I saw the video clip of Chick-Fil-A’s Recipe for Success on Fox Business Online.It’s an interview with Truett and Dan Cathy. Dan Cathy  talks about their recipe for success. I’m sure restaurant entrepreneurs like you can learn important lessons from them about how to create a successful restaurant empire.

Their first secret is Quality People. Dan Cathy mentioned that they attract high caliber people. I have heard that they go through thousands and thousands of applicants before they choose few who are right fit for operating their restaurant.They choose the people with the right mindset, attitude and drive and not necessarily with the money. This is the difference between their Franchise business model and other chain restaurants. The other restaurant chain go after people with money and sometimes not necessarily the right mindset and attitude.

Another recipe for Success is the quality service. It is the service that makes their business exceptional. No doubt the food is good, but the kindness and the great service of the employees makes the experience memorable.As Dan Cathy says the food tastes even better with excellent service.

Even during Economic Downturn in 2009 Chick-Fil-a weathered the storm and still made good revenues and profits. It is truely the answer to the test of how a restaurant based on principles of putting its people- employees and customers before profits can be strong even during the turbulent times. It shows the power of a business that is based on a strong foundation.

I hope you are inspired and if you at least try to incorporate some of the wisdoms from Chick-Fil-a I believe your restaurant would have a greater chance of success.

Do you like Chick-Fil-A’s business model and their business philosophy? How do you feel about their policy of closing their restaurant on Sundays? Is your restaurant incorporating some of the Chick-Fil-A’s recipe for Success? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Panda Express Launches Mobile, Online Ordering Test

Panda Express, the nation’s leader in Asian dining experiences with close to 1,300 restaurants, today announced the testing of Order Panda (www.orderpanda.com), a new mobile and online ordering service in 100 stores……………………….

Couple of days ago, I read the above head line about Panda Express that is testing the new mobile and online ordering in partnership with GoMobo. Here is the link if you want to read the entire press release.What this indicates to me is that restaurants are moving fast in adopting the technology to accomodate the demands of new generation tech savvy customers. These are the new breed of customers who never leave their phones alone and use it for everything possible that includes ordering their food too.

Now these big companies have big budgets and they can spend thousands and even millions if required to get these online and mobile order for their restaurant chain.

What about the small restaurants ? They don’t have millions at their disposal. So how do these small restaurants find a technology solution that does at least the online ordering  but without having to spend tons of money.

When I checked twitter profile for Foodler, I saw the twitter update about their iPhone app to be released by Feburuary. So I hope it should be available any time soon. I am guessing your restaurant might be able to use it for mobile ordering too.

I had done a research online and found one company that might be helpful to you. I thought of sharing with you. There might be others too. So if you know please do include it below the comment section for others to benefit. But I want to recommend one that I have tested and was quite satisfied with their service. The name of the company is Foodler and you can check out their website at  www.foodler.com

So What is Foodler?

Foodler is a website for ordering delivery and takeout from restaurants around you. It  is more reliable and faster than using a phone, since all orders are transmitted and confirmed electronically and the system automatically  remembers your address and payment preferences.

The first thing that I like about this service is that you don’t have to pay huge amount of money. It’s like pay as you go. Once you sign up your restaurant with the company they will include your menu on their system ready for online order. If you have your own website they can link it to your site. If you don’t have your own site then you can use their site to facilitate the online order for your customers.

There is no monthly fee. You pay only when there is online order made by your customers. That is a safe proposition for you because if there is no online order made during that week then you don’t pay. This is good especially when you are just starting.

So just give it a try and see for your self if it helps you to stream line the ordering process during the busy lunch or dinner hours.

Have you used foodler.com for your restaurant to process online ordering. If you have please share  your experience with us by commenting below that might be helpful to other restaurants. If you haven’t then experiment with this online ordering service and share your experience and results. Would love to hear your thoughts on Foodler.

Sprout is a company that builds application and tools based on Facebook that helps marketers and Fan Page admin like you, to enhance the Fan Page experience with your fans and help you engage better with them. Out of so many tools, that has got my attention is the Sprout Publisher.Sprout Publisher is a tool that helps you to create interactive contents like coupons right within the page.

