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Something I have noticed about new restaurants is that their Facebook pages have hundreds or even thousands of 'Likes' on or even before opening day. How does this occur? Facebook advertising? Word of mouth? Can word of mouth spread to thousands of people in just a few months? Mine (which is not a restaurant but is in the food sector) has barely a couple hundred and it has been open for five years. I tell my customers to Like my page but most don't bother. Am I getting too hung up on the business value of Facebook?
Well, what happens is is that the restaurant owner asks his network of friends to Like the new enterprise. So do the other employees.
Really, it's not a bad idea. Restaurants are very dependent on buzz, and people want to try the hip new place. Yeah, you might be in food service too, but delivering produce or something like that just lacks the same degree of sexiness. Hate to tell you. I mean, the new restaurant represents a fun new place to go on Saturday night. What are you selling?
So, as with all media, Facebook has its uses and its importance to your marketing is really based on the needs and patterns of your core customers. Funeral homes don't advertise on hip-hop stations. Budweiser isn't advertising on the AARP website. So you really have to be cognizant about the medium and the messages you put out there.
As one example, you only have a couple of hundred likes on your Facebook. What messages are you putting out there? Is it this steady, relentless drumbeat of buy, buy, buy? If so, you'll get ignored. If, on the other hand, if it's not about you all the time, but rather a steady conversation of useful information for them, they're likely to view your posts as relevant.
In short, think about social media as a conversation at a party. If you spend your entire time talking about yourself, the other person's eyes will glaze over and he will walk away. If, on the other hand, you talk about him, he'll think you're the most fascinating conversationalist on the planet. This is key to any advertising messaging, but social media most of all.
AFAICT the only purpose of having lots of facebook likes and twitter followers is for search engine relevance. Otherwise it's pretty much a waste of time. People look at it once to click "like" or "follow" and done.
I don't know about likes, but there's a good chance they hired an "seo specialist" to get them thousands of twitter followers and FB friends by publicizing the business through their network. You can do this for under $20 using someone you hire on fiverr. Not exactly legit, but there's a snowball effect that can attract genuine followers and likes.
I don't know about likes, but there's a good chance they hired an "seo specialist" to get them thousands of twitter followers and FB friends by publicizing the business through their network. You can do this for under $20 using someone you hire on fiverr. Not exactly legit, but there's a snowball effect that can attract genuine followers and likes.
I get spam email all the time. It'll be something like 20,000 twitter followers for $5.00. I think Google will flag a sudden rise in twitter followers as spam. This only hurts your SEO ranking.
Maybe, but if he's trying to promote a small b&m food-sector business, does google even matter? Customers would likely be finding out about the business via social media much more often than via search.
Most likely it's people buying likes or paying for likes. You can buy a million Facebook likes for something like $50 or look on fiverr and you can get a few thousand likes for $5. It doesn't cost much to get likes. Typically those likes however are fake bot accounts so there's not a real persona and even if the like is a real person it was someone on some type of like pyramid or like train just going down the row liking things so its not as if there's any engagement or any chance of that person eating at the restaurant or becomming a customer.
That said I have left Facebook likes for new companies where I know the owner is trying to create a buzz and goes above and beyond in terms of service to make a good impression I'm more than happy to do a bit of promoting of their restaurant myself.
AFAICT the only purpose of having lots of facebook likes and twitter followers is for search engine relevance. Otherwise it's pretty much a waste of time. People look at it once to click "like" or "follow" and done.
Totally, utterly disagree when it comes to Facebook. Of course, a lot of it depends on the business you have, but I've seen some highly effective social media campaigns that directly contributed to a bump in sales. I saw one company do nothing but Facebook to their existing customer base and realize a 20% bump in same-store sales.
Twitter? I still have a hard time understanding its purpose. But Facebook is a very good marketing engine, especially for the smaller business person.
But when Pinterest IPOs, it will be the best investment you ever made. It is social media designed to do one thing and one thing only: Suggestive selling for fashion, design, furniture, and cooking. Given the fact that Pinterest's users are overwhelmingly women, it will become the ideal launch platform for those industries. Mark my word.
I feel I should comment on here. I own a restaurant and currently have about 300 likes on my page (about 1 year old), a far cry from what some have done, but they are probably all my actual customers. I have a "like" logo on my carryout menus and on the napkin boxes. When I first started the page I invited all my friends to "like" it, but that was only about 100 people, and about 30 accepted, I had maybe 40 likes when I first opened. When I moved my restaurant from one city to another, about 20 miles away, we lost a few "likes" when we did this but since we moved we have gained over 200 likes in 4 months. If someone has a really big network I could see them getting hundreds of likes before they even open a restaurant, start a page, make some good relevant comments, and share with your friends, get your friends/family to share the page as well.
I remember I had one lady come in and rave about our food on her facebook page, that one day we got 20 or so more "likes", if only that could happen more often!
They are buying likes which is feeble because you lose out on marketing to a real audience.
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