Category Archives: iPhone Marketing

iPhone 4-Do you have mobile marketing strategy for your restaurant leveraging iPhone apps.

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Nash Sherchan| 2 Comments

Few months back Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs provided a peek at some of the new features coming to its iPhone 4 that is going to be available on June 15th.He presented some upcoming new features  update to its iPhone operating system.

Among so many updates that caught my eyes is the ads in iPhone apps and the potential that it offers to any businesses-big or small including restaurants. It allows them to tap into this new media to advertise to the new mobile iPhone-iPod users. Iphone OS 4 will also give developers more tools for putting ads in iPhone apps.That means more developers will be building great apps to monetize. I’m sure there will be some apps that will also target restaurants. The iAd platform system presents a big potential mobile customers to your restaurant.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple in his own words says “Average iPhone user spends over 30 minutes a day running third-party apps. If you put an ad in every 3 minutes, you’d have 10 apps running during that 10-minute period per user. We will soon have shipped 100 million iPhones and iPod touches. That will happen sometime this summer. 100 million times 10 is a billion ads impressions per day from the iPhone and iPod Touch community.”

Think about this for a moment. 1 Billion ads impressions per day. That is huge. The question that remains to you is that if your restaurant business  is ready to take advantage of this new platform that didn’t even exist few years ago. For get about Yellow Pages. No body looks at them now. For me, I haven’t seen them for years. When I get them on my door, they go direct to thrash. I’m sure you relate to this too as I presume you do the same. After all who wants to deal with that outdated yellow pages when you can get your information at a click of a mouse or push of a button on iPhone or other smart phones.

Though it’s just beginning, I believe this advertising model will be big in few years. You have a great adantage to dive into it right now when everything is fresh and virtually no one in your neighborhood is in it. I just wanted to share my thoughts where mobile marketing is heading and more importantly want you to be aware of the huge opportunity and plan accordingly from right now and reap the benefit.

Have you explored mobile marketing strategy for your restaurant? Have you tried  to advertise your restaurant business on any any iPhone apps? I’d love hear your thought.

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Food Spotting launches iPhone app that lets your hungry customers see the foods around them

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Few months ago I stumbled upon Food Spotting and it caught my attention because I knew that it had something unique to offer to restaurants and food lovers. Alexa Andrzejewski is the Founder & CEO of Foodspotting. She and her team were working on iPhone app then. So to keep up to date with their product release  I had subscribed to their newsletter. I got their email about their iPhone app that is available now for any one to download for free. I thought of sharing with you too so that you get an idea where the future for Restaurants is heading.

I firmly believe that with the penetration of smart phones in US and worldwide the dynamics of marketing is changing. There are new platforms created for restaurants which didn’t exist even few years ago. Just take an example of this Food Spotting App. They just released it. Things are changing and my hope with this blog post is to make you aware of the changes that are coming. I would suggest you to see this new trends and prepare your business to adapt to the new changes that this smart phones like iPhone is bringing.May be you might not see the effect right away. But I believe that over the time services like Food Spotting will definitely change the way food lovers ( at least the iPhone users for now ) look for the food they crave.No more will this new breed of customers  turn Yellow Pages to find restaurants.

Expect similar concept coming to restaurant industry especially when local location sharing is hot trend right now. What I am requesting is to keep your eyes and mind open to ideas. Just don’t discard it right away.

So what really is Food Spotting?

As stated on their site, “Foodspotting is a visual local guide that lets you find dishes instead of just restaurants. Powered by people who take pictures of their food for badges and recognition, Foodspotting makes finding good food easier by letting you see the foods around you”.

Watch the video of Foodspotting iPhone app demo by Alexa Andrzejewski, the Founder & CEO of Foodspotting and see for your self how it works and more importantly see how you can creatively market through these new kind of platforms which were not available few years ago.

I think it is cool way of being found by your potential customers on iPhone and may be later on other smart phones like Black Berry, Anroid and many others. What do you think?

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Posted in iPhone Marketing

4 Restaurant Marketing Strategies To Attract More Fans On Facebook And Convert Them Into Loyal Customers.

Posted on November 30, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 4 Comments

With over 350 million users world wide by now Facebook is the most popular social media site in the world. All of my friends are on Facebook. Most of my communications from email and phone have migrated to Facebook. We all hangout on Facebook to share information and updates about our personal lives. Over 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook every day as per the last stats on over all time spent on Facebook. Facebook has become a cyber destination for people to get updated with their friends and families.  Now what does this all mean to your restaurant?

Facebook in a way is blessing to small restaurants like yours. It offers a huge opportunity to market your restaurant for FREE except it requires little bit of your social time. It has leveled the field plain in regards to marketing.It means that no more can a BIG company win just because they have more money than you. The game of marketing today, in an age of social media is dictated not just by the amount of dollars one can throw at mass media company rather by creative ideas and innovation. In fact if you are smart and learn the ins and out of social media marketing you can outsmart the BIG brands who may try to outspend in the hope to crush you.

Some times it makes me think if at all now you need a traditional static website where there is no way of communicating with your customers directly as you can do on Facebook. Knowing how busy you are in your restaurants I don’t expect you to learn html for just creating website which sits idle in a cyberspace. However,I’d not hesitate to recommend a blog for you restaurant knowing how well it get indexed on blogs and can help your restaurant to be organically found on search engine like Google. I would recommend only if you have time and extra money to invest so you can post menus updates, recipe, any customers’ experiences or anything relevant to your restaurant. But if you think you don’t have that much time, you can start of your online presence by creating your personal profile and also Fan Page of your restaurant on Facebook. I believe if you just do this for now, you would be far ahead than other restaurants who are scratching their head to figure out this social media jungle. My recommendation is that you start the journey of social media marketing step by step. First Facebook, then Twitter, then may be blog and so on…. The key is to master on one and migrate to another. That way you are maximizing your result for the time you input. You don’t want to be in a situation where you are spread out thin in millions of social media sites, loosing the focus and getting no results at all.

Now that we know that Facebook can be helpful for small businesses like restaurants, the question is how can you leverage Facebook to attract more customers into your restaurant and potentially make more money for your restaurant?

Check out the video above created by “Your Business Channel” that shares the Facebook marketing strategies for businesses. However I have incorporated the strategies along with some other additional relevant ideas that is related to restaurant business.

Below are the four Facebook marketing strategies that you can implement for your restaurant.

  1. Get lots of friends-(Magic number is 5000)
  2. Create a Fan Page and use branded customized application
  3. Publish interesting contents
  4. Look for right partners

1.Get lots of friends

I hope you have already created your personal profile by signing up at facebook. If not I would highly recommend you to create one right now at http://www.facebook.com/   It will take you less than 10 minutes and it is FREE.Now the key is to request friends to your list and the magic number is 5000. You goal is to get that 5000 friends in your friend list. Now you are not going to request all in one time. But you can start by requesting 10 or 15 friends per day or whatever you think is appropriate in your situation. But I want to WARN you not to over do it. Facebook won’t like it and it will alert them as if you are spamming and won’t allow you to request any more friends. So go easy on that. Another important thing to keep in mind is to request friends by qualifying them focusing more on quality rather than quantity. What I mean is that you want to friend those people who might be your potential customers.  To begin with you could simply ask to your current customers that come to your restaurant. Most of them are already on Facebook. Once you become friends with them. Look into their friend list. Local friends have local friends on their friends list. Chances are that they might have categorized as local friends or real friends or something like that. You could just request friends by just writing  a small friendly note. It is like meeting friends of your close buddy at a party and introducing to yourself. If you do it correctly, chances are most of them will accept to be friends with you especially when you mention the friend’s name with personal note of yours. If you feel uncomfortable then there is feature where Facebook will automatically suggest you friends based on your friends social networks. It is doing pretty much the same thing except now the computer robots are doing the recommending. Facebook is acting as a friend who is trying to introduce you to a friend of a friend. So my logic is if Facebook is doing why not you do it more proactively and gain more friends faster. After all we join social network sites like Facebook to make more friends some known and  some unknown.

Alternatively you could also look into foodie group that is created on Facebook in your city.You can participate on some of those group that you like and make some friends there too. Imagine if you had 5000 friends that were potential customers of your restaurant. That means you have an access to your friends/customers at a click of mouse or touch of an update on your smart phone. You will never have to be at the mercy of those newspaper, radio or TV execs. No more will they control the marketing message of your restaurant. You will control the message yourself. Most importantly with out having to pay that hefty advertising fee and that never seems to work for your restaurant.

2. Create a Fan Page and use branded customized application

Once you create your own personal profile page on Facebook and get bunch of friends to start off, you can start building your fan page using branded customized application. If you haven’t yet created the fan page of your restaurant, here is the link on how to create a Facebook Fan Page for your restaurant.Though some of the big brands have made their own customized application from scratch costing them several thousands of dollars, you as a small restaurant with tight budgets, it might not be worth your money. However you can  use other Facebook application built by other app developers  by paying tiny subscription fees. This way you don’t have to invest a lot in one single app.Rather you have a chance to try several other apps that might fit to your restaurant needs. Some of the popular Facebook app providers are Involver, WildFire, Sprout Publisher . I would recommend you to choose some apps that would enhance your user’s experience on fan page. Your users are the fans of your restaurant. The key thing is that the app should make your fan page so attractive that it should make them come back again and again to the Fan Page. May be you could use app to distribute the coupons. May be update your tweets if your restaurant has twitter presence, or update your blog post. (I’m suggesting this if you are already on twitter or blogging)

3. Publish interesting contents

Update your Facebook Fan page at least once a day. Though there is no set rules on how many times a day you can update your fan page, the frequency is important with the relevancy of your updates. The best scenario would be 2 times a day. One right before lunch at around 11am and the other before dinner time say at around 5-6 o’ clock. These time slots are important because those are the times when people tend to check their Facebook right before they leave their office.You have two objective here by choosing this time. Your restaurant has a chance to get exposed to the most number of people by sharing whatever information you are trying to get in front of them. Secondly even if you were just sharing a general info lets say a great article on NY times about healthy living, you are indirectly reminding them about your restaurant. It is an indirect sell. You do not appear pushy rather informative and yet very subtle at selling your brand. May be that simple informative update will remind that person to get the dinner that his wife might have requested him for but he had forgotten it. You also may decide some other times as needs arise. It is totally up to you and try at different times just to test and see the results for yourself.

You should decorate your fan page with beautiful looking photos of signature dishes from your menu or some funny videos of some of your employees or yourself if you have one. It just makes the fan page more interactive. Fans tend to enjoy them since they have more visual effect. They seem to be more connected when they can see a chef showing his ninja style acrobatic skills. When customers see a funny video of a server who served them,  they feel the sense of belonging to that group. Even for  fans who have never visited the restaurant it would create a kind of bonding with your restaurant. It would create an image of cool restaurant in the mind of any fans that would come and see all those funny videos.While making the facebook update don’t be too structured and appear too corporate. Fans on Facebook are like friends so present to them casually as you would with friends. May be sometime creating jokes or being sensational like of tabloids. Do something different and unique and never be boring.

4. Look for right partners

You should work with others who have the same target customers like yours. You can just go around in your neighborhood and locate some other businesses in different market. Let’s say there is a health club. You could make friends with these business owners first. Chances are that they might have also built their fan base on Facebook. You could make a friendly business deal to promote each others business on Facebook. Wherever appropriate you could refer respective product to each others database of customers. When you are doing a joint marketing that would compliment each others business, both of you could also share the marketing cost. This way you could do grand marketing with less marketing expense to bear and yet impacting all the businesses involved in the marketing campaign. This joint marketing campaign can go beyond 2 businesses to any number of businesses. The more businesses you have participating the better it is.This is more effective when all the businesses decide to do offline marketing that is integrated with the online marketing that could be on Facebook.

Hope these ideas will help you get started  to effectively market your restaurant on Facebook attracting tons of fans and hopefully turning them into loyal customers of your restaurant for years to come.Please share this with your friends who might benefit from these strategies. I would also appreciate if you could drop some comments on what you think about the above Facebook strategies  and add some more ideas if you have that would help restaurants use Facebook more effectively.Thanks.

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Chipotle Online Ordering via iPhone-What it means to the future of Fast Casual Restaurant Industry.

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 6 Comments

Online ordering via iPhone at Chipotle-My experience.

The first time that I saw the Chipotle iPhone app was during the second week of January, 2009. Infact I was checking my iPhone to see if any mobile ordering app was available for restaurants. Co-incidently that was the very day, Chipotle Mexican Grill Restaurant had released their iPhone app. I was excited to see the app and decided to download it later on my desktop thinking that it would be easier and faster to download. Later on that day when I tried to download from my computer, I realized that the app was not available on iTune. I found out that Chipotle had taken out the app due to high volume of downloads. May be it was a good strategy to limit the restricted number of downloads that were made availabe to the public. That way they could test their new baby product without frustrating millions other who would have downloaded if it was available. That would include me too.But I was left behind. Finally after testing and perfecting the app for several months now they finally released their app. This time I made sure I downloaded it right away.