I presume you as a restaurant owner or manager have used  paper based coupons in the past to promote your restaurant. It might have been helpful in some way. But the down side of the paper based coupons is that it is costly. First of all it cost significant amount of dollars to produce those coupons. If they are color coupons the cost can be even higher.They can be as high as couple of hundred dollars to even a thousand and sometimes more depending upon the volume. Secondly it again cost you to distribute them. You have to pay either to a local high school student who is willing to distribute near by the apartments and local businesses or you have to go with an advertising agency who will charge you even more.

As a small restaurant business it is always smart to find a cost effective method of marketing. I’m sure you would agree on this with me. One thing that I love is doing a research on cost effective marketing ideas online for restaurants.

When I saw this Sprout Publisher with a capability to create coupons and distribute it digitally via Facebook, I was thrilled. Because with this you can do pretty much what you have been doing offline with paper based coupons.But now with the power of Facebook, I believe you can do it more effectively and with more precision. So Why not leverage Sprout Publisher to create coupons and distribute them via Facebook Fan Page.

First of all you have to install the Sprout Publisher. So go ahead and install it. I won’t go into detail here. Just follow the instructions. With few clicks it should be done. Now once Sprout Publisher is installed, watch the above video and follow the video tutorial to create your coupons for your restaurant.

How you can leverage coupons on Facebook for a chance to create a viral marketing?

The reason I’m more excited about this is that unlike your paper based coupons, this digital coupons that you create on Sprout Publisher has a chance to go viral. If you craft your coupon with an incredible deal it has a chance to spread all over Facebook among their friends and can multiply into hundreds and even may be thousands. Who knows?

So you might be wondering, how? Well the first thing you have to make sure is that your coupon is so compelling that once a friend or fan receives the coupon on their Facebook profile page they should feel like sharing with their friends voluntarily. If the coupon saves some money to his or her friend, it encourages them to share because you are giving a compelling incentives to do so.

You got nothing to lose by trying this marketing techniques. Just install the Sprout Publisher and give it a shot.It is a FREE tool available to you.

Have you tried Sprout Publisher to create coupons? Please share your experience how effective it was for you. If you haven’t then I would recommend you to give it a try and let us know how did it go for you and share some of your results by leaving a comment below. Thanks.

Kevin Rose is an entrepreneur who is well known as a co founder of the social-bookmarking website Digg. He lives in Bay area and  has a finger on the pulse of what is going on in the tech world and what future holds for these new location sharing services. He shares his thoughts on FourSquare and Gowalla.He is convinced how it is changing the landscape of restaurant businesses in his bay area when leveraged with new way of marketing via Foursquare or Gowalla which is well worth taking a note.

I also believe that location sharing services like FourSquare and Gowalla are going to be huge this year and in the future. So why not get familiar with these services and take advantage of a new medium for marketing your restaurant to tech savvy customers like Kevin Rose. So now without further due let me explain what really is Foursquare and Gowalla.

What is FourSquare and Gowalla?

Four Square and Gowalla are location sharing services based on apps on smart phones like iPhone that enables any one to share their location they visited with their circle of friends in their network and shout out any information that they want to let their friends know about.

Why is Foursquare and Gowalla getting popular?

I believe Foursquare and Gowalla is getting popular because it is a new way of communicating with your close friends and knowing their where abouts without having to call them or text them. It can be useful during any days of the week but this seems to be more handy during the weekends when you want to know which local restaurant, bar or night club you want to visit based on your friends preferences and where they are at the very moment.

The another driving force to make it popular is that it adds game aspect to this service which makes it even more attractive. Who doesn’t love game and wants to win. It becomes exciting to brag about being a mayor of a restaurant and that you got a Free Beer and Pizza like Kevin Rose’s friend Jeff.

It encourages people to compete for that mayor ship which is good thing for your restaurant.It becomes a game to your customers and has a chance of getting viral with all their circle of friends.

Why your restaurant should care about these location sharing services?

These services are new and so many restaurants are trying to figure it out how to best leverage this to attract new customers. It is exciting and experimental as Kevin Rose says. I believe that your restaurant should at least understand the concept and if possible sign up too. That way you get to play around and dip a toe into the water and see for your self if it does work for your restaurant. If it is working for other restaurants then it should be working for you too, Right?

The main reason why your restaurant should care about these new location sharing services is that it gives you the exact demographic information about your customers. Where they are ? Where they are headed to? and so many other important datas of your real customers in a digital format at a click of a mouse.

In the past and even now so many restaurants have a static website with no way of collecting the real data that is useful to the restaurant business. As Kevin Rose says, restaurants typically have email collection mechanism via their website or questionnaire survey bundled with the check. They are better than having nothing. But with the tools like Foursquare and Gowalla you have a chance to collect useful and relevant datas like male and female ratios, time they normally check in at your restaurant and many more that you could use for marketing your restaurant better with the existing customers and potential new customers.

Viral- Another reason is that your marketing becomes viral. How?  Let’s say one of the greatest fan- a loyal customer is in you restaurant. He checks in with Foursquare or Gowalla and informs his private friends on the network and possibly to Facebook and Twitter if he or she chooses so. First of all all his friends on Foursquare or Gowalla are gonna know where he/she is and therefore encourages them to visit your restaurant without even having to call him/her. This can now multiply to number of other friends. The more popular the friend is the better for your restaurant. Imagine high profile tech savvy customers like Kevin Rose or Tony Hsieh from Zappos checks  in to your restaurant and made a shout out to their friends and followers. You could have floods of their fans coming to your restaurant just knowing that they could hang out with them or at least be around them.

How you can create a loyalty program with Foursquare?

Mayor ship- On the video you heard the story from Kevin Rose how his friend Jeff gets the FREE pizza and beer once every week for being the mayor of the Pizza Place in San Francisco. Basically the mayor ship is won by one of your loyal customer who visits your restaurant the most. He or She is the greatest fan of your restaurant. So it does make sense to reward him or her for the loyalty. In turn it creates a competition among their friends to take that position and thus encourages other friends to visit your restaurant or bar often.

Thus it becomes one of the most powerful loyalty program that can go viral.

Points for automatic update on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare-This is the loyalty program that I have seen Tasti Dlite doing it with great results so I thought of sharing this with you though you might have to adjust to your available resources.

Right now Tasti Dlite is using their plastic gift card to give the points for their loyal customers who visit their physical store but they take it one step further by integrating it online with social networking site like Facebook,Twitter, and Foursquare. I believe this is powerful in the sense that it has viral effect to spread through out the social networking site like Facebook and Twitter among tons of friends and followers.

How do they do it? Let’s say a Tasti Dlite customer comes into their store and buys an ice cream. They get the point for that purchase and now if they opted via online allowing for automatic check in  update on Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare they get 1 point for each. This helps to spread the word out to the entire friends on Foursquare and Facebook, and followers on Twitter.

New Advertising opportunities for your Restaurant?

Since Foursquare or Gowalla is an app in smart phones like iPhone it is a new platform that didn’t even exist few years ago. It has now become a new medium for advertising your restaurants. It even has a new name and is now known as appvertisement.

The core idea is to have your targeted advertising appear on these app on smart phones like iPhone. Let’s say a person checks in to one of the restaurant across the street. Since app recognizes where you are with their GEO location based technology, they can pull out your bar or restaurant deals in to their app saying something like ‘happy hour starting at 6pm or 20% off on your entire check” at your restaurant. I’m just giving you some examples. It could be anything you wish. All you have to do is sign up your business with the service and subscribe to their advertising.

I hope you take advantage of these new advertising medium which can be far effective than the old style advertising on Yellow Pages and newspaper which are not laser targeted to  local customers.

I hope you see the benefits of using these location sharing services like Foursquare and Gowalla and integrate it into your marketing mix to attract new breed of customers. Please try to understand the concept and at least start playing around with it. Once you  grasp the idea you can go with full blown marketing promotion with Foursquare or Gowalla.

Have you used Foursquare or Gowalla? Do you see some more benefits of using it for restaurants? Whether you are a manager, restaurant owner or simply a customer, if you have tried these services , I would appreciate if you could suggest some unique ideas to promote and attract new customers or simply your thoughts about the service by commenting below.

Happy New Year from Marketing Restaurant Online.

It’s a new beginning. Want to start with an inspirational eBook written by a great author Seth Godin- also one of the greatest marketers. It’s worth a read.

Hope it will help you to find some new ideas, new way of thinking to grow your business in the year ahead.

Wish you a prosperous year 2010 with full of new ideas.

To your Restaurant Success.

