I’m assuming you’ve tried to look your location up before on Google Maps. Have you tried, specifically if your location is in the Atlanta area, checking Yelp, Urbanspoon, or Kudzu? These are all directory sites with entertainment, restaurant and service industry listings. Each of these sites are mostly customer-driven and allow users to rate and review businesses. But you hopefully already knew that.
Let’s talk about why it’s important to take ownership of these listings. You want your listing’s information to be accurate, for one. You also want the ability to respond to reviews, questions and comments. Your location may already be listed or you might have to add it. Some of these directory sites (Yelp in particular) will allow you to register as a business owner and add or take over your location’s listing. Once you have this done you can add your listing or make changes to an existing listing, upload pictures, and write a review for your listing (clearly stating you’re the owner or manager, of course). You’ll then be ready to encourage your loyal customers to write more reviews for you.
In the same vein, there are some definite DON’Ts with these directory sites:
• DON’T fake any reviews for your location. This can be very obvious and will make you look dishonest.
• DON’T incent customers to write favorable reviews. You want honest opinions only.
• DON’T ignore unfavorable reviews. Turn these bad experiences into good ones by contacting the customer privately and listening.
• DON’T become openly defensive about bad reviews. They happen. DON’T remove them, either. The point of this is to be transparent. But pay attention – you may have some changes to make.
• Lastly, and this should be obvious, DON’T write unfavorable reviews about the competition. Even if you think they’re doing it to you. This isn’t elementary school.
Taking ownership of these listings is just a small part of making sure people know who you are and what you are. It's just one more tactic for your localized social media strategy, and shouldn't take long to set up or maintain. You will probably want to do some research to find other local (and not-so-local) directory and rating/reviewing sites and make sure you're listed there. Here's a great list to start with, but your community may have sites of forums you'll want to become involved in as well.
As always, feel free to comment below with your stories about online directory marketing. How have you joined your customers' conversation?
Monday
Adapt the Tactic to Your Audience
It's come up a lot lately in individual conversations, so I make it a point to...uh...point it out again.
I need new ideas. This statement needs to be refined: You need new ideas for whom? I'm not splitting hairs, but generally people want new ideas and then they find people to market to.
Consider this example: A local restaurant puts on an open mic night. Their challenge now is to find people to attend said open mic night. They're now out pounding the pavement, talking to anyone who will listen, saying "come to our open mic night."
Did the general public ignore your promotion about how great your food is, but now all of a sudden they're falling over themselves to come in to read poetry or play the guitar? I doubt it. If an open mic night promotion works to the general population in your area then you would likely have had the same success with telling everyone how great your pizza/bbq/chicken tenders/steak is.
In other words, it's that you did any promotion at all that made it work.
The converse is usually also true. If an open mic night promotion fails to draw people, it probably wasn't the open mic night. It was your food.
If you're in this situation, a simple modification to the promotion might work better.
How can I get the church choir to come visit? Maybe an open mic night. It appeals to the target audience. If it works, try other church choirs. Try the HS drama club. But don't bother talking open mic night to the PTA.
Choose your audience first, then adapt tactics that appeal specifically to that group. You'll save yourself a whole lot of frustration.
I need new ideas. This statement needs to be refined: You need new ideas for whom? I'm not splitting hairs, but generally people want new ideas and then they find people to market to.
Consider this example: A local restaurant puts on an open mic night. Their challenge now is to find people to attend said open mic night. They're now out pounding the pavement, talking to anyone who will listen, saying "come to our open mic night."
Did the general public ignore your promotion about how great your food is, but now all of a sudden they're falling over themselves to come in to read poetry or play the guitar? I doubt it. If an open mic night promotion works to the general population in your area then you would likely have had the same success with telling everyone how great your pizza/bbq/chicken tenders/steak is.
In other words, it's that you did any promotion at all that made it work.
The converse is usually also true. If an open mic night promotion fails to draw people, it probably wasn't the open mic night. It was your food.
If you're in this situation, a simple modification to the promotion might work better.
How can I get the church choir to come visit? Maybe an open mic night. It appeals to the target audience. If it works, try other church choirs. Try the HS drama club. But don't bother talking open mic night to the PTA.
Choose your audience first, then adapt tactics that appeal specifically to that group. You'll save yourself a whole lot of frustration.
Friday
5 Facebook Ideas You Should Be Using
Got a Facebook fan page for your restaurant? Super. Don’t? Then read no further. Go directly to Facebook, build a fan page, and get back to us.
We're not saying that using Facebook is a strategy – but it’s a more personal way of communicating your other tactics (events, specials). Having an FB fan page won’t necessarily get you more business. Using Facebook to promote specials (or make someone feel good by making specials just for fans), highlight your community involvement, whatever – that’s how you make yourself Mayor of the Village.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about Facebook marketing. I’m going to lay down some ideas here. You may have used a few of these before and if so, leave a comment and tell us how it worked. I will also list some that are hopefully new to you. So without further ado and in no certain order:
1. Once you have over 25 fans, go to facebook.com/username and reserve a unique name and url for your page. Let’s say your restaurant is Fannie’s Cookies. Then reserve “fanniescookies” as a username. Your page’s unique url will now be facebook.com/fanniescookies which obviously is easier for directing your customers.
2. Everyone should know this one: promote Facebook-only specials. There are a ton of ways to go about this. Post a keyword or phrase like “Fancy Fannie likes funnies” or something that people wouldn’t use in normal conversation. Tell your fans that if they come in and dance for 15 seconds, they get a free drink with their meal. Hold a contest for all fans, giving something free and OF VALUE to a random fan or two when they sign up before the end of the month. Run a photo or video contest and have fans upload them to your Facebook page. The list goes on and on.
3. Do you have a presence at local events? Make sure you mention your Facebook page and specials. Maybe even make a quick business card or coupon with your Facebook url to send home with folks, because I don’t know about you but my memory sucks.
4. Another idea for Facebook and events. Let’s say you’ll be at the local high school’s football game this week. Use the Events app on Facebook to create an event. Invite all your fans to the event. Promote the event via posts to your page. Maybe even give a little something extra to customers who mention that they saw you on Facebook. Like American Express says, “Membership has its privileges.”
5. Promote peer-to-peer discussions. That’s what social media is about, right? So don’t just talk to your fans but facilitate discussions on your Facebook page. This can also be a contest situation, depending on how many people answer your discussions. Starting questions will depend on your audience, but could be anything from pitting 2 local football teams against each other (“Who has the best team, the Red Rangers or the Purple Penguins?”) to asking about fans’ favorite pizza toppings. No hard selling here, of course. Talk about what the fans want to talk about.
Stay tuned for more Facebook ideas soon. In the meantime, post comments here and tell us your Facebook success stories – and your fails. Those can be helpful, too.
We're not saying that using Facebook is a strategy – but it’s a more personal way of communicating your other tactics (events, specials). Having an FB fan page won’t necessarily get you more business. Using Facebook to promote specials (or make someone feel good by making specials just for fans), highlight your community involvement, whatever – that’s how you make yourself Mayor of the Village.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about Facebook marketing. I’m going to lay down some ideas here. You may have used a few of these before and if so, leave a comment and tell us how it worked. I will also list some that are hopefully new to you. So without further ado and in no certain order:
1. Once you have over 25 fans, go to facebook.com/username and reserve a unique name and url for your page. Let’s say your restaurant is Fannie’s Cookies. Then reserve “fanniescookies” as a username. Your page’s unique url will now be facebook.com/fanniescookies which obviously is easier for directing your customers.
2. Everyone should know this one: promote Facebook-only specials. There are a ton of ways to go about this. Post a keyword or phrase like “Fancy Fannie likes funnies” or something that people wouldn’t use in normal conversation. Tell your fans that if they come in and dance for 15 seconds, they get a free drink with their meal. Hold a contest for all fans, giving something free and OF VALUE to a random fan or two when they sign up before the end of the month. Run a photo or video contest and have fans upload them to your Facebook page. The list goes on and on.
3. Do you have a presence at local events? Make sure you mention your Facebook page and specials. