Category Archives: Twitter Marketing

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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Posted in Blog Marketing, Face Book Marketing, Twitter Marketing, Youtube Marketing

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Why Monitoring Reputation of Your Restaurant’s Brand Is Very Critical For Success In The Twitter World?

Posted on February 26, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 4 Comments

Today I was just checking my Twitter updates in the afternoon. One twitter updates from non other than Zappos-Ceo Tony came to my attention. This is one of the company that I respect not only because it understands its tech savvy customers very well but also because it’s core business philosophy is very relevent to today’s demand of new information age.

The twitter updates said “Just ate at restaurant called “The Burger Grill”. They didn’t have Swiss cheese. That’s like staying at a hotel that doesn’t have towels.”

I retweeted to my followers as lots of my followers are restaurant business owners. I thought that I would pass this message to the restaurant business people and actually any business owner just as a reminder how important it is to keep monitoring your restaurant brand online. Especially on Twitter where people are talking about your restaurant. In this case it was not a good thing about this restaurant – The Burger Grill.

When I checked the number of followers of Zappos at the time of writing this article, it is 138,945. That means, at a push of a mobile phone’s button the message about the restaurant spreaded to all the followers and even more which was retweeted by some of the followers including me. With in split seconds the reputation of the Burger brand was challenged.  I don’t know if any person from the restaurant is monitoring all these things in the cyber world. If not then they are really in trouble.

However if they don’t have one then it is critical to have someone start monitoring their brand. In case there is this kind of instances, then they can right away take care of the customer and defend  their brand’s reputation. If they had discovered this online and taken care of them right away then there would have been tweet again from zappos about it. Since I didn’t see any of that it is safe to presume that the case was unresolved and left isolated. This is really bad for the restaurant-”The Burger Grill”. I don’t know if they understand the severe consequence of bad tweets about their restaurant on Tweeter which can either make it or break it. It all depends how effectively you can use to your restaurant’s advantage.

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Posted in Twitter Marketing

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Search Twitter-As a Restaurant Owner You Can Find Out what Your Potential Customers are Craving For On A Real Time And Attract Them In To Your Restaurant Before Your Competitor.

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

When your new potential customers are searching restaurant in your town in Twitter, be the first one to respond and increase your chance to turn them into customers.

search.twitter.com

Search Twitter is a feature within Twitter which allows you to search what people around the world is searching at the very moment on a nearly real time basis. Right now it may be delayed search results by few seconds, however Twitter is also testing for a feature that would provide us a real time people’s twitter search. Wow! this is going to be the most powerful search engine available for any one  that could be used for any business-big or small, including your restaurant.

Twitter Search which you can find at search.twitter.com is really a hidden treasure for your restaurant business. It has full of appetite information about so many food enthusiast. If you can dig in the right information and use it to your advantage it can be more powerful than the television, radio and yellowbook advertisement, all combined.

Why Twitter Search is a powerful tool available for restaurants?

There was a story about the Twitter’s  usefulness in finding the best restaurant for a newcomer in New York that I heard couple of months ago. It went some thing like this. Weekends are the best time when most of the New Yorkers and many go out for dinner. It is their way of  life style. But to new comers to this city, it might be challenging to decide which restaurants to go. In the past they have been relying on the restaurant review sites and had to go with the stranger’s recommendation which could have turned into not so good choice. But with the birth of Twitter, the new comer has an access to the real time opinions of his New York’s friends who are trustworthy and more accurate than those recommendations from restaurant  review sites.

If you look at this twitter search feature then you can think of it as a search engine like Google which searches the web for the contents that are relevant to people’s queries. But Twitter search takes one step further and that’s when it becomes so powerful. I believe this is powerful than Google in the sense that it brings nearly the real time searches. Where else  Google’s  searches may  be few weeks if not month old search results. If you put this in a simpler term then it is like reading the minds of millions of people and trying to find out what are they craving for dinner tonight at exactly 6pm or what are people craving for lunch at 11:30 am. It can be that specific. When you can search these hungry people using search.twitter.com and provide them with the right information and some sort of incentives in return for  dine in or take out, you have more chances of swaying their decissions and funneling all these hungry customers into your restaurants.

Try this out, you will be amaged how many people are looking for your restaurant in the cyber world who are very hungry but don’t know where to go. Be the first one to connect with them, build  a rapport and invite them to your restaurant. Give them the best service and the food that they were searching on Twitter and you will have one more twitter follower, a great fan and a loyal customer for years to come.

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Posted in Twitter Marketing

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Restaurant Branding In Crisis Online- Why You Need To Protect Your Restaurant Brand Online?

Posted on February 19, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Restaurant Brands can be hijacked on the internet. How Can you protect from happening?

With the rise of web 2.0 and social media tools on the internet, it has helped small businesses like restaurants to leverage the technology to brand it’s name to the world easily and much faster. No more do they have to spend millions of dollars to get spots on a Superbowl commercials on the television. In fact with some clever smart ideas small restaurant have a chance to outsmart even  big restaurant chains if they choose to harnesss the power of Twitter. Restaurants have started using social media tool like Twitter and it has enabled them to communicate with their potential customers on a instant demand basis and also with existing customers about deals and latest happenings and so many other things useful and related to their restaurant.

With every things new, there is always some confusions and complexity to deal with during the initial phase as the creator of the new social media themselves like Twitter is trying to figure out how to provide the service best without harming others interest. So while going through maize of complexity of branding online, there seems to be one problem with Twitter,that they don’t have control over. That is the  control over the authenticity of the restaurant brand representation. It’s not that they don’t want to but it is practically impossible to police millions of people who are registering accounts every second. That means any one can register your restaurant brand name under their name and possibly could try to take advantage of if not caught early and reported to Twitter. In this case would only Twitter have the right to siege the name if the person were proved to be misrepresenting your restaurant brand. This has happened  to so many restaurants and companies like Exxon and also high profile figure like His Holiness Dalai Lama recently.

Instead of reacting to the hijacking of your brand and go through tedious process of complaining to Twitter which might take so many valuable hours out of your busy schedule why not just proactively protect your brand right now.  You can go online and see for yourself if indeed somebody has taken your restaurant name. It could be that they might have the same name like yours and they have registered it first or it could be some individual unrelated to the brand but for some commercial reason he might have reserved that name under him. It is like hijacking your brand. It is serious crisis and happening to many businesses including restaurants.

This puts a big question mark on Twitter’s capability of authenticating the representation of any high profile figure and big companies brand and restaurant brands like yours.  So now the thing to be cautious is to make sure you reserve your restaurant name on Twitter before any body grabs it.

You can go to www.twitter.com and register your restaurant name. It is free so there is no point  waiting any longer. Even if you think that you will not use it right away, you can reserve it and let it sit there so that when you are indeed ready at least the name is reserved and you have a control over it. You then can pursue your restaurant branding online via Twitter. The earlier you jump into this band wagon the better it is. Because your competitors don’t have a clue what the heck is Twitter. So before it is too late, go ahead and start building your brand and grab all the loyal customers and create fans and followers who would be eager to get may be some coupons, specials of the day or  any new updates about your restaurant.

Good Luck with Twitter and keep tweeting and you will be amazed how simple the tool is and yet so powerful than any other traditional media out there.

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Posted in Twitter Marketing

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Using Twitter How Can You Effectively Brand Your Restaurant Online?

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 6 Comments

The Power of Twitter In Restaurant Marketing.

Restaurant Branding Online is a whole different game from branding done  through traditional medium like Television or radio. It is very cost effective and yet very powerful if done correctly. However if you neglect this, it can pull your restaurant business down with few push of buttons on iPhones and G Phones-Anroid that are never left alone by generation Y and tech savy consumers.

When I researched the restaurant industry to find out the leaders that were using social media tool like Twitter, the first brand that appears is Popeyes Chicken. Popeyes Chicken has recognized the importance of using social medias like Twitter to attract the new tech savvy generation that is growing in exponential number every day. They have been also exploring new mediums  like My Space, Face book to reach and connect to new generation customers.

There is a  common misconception about this kind of online restaurant branding in the restaurant industry. Business owners of small independent restaurants think that this kind of online restaurant branding is expensive and complicated and that they are only for big chain restaurants with big marketing budget. Nothing is far from truth. In fact,small restaurant has a great advantage even to battle and win the big chain restaurant with big marketing budget provided they want to learn and use it effectively.

I would highly recommend every restaurants  to use Twitter to market their restaurant which would help them  create a great restaurant brand and loyal fans.It can be much powerful than the traditional medias like TV, Radio, Newspapers, Yellow pages all combined.

If you do it yourself then it doesn’t cost you a dime except little bit of your online social time. However if you are very busy, it can be outsourced to another person outside of your company or you could use some one in your own company who is well rounded and knows how to use Twitter and other social media tools on the internet. The most important thing it that you have to have a confidence on that person who you think can represent your restaurant brand accurately and communicate the same message with your customers online. It is like a human customer service available instantly on the internet when ever the customers require service from your restaurant or need to answer any questions regarding your restaurant business.

Twitter is such a great tool for monitoring your restaurant brand.  Using this tool you can defend your reputation and also get so many business by communicating with your potential customers and delivering the right information in a real time basis. Imagine a tourist from other state or a foreign country came to your city let’s say New York. He is hungry. He doesn’t have a clue which restaurant to visit. He likes Italian food. He takes out his iPhone and types a message in Twitter. He asks all his friends if they know any Italian restaurant they recommend in New York in 10th Street. His local friends from New York instantly recommends the favourite restaurant at that particular location on a real time basis. Since he trusts his friend more than a local directory, he visits that particular recommended Italian Restaurant.