Nash Sherchan

I have always admired Hard Rock Cafe for it’s uniqueness and more importantly it’s restaurant  business philosophy for success. They care about the people.They care about their employees and their customers. This is their mantra to success. Many other big restaurant brands have come and gone including Planet Hollywood, but Hard Rock Cafe remains strong and solid like a rock right in the heart of down town Atlanta.

Mission Statement of Hard Rock Cafe

“To spread the spirit of Rock ‘n Roll by delivering an exceptional entertainment and dining experience. We are committed to being an important, contributing member of our community and offering the Hard Rock family a fun, healthy, and nurturing work environment while ensuring our long-term success.”

From the mission statement you can tell that they take care of their employees. They treat them like a family and create an environment of fun where the employees look forward to come to work not just for the sake of the job but to enjoy the work. They do it  by delivering exceptional entertainment and dining experience to their guests. It becomes so natural to them that the work seems like play and more fun. Who wouldn’t want to work in that kind of fun and entertaining work environment?

Also they focus on customers making sure that they deliver unique entertainment and dining experience. Mastering on these two things they have created a huge successful restaurant empire. They have been able to expand to different countries around the world and become an international brand. There are several reasons that has led to the success of Hard Rock Cafe. Below are the seven reasons that I noticed after watching the video and will try my best to explain them to you. Hope it will give you some ideas and more importantly the mindset of a restaurant entrepreneur who wants to be successful not only in United States but world wide in any country around the globe.

7 Key Reasons are:

1. Flexibility is the key to win in this complex Global competitive restaurant market
2. Use Speed to your advantage
3. Restaurant should focus on experience economy
4. Be different than other restaurants in the crowd
5. Music has a mystic formula for success
6. Merchandise can be mobile  marketing billboards for your restaurant brand
7. You are in People Business and not in Food Business

Flexibility is the key to win in this complex Global competitive restaurant market.

Hard Rock Cafe is flexible with the product, design and so many other aspects of their restaurants based on the local market they enter into. It means that they try to present themselves customizing things to the likes of their local customers. Every different restaurants have unique design customizing to the local country they are in.They empower the local franchisee to create their own unique Hard Rock Cafe that delivers unique  guest experience. This is What I call being flexible. Flexibility also means that you respect the tradition and culture of the locals and design your restaurant settings with that view in the mind. Other wise you might build something that you think is ok but then later find out that it is not accepted by the locals. The perfect example is when Disney Land in Paris, built  some of the restaurants with American Consumers in mind. Americans consumers are used to eating while standing or even walking on a busy street in New york. Well the consumers in Paris have a different custom. They prefer to sit and relax for few minutes to enjoy their food. Even a great company like Disney Land can fail in that aspect if they are not flexible to custom make the designs and settings  according to that country’s local norm.So I hope if you are planning to expand your restaurant whether in US or internationally please make sure you are flexible.

Use Speed to your Advantage

With flexibility comes Speed.When you are flexible, it means that you are willing to work with what is available locally. You are willing to take consideration of the social culture or the local government rules, local business practices.This will allow you to accomplish the things faster even after having to deal  with the most bureaucratic governments or different culture in most unique places in different countries around the world. Speed is the key for faster expansion. In every business in most cases who is early in the innovation curve wins. So when you see a market whether in US or in a different country try to be the first and capture the market before your competitor. For example KFC was early to recognize the opportunity in China. So they went into that market first before McDonald’s. KFC enjoys the greater market share today though McDonald’s has started to expand rapidly once they knew that they were getting late in Chinese market.Right now China and India are the best international market for any restaurant business entrepreneurs if you have thought about expanding your brand in international market.

Restaurants should focus on experience economy

One of the main mistakes most of the restaurants make is, they think that they have to make the best food in the town to be successful. That is far from truth. McDonald’s doesn’t have the best food. I am not suggesting that your restaurant should not strive to make the most delicious food in the town. You should. In the process of focusing more on this part of making delicious food (tangible product) they loose track of providing the intangible product which is experience. Hard Rock cafe sells experience. Food is just the medium that allows them to sell what they are good at and that is delivering exceptional entertainment and dining experience. I hope you will focus more on selling experience than just the food.

