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Location: St Thomas, USVI - Seattle, WA - Gulf Coast, TX
811 posts, read 1,147,741 times
Reputation: 2322
Facebook is an accessory marketing tool for any business. Business 101: Social media is a tool to drive potential clients back to your WEBSITE. Social media is not a replacement for a proper website for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is your lack of control over visibility and content ownership (I know fellow business owners who had huge FB page followings that had their pages "revoked" for one reason or another. All that hard work put into content on their pages and all of those "likes" evaporated in an instant.). You do not own a FB page. You also cannot present your content as elegantly or clearly as you can on a website. I could go on, but a website is really important.
Specifically regarding a restaurant business, there is little value in a FB page aside from promoting specific events, specials, new menu items, etc. FB can be a good tool for this and can stir-up local awareness (Instagram and Twitter may be more useful for your specific business though), but it is definitely not a reasonable replacement for a proper, professional-looking website (doesn't need to be complex or fancy: location, contact info, a little about your restaurant, menus), which will also be the only way to establish a permanent, reliable web presence.
That's my two cents as a business owner. My two cents as a restaurant-goer: I absolutely hate it when a restaurant's Yelp, Urban Spoon, or FB listing does not lead back to a real website.
Good luck with this summer project! Perhaps you'd have some fun with a website building template. I recommend Wix or Square Space as simple, entry level templates that you might have fun playing with. Domains and hosting through those companies are very inexpensive and would be well worth the small investment to grow your family's business through an online presence. Add a FB page for fun and extra marketing, absolutely, but start with a website.
If you will be including pictures of the food, have the pictures done professionally or at least have them reviewed before posting. Badly taken food pictures a big turnoff.
Google your restaurant's name and make sure the top 5 website information is correct. Location, phone #, hours open ect. Nothing worse then going to a new restaurant and finding out it's closed because yelp or google maps listed the wrong hours or yelp saying it's closed when it still open for a few more hours.
I don't believe Yelp etc. I don't always believe that the reviews are real. I like it when a restaurant has a well maintained and up to date website and a menu.
Facebook is secondary to a good website. If I don't find a website and no one has specifically recommended the place to me, I might pass.
I do like Urban Spoon though. But if I look at Urban Spoon or Facebook, I want a link back to the real website.
As a Yelp Elite reviewer, at least where I am, the community is REALLY good about policing reviews and flagging and reporting suspected shills and smear campaigns. Because of the size of the metro and the fact that I know so many of the regular, local reviewers, and know them to be actual, legit reviewers, it's easy to point out the odd one that crops up that's not legit.
Usually, when there is an uncharacteristically negative review that runs counter to a whole bunch of good ones, where I know most of the reviewers to be legit, an uncharacteristically positive review that comes out of nowhere among a bunch of legitimate less than positive reviews, when a new establishment gets a polarizing review before its even opened yet (!), when said questionable reviews are from "reviewers" who have no thumbnail picture, few reviews to their names, a smattering of reviews that are supposedly from all over the country/world, no profile filled out, a vague, sparse review, or one that is obviously agenda-laden...those are all pretty good indicators of shills and smears, and you can flag them as questionable, and they may get taken down. But even if they don't, it's usually really easy to tell what's a BS review and who has an axe to grind and that sort of thing. Usually, reviewers with a whole bunch of well-considered, in-depth reviews, who've been reviewing for a number of years, who have the "Elite '[year] behind their name (thus indicating years of reviewing and participation in the community, no infractions) are trustworthy reviewers. In that they're fair, and not running smear campaigns to try to put competitors out of business or being paid to write bogus awesome reviews, or course. They still may not have the same taste as you, which is always a given with reviews. But they're usually at least legitimate reviewers.
Just like word-of-mouth, reviews are best taken with a grain of salt. I tend to put more weight on the opinions of those reviewers who've written reviews of places I've been that I agree with, and have established that we have similar taste and value the same sorts of things in places.
Thank you! I will try to build my website building acumen and make one for the restaurant!
Here, I'll do it for you:
Navigation links:
Home
About Us
Menu
- lunch
- dinner
Hours
Location
That's it, you're done. Throw some photos up. Many web hosting companies offer free 5-page sites and templates. That's all you need. Or go to Wix.com, or TheGrid.io and use their templates and hosting, pay by month, it's cheap.
Lots of people don't use FB. Like me, who is on twitter, pinterest and several other social sites, but wouldn't use FB if you put a gun to my head.
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