Another scenario could be that if the owner of that Italian restaurant had a smart strategies like Popeyes then he would be proactive and respond to the twitter request instantly. He would have used Tweetbeep which would alert him with certain keywords that he would target like “10th street restaurant” just for an example. He would instantly get an alert and could investigate about the query and help him by providing more information and may be with directions. This is proactive marketing that is feasible because of social media tools like Twitter. This would not have been possible may be even few years ago before the birth of Twitter.

If the tech savvy customer had a good experience at the restaurant then he would tweet right away and tell all  friends in his twitter account and possibly to the whole world who ever were trying to decide where to eat at that very moment in New York at the 10 th street. The Italian restaurant might have a chance to sway other peoples decision to dine with them. On the other hand if the customer had a bad experience in that Italian restaurant then he would again tell all his friends via twitter and virtually to whole world. The bad thing about this is the speed of the bad reputation that  would be transferred in split seconds and to thousands and even millions and more. With old traditional word of mouth they would be able to tell may be  10 or 20 people, but with twitter they can tell to the whole world with a click of a mouse or push of a button on their mobile phones. So the thing to keep in mind is that not to mess up with these tech savvy customers.Provide great service and delicious food. He will do the marketing for you. But if by accident the customer got a lousy service and had a bad experience please try to resolve it as soon as possible. You will not have a luxury of waiting time of 14 days to get the complain letter from this customer. Rather he would be sending that same letter in 140 characters or less to all his friends that could be in thousands. That would grow exponentially as his thousands of friends have another thousands of friends.This could mulitpy in to millions and even more.  See how fast this grows. This is the nature of the Twitter. Either it makes it if you do it correctly or it breaks it  if handled incorrectly.

So I would highly urge to fellow restaurant entrepreneurs to look at this simple and yet powerful tool called Twitter very closely and use it to your advantage and not the other way round.

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Posted in Twitter Marketing, Viral Video Marketing

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Using Twitter How Can You Promote Your Restaurant.

Posted on February 1, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Video onThis post by Erica O’Grady originally ran on Pistachio Consulting‘s TouchBase Blog, featuring what business people need to know about Twitter and microsharing for business. You can subscribe to TouchBase here or follow @touchbase on Twitter.

Watch the video interview where J.R. Cohen, Operations Manager for CoffeeGroundz (@coffeegroundz) Cafe in Houston, Texas talks about the Twitter and how it has helped him promote his coffee shop.

He explains how he initially got introduced to Twitter and also how he managed to get over 1000 followers within couple of weeks of using Twitter.  He jokes about the first Twitter order that he took for the Wrap sandwich ordered by his customer Sean. This is one thing that most of the restaurants might not even have thought about it. But the fact that J.R. Cohen has successfully taken the first Twitter order in his coffee shop, it opens another possibilities for an alternative option to online order especially during the busy breakfast, lunch or dinner time. He also talks about how he has integrated his Twitter into his Face book page. By integrating these powerful social medial tools, you can create your community, communicate with them and promote your business.More importantly provide service or product effectively and efficiently.

I hope this interview will give an insight to the power of Twitter and how it can help promote your restaurant. Please feel free to provide your feedbacks and we would love to hear this kind of success stories that can help small businesses like your restaurant and many around the world.

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Restaurant Twitter Marketing-How One Coffee Shop In Houston, Texas Used Twitter To Attract More Customers And Increase Their Sales.

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 3 Comments

Yesterday I read an article written by Erica O’Grady which was refreshing to me and thought I would share with you. This is a story about one coffee shop called Coffee Groundz in Houston, Texas who has discovered the magic of using Twitter to their business advantage. This is a real success story that is happening to small coffee shop like Coffee Groundz. It can also happen to your restaurant business if you can understand this incredible new social media tool called Twitter and start exploring the magic it offers to all restaurants- big or small. Best of all it is FREE. Coffee Groundz despite being an independent small coffee shop can now compete head to head with even big coffee house like Starbucks and Caribou Coffee. Social Media Tools like Twitter has leveled the marketing field plain. Never in the history has been this easy and affordable for small businesses like Coffee Groundz coffee shop to market their business effectively and attract more customers. In the past the success of a marketing in business  was determined by the amount of dollars they could spend on old medias like televisions, radio and newspaper. But with the birth of Twitter, the equation has been changed. Now the marketing is won by innovative ideas with the help of  online tools like Twitter and similar social media tools that are readily available for Free.

Please read the post below to get a clear idea how Coffee Groundz has used Twitter to attract more customers and helped streamline their business and marketing effort.
This post by Erica O’Grady originally ran on Pistachio Consulting‘s TouchBase Blog, featuring what business people need to know about Twitter and microsharing for business. You can subscribe to TouchBase here or follow @touchbase on Twitter.