Be different than other restaurants in the crowd

To stand out in this crowded restaurant market you have to differentiate your restaurant. If not then your restaurant gets lost in the crowd and no body notices it. Just look at Hard Rock Cafe. It is different out side and inside. Just looking at their big guitar outside attracts me to their restaurant. Since I love music and guitar, it connects with me even without going inside. Even for the first timers who have never visited Hard Rock Cafe it connects with those music lovers who like to enjoy food in a fun and entertaining environment.When you look at the world of sub sandwiches, Subway is different.They have Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and that is fresh subway sandwich, made the way you want it, on fresh bread baked that day. They are different from other thousands of Sandwich places around by being unique and different. So please create your own USP for your restaurant and be unique and different from other restaurants.

Music has a mystic formula for success.

Music is life. Music is universal and doesn’t have boundaries. Whether one is from India,China, Japan, Mexico, France, Australia or Nigeria, everyone likes music and of course the food too. But the trick is when you have so many different cultures and may be different food preferences how do you bring all of them into your food establishment. Not by trying to sell them the food first because they might have different tastes. But if you begin by selling them the entertaining experience using music first you might have more chances to attract that diverse clientele into your restaurant. Hard Rock Cafe has been successful at selling the Rock and Roll,Hard Rock experience.That’s why they attract all the tourists from around the world. Music has a mystic formula for success. So use it to your restaurant’s advantage.

Merchandise can be  mobile  marketing billboards for your restaurant brand

Merchandise is another area where even other BIG restaurant brands go wrong. Hard Rock Cafe has done it right. That’s why I admire it’s creativity. If I would compare Hard Rock Cafe with Technology company, I would say it is Apple of restaurant industry. Like Apple Hard Rock Cafe delivers the best design, best user experience, and best marketing. Did you hear  the last part? I said best marketing. Let me tell you why?

Selling merchandise alone is another revenue stream for their restaurant business. They make good chunk of money from just selling those t shirts, jackets, and hats. May be more than what they make from selling foods.(Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m just guessing looking at the number of t shirts, jackets, and hats worn by other people that  I have seen myself and considering it has a world wide appeal.)

Do you see the genius of a restaurant business which is also a great marketing company?

Hard Rock Cafe is shooting two birds at one shot. I consider Hard Rock Cafe not just in the business of restaurant but also marketing. Just think about this, all the Hard Rock Cafe restaurants in different countries are selling the merchandise to all those tourists coming from around the world to that particular country. Hard Rock Cafe is smart enough to make sure that jacket, t shirt or hat from that particular city is available only in that place. This makes it more attractive for the tourist to buy it as a souvenir.  Now this is the genius part. First of all they make the money selling that t shirt, hats or jackets or any merchandise.  The tourists after the vacation go back to their country. Either they wear those t shirts, hats or jackets themselves or give as presents to their friends and families. In either case they are essentially making their own customers as a moving advertising bill board. Instead of having one billboard on a highway, they have thousand if not millions of those small billboard walking around the cities of the world. Thus promoting further the brand of Hard Rock Cafe.  This is what I call a genius of a restaurant business leveraging it’s own customers to market it’s brand.

“You are in People Business and not in Food Business”

Let me make the above statement clear to those who have not got the concept. Some of you might be in a false perception of what business you are really in. Yes, I understand that you as a restaurant owners or operators sell food. But the real customers come to restaurant not just for food. They come for experience. Food is a tangible product. Any competitor can come behind you and make exactly the same product or may be even better. But with experience which is intangible product which can only be felt but not touched, it is hard for any one to duplicate. It is a unique experience your restaurant should attempt to deliver. There could be other restaurants who can make better food (tangible) than Hard Rock Cafe. But I can bet with you that they can not deliver the same level of exceptional entertainment and dining experience. It is intangible. It is different. You cannot touch the experience. You can only feel it. Hard Rock Cafe has special group of people who are the team members of the restaurant but also who are as a part of the family, that delivers the unique experience to the guests.

So my recommendation to all the restaurants is to focus on creating a great team of employees (people) that can deliver exceptional service and dining experience. You might have to do lot of filtering through lots of interviews, but it is worth it until you find the right people. Sometimes you might not find them right away. But keep looking and they will appear. Once you locate, try to attract them to work for your restaurant even if you have to pay a little extra than others that are average. Create a fun environment to work at like Hard Rock Cafe. Your restaurant must be like a fun place to be for both your employees and customers. The synergy is powerful when you bring two most passionate, fun loving group of people together in one place into your restaurant. Food is actually just a medium to connect two group of people to create a most unique dining experience which they both might remember for long time to come. This is what I believe a restaurant should aim for.