During my last blog post about Chipotle iPhone app I had promised that I would test it and write about it. Last Saturday I had a chance to test it. So I just wanted to share my experience. Tired of eating the same  usual stuff from the same restaurant I was hunting for a new concept restaurant. Then I realized why not take this opportunity to try iPhone app for mobile ordering at Chipotle. A friend of mine and I went to Chipotle located at 10800 Alpharetta Hwy, Roswell, Atlanta. My friend got a burrito, salad and a drink. I decided to test the mobile order via iPhone so I just got the drink only. I then took out my iPhone and started to place an order. The ordering process was pretty simple. Every thing was self explainatory. Since I had not signed up yet, it prompted me to sign up before check out. So I did that too. Thought sign up would be long one but I experienced it to be a short one. Very thoughtful of Chipotle especially for people who would just give up because  it was too long sign up process as it often happens on the web. Once I signed up it took me to the payment section where I input my credit card numbers and in few seconds the payment was processed. Then it said that my order was received and that email receipt would be sent to me which I did receive it. Literally it took me may be 2-3 minutes though it was my first time trying to figure it out and place an order at the same time. Next time the ordering process  would be may under a minute.

Experiencing the iPhone mobile ordering at Chipotle by myself, I see that Fast Casual Restaurants are headed to a promising future. But those who accepts the technology and adopts are gonna win. And the rest who are hiding their head in the sand assuming that nothing is changing they will have a hard time in few years to compete with restaurants like Chipotle who have already started using innovative technology to accomodate the needs of their busy corporate customers.

Why Restaurants need to adopt innovative technology to remain relevant in the future?

As soon as the Chipotle iPhone app was released back in January 2009, I checked some of the Apple forums. There were hard core apple loyal fans who were so excited to use the app. They all were raving about it.With more than 40 millions iPhones to be sold by 2009, the chances of iPhone users downloading Chipotle iPhone app also increases. Since every iPhone users have to eat lunch, I am assuming they would have know about Chipotle app by now or if not they will soon as it gets more popular. As customers become accustomed to online ordering via iPhone I’m sure those busy customers working in a corporation at those high tall rise building would not want to waste their time waiting in the line to get their food during the lunch time. Rather they would want to pre order via their iPhone and pickup their food without having to wait in long lines sometimes taking them may be even more than 5-10 minutes.

The imaginary scenario would be like this. It is almost 12 pm lunch time for all companies in US. The customer gets in the lift to go down to drive up to the local restaurant. While in the lift he takes out his iPhone.( Hope their company has set up the strong connectivity in their building other wise he will have to do it while driving) He places his order in less than a minute. He drives up to the local restaurant. Without waiting the long line during the busy lunch hour he goes straight to the iPhone mobile order line. His lunch is ready for a pick up. He shows his email receipts confirmation to the cashier. He gets his food right away. What it takes 2-3 minutes (fastest) if he would have come through a regular line and paid with his credit card, would literally now take him only few seconds to get his food when ordered via iPhone.

With time being scarce during the lunch time who would not want to leverage the innovative technology to cut down the ordering and waiting time and use that time to enjoy the food. I think every one would. At least I would.

I believe restaurants should recognize the importance of accomodating their busy tech savvy customer’s need and attempt to provide the fast service by leveraging technology.If you restaurant won’t then those tech savvy customers are not obligated to be loyal forever. They will switch the restaurant with few clicks on their iPhones.

So I hope all restaurants  whether independentor chains would see this trend as a promising opportunity and adopt innovative technology to remain relevant in the future.

I’d  appreciate if you could share your thoughts about Chipotle’s  app if you have tried the online mobile ordering via iPhone.Even if you haven’t tried it let us know what do you think about  mobile ordering trends and how it would impact the  future of the fast casual restaurants, by dropping some comments below. Thanks!

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7 Tips For Restaurants To Attract More Twitter Followers.

Posted on April 7, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 7 Comments

Well for the past few weeks I have been busy tweeting and learning the right strategies to tweet in order to increase the number of followers and more importantly building a solid network based on shared interests on the same subject topics. I must admit that after this 2-3 weeks of experimentation, twitter is addictive once you get hooked. It is like a suspense movie that you never know what is coming next and keep you hooked on the seat for hours and makes you keep on tweeting.

I just wanted to let my self free and dive into the twitter world and experience for myself what it is really like. It was kind of short vacation from my blogging world. I feel so relaxed and energized to write this article not just based on reading an ebook and blog post about twitter but in fact experimenting those Twitter strategies myself and then sharing it with my audience.