Twitter To Go?

When J.R. Cohen, Operations Manager for CoffeeGroundz (@coffeegroundz) Cafe in Houston, Texas first heard about Twitter from one of his customers, he was puzzled but intrigued. Today, he credits Twitter with almost doubling his clientele and with opening his eyes to a whole new way to build Community.

If you’re reading this article, then chances are you’re already on Twitter, and you may even have experienced the power of Twitter for building your own personal or corporate brand. Recently, more and more companies have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon to help manage their online identities making it increasingly harder to stand out from the crowd.

But Cohen and CoffeeGroundz have found a way to do just that. Shortly after joining Twitter, Cohen started following members of the local Houston Twitterati and in no time had amassed over 1000 followers. Cohen is a naturally charismatic, giving, and friendly guy – traits that make him a natural on a network like Twitter.

On Becoming The Purple Cow

Nothing can build your brand faster than being or doing something remarkable. Seth Godin, author of the recently released Tribes calls this becoming “The Purple Cow”. Cohen didn’t set out to become a Purple Cow – but with one brief 140 character message – that’s exactly what he’s done.

On October 31st, 2008 Sean Stoner (@maslowbeer) was hungry. As a regular customer at CoffeeGroundz he sent the following Twitter to Cohen:

Cohen quickly replied and Sean went through the drive-thru at CoffeeGroundz to pick up his burrito.

This simple exchange got a lot of coverage on Twitter and was hailed as potentially the first time that Twitter had ever been used to place a To-Go Order. Seeing an opportunity, Cohen started taking to-go orders via direct message from any of his Twitter Clientele.

CoffeeGroundz offers free Wi-Fi, plenty of outlets, and they serve beer and wine – making it a cross between a Coffee House and a Lounge. Today, customers can order beverages and tasty bites from the comfort of their seat using Direct Messages to @coffeegroundz. How cool is that? You don’t even have to stop working to walk to the counter and order a coffee.

Building Community While Making a Profit

Recently, CoffeeGroundz was the venue for a Houston Tweetup that Cohen nicknamed “The Great Twitter Party”. Nearly 100 Houston Twitterites spent a lovely Sunday afternoon there at the largest Houston Tweetup to date. And did I mention that they bought lots of food and beverages? So the next time someone tells you that you can’t make money from Twitter, tell them to think again!

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Posted in Twitter Marketing

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Twitter Marketing – What Is A Restaurant Twitter Marketing ?

Posted on January 3, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

What is Restaurant Twitter Marketing ?

Restaurant Twitter Marketing is a process of marketing your restaurant using one of the social media tool – twitter which allows you to write or post your content for no longer than 140 characters and  send messages to your loyal customers and fans all at one time on a real time basis. It also let your customers who are twitter users and followers of your restaurant, read the updates and communicate  among each other effectively much faster on a real time.

Why Twitter is important to your restaurant ?

Twitter is important to your restaurant simply because it is one of the most powerful tool there is on the internet to communicate with your customers about any thing valuable and useful to your customers.

Best off all it is FREE. Why not make use of the tool that is readily available. You don’t have to spent thousands of dollars to get into it. All you need is few minutes of your time to sign up and implement the strategies.

How does it help to your restaurant ?

Twitter helps your restaurant in three ways:

  • First of all it help you send messages to your customers whether it is notification about the happy hour or invitation for your wine tasting session at your restaurant or any thing that is valuable and useful.
  • Secondly it help you to send those mobile coupons. Remember on Twitter you can only write 140 characters or less. This is perfect for coupons that can be sent direct to your customers cell phone in the form of short message service (sms) or can be accessed directly from their web access enabled mobile devices like iPhone or gPhone . You can decide to send a coupon on a rainy day to influence your customer’s decision to come to you restaurant rather than order pizza from the pizza restaurant or it could be vise versa. The question is who takes the first initiative. So even with in the restaurant competitive industry it will be very vital to adopt to this new emerging technology like twitter to make your digital oriented customers chose your restaurant over your competitor’s. That’s why who ever understand this and implement the technology provided by twitter at free will win and the other restaurant who still believes in the primitive age marketing ideas and are hiding their heads under the sand will one day wake up to realize that they now don’t even have their customers who have chosen more digital style of life and thus making his restaurant obsolete in the modern technology restaurant age.
  • Thirdly it helps you to  monitor  the feed backs of your customers  about your restaurant on twitter. You can relax and enjoy the good public relation that you get while all your customers are raving about the great vibe of your restaurant. On the other hand you can detect early any not so good public relation  that is floating may be due to bad dining experience or what ever reason it might be  and you will have a chance to know about it and rectify the problem in early stage and cool down the situation.

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