What do you think? Do you think restaurants should focus on making the best food in the town or delivering the exceptional dining experience to their guests? I would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.

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.

What is Landing Page?

Landing Page is basically a page that your new potential fans will see when they visit the fan page of your restaurant on Facebook.It is sort of introductory page where you direct your new fans to and  persuade them to become fans.

Why you should have Facebook Landing Page?

When a new potential fans come to your fan page, you don’t want them to get so confused that they leave right away with out becoming a fan. If it takes them to the main wall with many tabs and other things in one place your potential fans might not know what action to take next. So the main purpose of the landing page must be be a focused one. It should provide clear and concise call to action.You can put any information about your restaurant.  It can be an introduction about your restaurant business, an opt in for eMail Loyalty Club, anything relevant to your restaurant and more importantly Call to Action to Become a Fan.

Video Tutorial for Visual Learner

For all those visual learners I have included the video tutorial prepared by Pat Flynn. The video explains in detail and shows you step by step how to make a Facebook Landing page. Please watch the video to get an idea and then follow the steps that I have outlined below.

Steps for Creating Your Facebook Landing Page?

1. Create a Facebook Fan Page
2. Install Application-Static FBML
3. Have website designer  create HTML
4. 2 ways to see the landing page for customers.

Create a Facebook Fan Page-

Obviously the first step before you create your landing page is to create a Fan Page. If you haven’t created one, then here is a link on how to create a Facebook Fan Page for your restaurant.

Install Application-Static FBML

First go to the home page of your fan page. On the left hand side below the logo of your restaurant, Click  “Edit Page” and scroll down for more application. Browse for more and on a search box type in Static fbml and it should bring you with fbml app. FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language. You don’t have to worry about this fancy term. But you should be aware of what it does so you understand how it functions when you use it.

Click on Static FBML and then click again on Add to my page that is just below the app icon. Then select the Fan Page where you want this FBML to be activated. In your case it would be the fan page of your restaurant. So select that one. If you have multiple fan pages for multiple restaurants then select the respective restaurant that you plan to include the landing page. Now go back to home page of your fan page. Click Edit and then look for Application FBML. Click the little pencil looking icon and then click Edit. It is going to ask you the Box Title. This is where you put the title that you want it to appear on the tab. You can give any name you find it relevant with your restaurant. I would say something like Welcome.

Have website designer  create HTML

Then you have a bigger empty looking box which is for fbml code or html. Since you are restaurateur and not a website designer I don’t expect you to learn all the technological thing. What I would recommend you to do is have a website designer design the attractive landing page for you and get the html code from them. You will have to pay a small fee but will save you the time and hassle. Now all you have to do then is copy and paste it in the box. Click Save Changes. Once you save it, the landing page should be ready.Go back to the Fan Page. Your new tab that you created might not be visible.To make it appear you have to click the double arrow icon that you see on the far right and click the Welcome landing page that you created. Now you should be able to see the landing page. Make sure that the landing page has 2 important aspects of an effective fan page. One to include Call to Action-Become a Fan in the beginning and end. Two to explain about your restaurant and the benefit of joining your fan page.

2 ways to see the landing page for customers.

Now that you have created your landing page you need to set landing page so that your new potential fans can view it before they decide  to join your fan page. The first way is to go to the main fan page. Click Edit.Scroll to Application and click the pencil looking icon, then Link to this tab. This will create specific link. You can use url shortner like http://bit.ly and use the link to promote it on Twitter or on your website if you have one.

The second method is to allow the first time potential fans to land on the landing page so the chance of them becoming a fan is greater. First you need to go to the main fan page. Go to the status area where you make the updates. Under Options you will see settings. It will take you to View Settings. On the second, where it says “Default Landing Tab for Everyone else” Select Welcome page that you had just created or whatever name you had given to your landing page. And that’s it. You have created a Facebook Landing Page for you restaurant. Congratulation.

Do you think incorporating a nice compelling landing page will help convert more potential fans into real fans? Please share your thoughts and experiences with the results you have got with your landing page on Facebook.Thanks.

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!