I feel there is a difference between education and learning. Education to me is when you study or get information from an ebook or from some experts. But learning is when you apply those education that you studied in to practise to get the results. So with all the education I got from all different ebooks, and twitter experts I tried to put them in to practise and these were the following lessons that I learnt.

Again, I would highly recommend you to take this real life experimentation of Twitter education and put it into practise. That is when learning begins and improve upon one tweet at a time, understanding that learning never stops and keeps continuing for a life time to come.

Lessons Learnt from my  Twitter Experiment.

  1. Build a relationship  with your followers and also one who you follow as well like @SocialNetworkTV
  2. Study before following any body and make the first tweet very personalised like @iRestaurant
  3. Try to inject humour with your twitter to give a different flavour like @PopeyesChicken
  4. Ask questions rather than just tweeting a plain statement like @mikefilsaime
  5. Tweet in relation to your subject topics and also other occasional personal tweets like@geekpreneur
  6. Don’t try to promote only your blog or your product or service in every tweets. Recommends @sethgodin
  7. Humanise your tweets like @chrisbrogan

Build a relationship  with your followers and also one who you follow as well like @SocialNetworkTV

William Lark @SocialNetworkTV gave me this great tip on twitter that any one can overlook. Infact I also overlooked this in some way. I started building a strong relationship with those who followed me first because it is natural that when some one followed you, that means they liked some thing about your profile or tweets that was of similar interest to them. If not all at least the genuine followers believed that principle.But I used to think that the big guys with thousands of twitter followers whom we initially started following would not even care about little guys. That is still true but it doesn’t mean that you can not start building relationship with them too. Persistence wins their heart and quality tweets wins their mind. Even if they don’t return your tweets and DMs keep trying with great powerful tweets. Let me tell you one thing eventually you will get response.I know it because I have got response from John Jantsch @ducttape

Study before following any body and make the first tweet very personalised like @iRestaurant

Oh boy! I should not credit my self. But you know what there are something you learn on your own in the process of learning. So at times you can get credit for your self , that is ok. I wouldn’t mind if you learn something of your own and share with me. I would be happy to put it in my next blog post and give you your credit for that too. I read in some articles that Boeing Company before it initiate it’s talks with potential buyers they find out every detail about the buyer. This is very important because it is not a $1000 dollar deal. We are talking about multi million and billion dollar transaction in one sale. I feel you should treat your first tweet to your follower in the same manner. You will be surprised how reactive they would be. It is human nature. No body wants to be generalised as sir or madam especially in Twitter world. They would prefer ” Hi John or Hi Marianda”. Once you understand their core interest, I would recommend you to follow back and start building relationship based on their interest and not yours starting with very personalized tweets.

Try to inject humour with your twitter to give a different flavour like @PopeyesChicken

This is another great tip that I learnt from @PopeyesChicken. The reason people come on Twitter is not just because they want to talk about their daily life but also because it is a fun place to be with full of interesting people. Life in physical world and especially at the corporate world is so boring and dull that people love coming to Twitter to meet with cool people full of fun and joy. Just think about it as a party. When you go to a party nobody want to hang around a guy or a girl who is talking simply boring stuff. Most often you see more people hanging around a person who is full of energy, passion and most importantly full of funny jokes while presenting his views what ever it might be. Have you ever heard a burst of laughter coming from a corner of a party and made you think what on earth is going with that crowd. It creates curiosity in your mind to find out what really that laughter  was about. Even if you were talking with some one,you want to join that group to share that joy and fun. Well this is what exactly what happens in Twitter. So it is very important to be that guy in the party who creates that excitement and curiosity to not only group he is talking to but people far away from him.This principle is very well displayed by Popeyes Chicken. Every now and then I get their funny tweet. If you want to get the taste of humorous tweet, you can do so by following them at @PopeyesChicken

Ask questions rather than just tweeting a plain statement like @mikefilsaime

A great tip that many people on Twitter miss and  I learnt it from Mike Filsaime while I was watching his interview with Joel Comm at Twitter A Thon. Twitter is a place where you break the ice with other people that you have never seen and never met but have a common interest on the same subjects. It is like a real life where you you start a conversation when you meet a new people. But  how do you do to make it natural and reactive. You could say some thing like this. “It is cold out side. I am craving for some soup today.The restaurant has tomato basil and chicken noodle soup. Which one would you recommend?”  See here instead of  throwing just a plain statement you ended with a question. This enables human mind to react to the question because they are looking for an answer. If you had said just It is cold out side and craving for some soup today.The restaurant has tomato basil and chicken noodle soup. It looks so plain and old statement that the other person at the other end would not know what to say or do. In fact it might confuse him and make him feel awkward. I wouldn’t be surprised if he or she would run away just because he or she didn’t feel comfortable around. Also don’t make it look like  if it is coming from a nerd with his dark specs not knowing how to start a conversation with a beautiful girl. Even if she had attracted to him to begin with she would be the first person to run far away from that person because of the boring stuffs he talks about and the style he presents. So please don’t be that boring guy in Twitter. This might be my biggest advise.

Tweet in relation to your subject topics and also other occasional personal tweets like @geekpreneur

This is the tip that I got from reading the ebook titled “A Geek’s Guide To Promoting Yourself And Your Online Business On Twitter”. I highly recommend it. Though it says for online business it is also applicable for offline business like restaurants. When you enter to the world of Twitter you go with a strategy. You have a mission to accomplish whether it is to sell your product or service. It is always good to make most of your tweets in regards to that specific subject topics with the niche target market in your mind. You just don’t tweet random thoughts right and left. Every tweet is very carefully scripted not only to inform your target audience but also leaving a net for others to find you when they are searching for that term on search.twitter.com Every now and then you can tweet about your own personal thing that you find relevant to your audience. That way this gives them a sense of surprise tweet rather than assuming you are the same old tweeterer who tweets only about your blogs or the same old same old topics.

Don’t try to promote only your blog or your product or service in every tweets.Recommends @sethgodin

This is one of the most “out of the box” kind of  tips that I learnt from Seth Godin-one of the most  reknowned marketers of our times who has seen the fundamental changes in the marketing world with the birth of internet and with his Squidoo lens. Seth Godin doesn’t promotes his book on any podcast that I have listened to. Infact he doesn’t want to even mention about it. I call it “Reverse Marketing.” He makes a subtle sales by bringing the insights into the subject of marketing. People get so intrigued that he doesn’t have to really sell his book. It sell by itself. People are more curious why he doesn’t shout loud like others trying to sell their books.It makes people to find out about it more organically and naturally than him trying to forcefully convince people to buy his books. I have taken this to my heart. I fully believe this strategy. I would recommend you to use this strategy if you want to win the hearts and mind of your target audience or customers for a life time and not just when you are tweeting just for the sake of the sales.

Humanise your tweets like @chrisbrogan

Last but not the least please, the tip that is probably the most important tip and that is  humanise your tweets. This is a tip that I got from Chris Brogan when I listened to his podcast interview with John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing. Don’t make it look like some computer robots throwing those tweets. Chris Brogan says in his own words that “Twitter is full of human beings but computer robots.” A person  likes to talk to another person. So when you communicate with your followers or new prospects try to make a real life conversation may be with little touch of passion, excitement and obviously not to forget the humour. Thought there are some automated tools to make our life easier, Chris Brogan seems not a great fan of automated tools as it takes away the charm of human to human connection that is meant to be established by Twitter.

These tips that I have learnt over the course of last 2-3 weeks are just the basics of Twitter practises and there are still more to be learnt. So keep your eyes and ear open to different ideas and you will learn fast to attract more followers and convert them into your customers for a life time to come.

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2 Platforms That Chefs Can Use To Create Their Own Tv Live Show Like Chef Emeril.

Posted on January 22, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

There is no doubt that Youtube has been a blessing to all of us who as an average user can upload their own videos on Youtube and broad cast virtually to the whole world. Last year in 2008 Youtube also released Youtube Live which they have wanted to release it sooner but couldn;t do it because of the technology issue and not enough resources available to do it properly at the time. However with the backing of Google, Youtube Live have been a reality.

What does Youtube Live means to the restaurant owners and the chefs around the world ?

Well, it means that any chefs can have their own tv show like Chef Emeril Live or may be even better. They can create their own lets say Italian cooking session live in their kitchen assuming you are Itlaian Restaurant which can be viewed live by  interested fans all around the world. It means that consumers have options  to watch either Chef Emeril Live show or any other Local Chef Live show that they can see on internet streaming video like Youtube or Ustream. They can choose to watch his or her local town chef Live show which resonates to his or her taste.

