you look at it’s history, it is barely 4-5 months now and they are so popular with in this short period of time. We would be pondering how on earth is this possible to a new concept restaurant which didn’t have any brand recognition at all. Well this is possible due to power of internet technology and social media tools. Never in the history it has been this easier and faster for any restaurant to spread their ideas and create a great brand which would take years with the traditional medias.

Hope you realize the potential of social media and use it to your advantage. Have you tried using social media for your business marketing. Please share your experience below and any questions you have. So we all can help each other. Thanks.

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Blog Marketing-What Is A Restaurant Blog Marketing ?

Posted on January 6, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 5 Comments

What is a Blog ?

Blog is essentially a website where entries are posted on a regular basis displayed in reverse chronological order.Blog is a tool which helps you to showcase your product or service to the locals and virtually to the whole world. It helps to display the menu, distribute the coupons, and much more to attract new potential customers.

Blog is a conversational communication medium where you and your customers can communicate in more personal level by allowing your customers to comment on the video that you posted of a  recent wedding event that took place at your restaurant or provide feedback on anything that is relevent to your restaurant.

What is Restaurant Blog Marketing ?

Restaurant Blog Marketing is a process of marketing your restaurant using blog.

Why it is essential for your restaurant ?

Blog is essential for your restaurant because it enables two way communication between you and your customers. You would be able to understand your customers likes and dislikes  on a more personal  level.
Best of all it is free, and you can literally get your blog ready within few minutes if you put your mind into it.

How can you use it for FREE and right now ?

There are several free blog software out there but I would recommend WordPress for your blog simply because it has several cool features that you can add on as required later in the future. You can visit at www.wordpress.com and register your restaurant name for a blog. Play around with it and in no time you will have your own restaurant blog at no cost.

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