Another good thing is that your live show can be mobile too. It doesn’t have to be confined to the traditional tv set or the desktop in the room. The Chef Live show can move with you. Lets say I was on a road trip back to Atlanta. The Live show is at 6pm. There is no way that I can reach home to Atlanta to catch the Chef Live Show on time. No problem. iPhone is at rescue. iPhone has Youtube integrated into it. Since 3G high speed internet can handle the big video file downloads the streaming of video is smooth and the quality is great. I have seen the video on my own iPhone and the quality seems to be as good as on the computer or even TV.Verizon also has integrated the Youtube on their platform. So all the Verizonwireless subscribers with the data plans can stream these Youtube videos and Live if you choose to do so. Verizon Wireless and At&T combined has more than over 100 million subscribers. Tmobile and Google have teamed up and released GPhone with their own software anroid. I am sure they also have incorporated Youtube. So you have a great mobile audience too if you can tap into this market.

Walmart and Apple has also made a deal to offer an iPhone at a very low price of $99. Apple has strategically chosen Walmart for mass distribution. Can you imagine how many people would be persuaded to buy iPhone. Any body would buy it. Why not ? if you are getting phone, ipod and internet connection almost at the same price you would get the regular phone with no bells and whistles. What this indicates to us is that more and more people will be carrying the internet enabled mobile devices like iPhone. So it would not be at your best interest to neglect this mobile youth generation who holds the power of consumer at a touch of mobile buttons.

When I saw the ad about ustream.tv that would enable  watch the President Inauguration Live with the ustream iPhone mobile application, I was excited and wanted to try as soon it was available. It was not available on the 20th Jan 08, the day when I checked out on the internet. However I applied for the mobile application for ustream via email. On the 21st I got the email that they were approved by Apple to release the ustream.tv mobile application. I downloaded the ustream application on iPhone on the same day to check if it does work. Also I was excited to watch the President Inauguration on Ustream tv on iPhone. It gave me a connection error which was understandable considering it was their first release and that they have lots of bugs to findout as in every first release application. Well these things might not be important for us as the technicians at ustream and apple will figure out how to stream live videos flawlessly. The thing that is important to us is that once all the technological aspects are perfected how as a restaurant owners or chefs can take advantage of this technology to get your restaurant brand exposure to your loyal fan customers and may be new potential customers.

If you have iPhone I would recommend you to download ustream application from itunes.com and test for your self if does work for your restaurant chef live show. If it does you have created your own private tv network where you can create several shows about your restaurant and this time you don’t have to pay a dime to those local tv networks. If you try this experiment we would love to hear from you. Please do share your findings to us by commenting on the blog.

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Urban Spoon- Adding Your Restaurant In Urban Spoon Might Help iPhone Users Find Your Restaurant.

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

I am sure some of you have seen the ad of iPhone on the television. But among all the adds, one that caught my eyes was about the mobile application known as Urban Spoon on iPhone. If you haven’t seen the ad, please watch the video above and you will know what I am talking about. Basically it promotes how iPhone with such powerful mobile application can make our life much simpler and easier while we are in dilemma about which restaurant to go for dinner or lunch.

So the question is what is Urban Spoon?

Urban Spoon as advertised on iPhone ad, essentially is a mobile application on iPhone which helps iPhone mobile customers to find out which restaurant to visit while they are in confusion which restaurant to visit whether it is for
lunch or dinner. Since Urban Spoon also has online presence, it is a tool that small or big restaurants can leverage for their online presence and more importantly mobile presence.

Why adding your restaurant on Urban Spoon might help mobile customers find your restaurant easily?

As adding your restaurant on Google map is important for your restaurant to be found on search engines, adding your restaurant on Urban Spoon is important so that your restaurant can be found by those iPhone users and possibly by other internet access mobile users. Since the number of iPhone sold till the last year in 2008 was over 13 million and growing every day in States and other several countries, the traffic that you
could possibly generate from this can not be neglected.

How can you add your restaurant on Urban Spoon ?

Adding your restaurant in Urban Spoon can be very easy and simple.You can go online at www.urbanspoon.com  site. On the left hand side little above the bottom you will find title which says New Restaurants.
On the bottom of that there is link in blue which says Add a Restaurant.Click the link and follow the instructions. Just type in your restaurant information, your menu with website link and submit the information. It can be that simple and easy to list your restaurant on Urban spoon.

So what are you waiting for? Go and add your restaurant on Urban Spoon and attract all those iPhone customers.
Good luck and do share your trial and triumphs on the comment sections.

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Order Coffee Using iPhone and Pickup Without Waiting In Line.

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

One of the key ingredients to your restaurant success in today’s fast paced world is speed and convenience. Without them, selling food or drinks alone might not work as it used to in the past especially with iPhone and iPod generation.

Americans don’t have much time especially during the week days while the work load is greater than the time. So that means they also have less and less time for lunch. The average lunch break time is about 30-45 minutes depending upon the company that they are working. By the time they leave their office and drive to the local restaurant their half of the lunch break is over. Once they reach the restaurant there is a big line as every one seems to be  hungry exactly at the same time. It could take several minutes before they could get their food in their hands. This is a time consuming process and this doesn’t help the hungry customers who are in a hurry. This some time could lead to an unpleasant experience.

So the question is how can a technology and multifunctional device like iPhone help the hungry office workers order food seamlessly at a click of iPhone and receive it without even waiting in the line and without fumbling to dig into wallet or purse at the cash register counter. iPhone has been a great platform for any mobile application to provide mobile services like mobile order and mobile payment that it will make small restaurants to be able to provide the mobile services to their customers too.

Watch the video and see how a person can easily order  frappuccino from Starbucks with few clicks on iPhone and also make their payments by their  itunes account. Once the frappuccino is ready the customer gets the text message saying that it is ready, the customers comes straight to fast lane where they don’t have to wait in line. All they do is show the text order confirmation to the cashier and gets the frappuccino. It cannot be simpler, easier and faster than that. All in all it would take,may be 10-15 seconds before the customer gets the frappachino in his hand.

The good turn around time of a lunch customer from the time he orders and gets his  food on his  hand after finishing the payment transaction is around 2 minutes and 40 seconds in quick service restaurant industry. Imagine that time is reduced to only 15 seconds how many customers would you have served in 2 minutes and 40 seconds. Essentially you would have served about 10 times more of the customer. Now that is speed and convenience. Your food is prepared and sold in faster speed. This would be ideal to drive thru like Starbucks or Mcdonalds or any restaurant that has a drive thru. Another good thing about this is that there would be less chance of mistakes as all the orders are predetermined by the customer while ordering by mobile iPhone and is being sent  digitally. That means there is no manual entry by your staff in the order taking process and decreases the chances of error which is a great benefit considering that a single mistake could back log your line for several minutes. As the prime  lunch time window is only 2 hours between between 11am. to 2pm. loosing even 5 minutes is like loosing 20 customers. The another best part of this technology is that it has  bar code system known as Semacode which will allow to use itunes account for the payment transaction which will bypass the credit card transaction and speed up the pick up process.

Apple Inc. has already patented iPhone mobile ordering and paying technology. The iPhone application for this mobile ordering and paying is called “Quick Order”. What this tells us is that revolutionary technology is coming to restaurant industry whether it is just selling coffee or food.

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iPhone- Marketing Your Restaurant On iPhone.

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

What is iPhone ?

iPhone is a  revolutionary mobile device with three products converged into one. As by the name only,one can tell that it is a mobile phone. It also include portable media player most popularly known as iPod and internet connection.

What does marketing on iPhone means to your restaurant?

Since its launch on 11th July, 2008, it is estimated that Apple has sold about 7 million 3G iPhones in the first quarter alone. As of late October 2008 the total number of iPhones sold was about 13 million. The number of iPhone sold is staggering since then. There is no doubt that this product is a smash hit and will be admired and owned by so many not only in US but world wide. The iPhone is being sold in more than 70 countries and most probably more in the future.

Well you might be thinking what does all this statistic means to you ? It means a lot. It means the leverage that your restaurant will have to connect to the potential customers directly without spending big bucks on those mass media television ad marketing.

It also means leveling the marketing field  plain. Never in the history of marketing it has has been this easier for small restaurant  to battle even the big chains. Today the successful marketing is not dictated by the dollars they can spent on traditional media like tv. Rather it is won by the restaurant owners who will use  innovative idea and the right tools readily available virtually for free or very low cost.

For the small independent or chain restaurants it is a promising time if you can recognise the opportunity and take advantage of it. Therefore I would highly recommend to all the restaurant owners and operators to keep their eyes and ears open with regards to mobile marketing and start using mobile marketing on iPhone.

Please watch the video about iPhone presented by the Co-founder of Apple Inc. to get a better idea of the revolutionary multi functional device. More importantly to see beyond iPhone and the possibilities how it can help market your restaurant effectively at a affordable price.

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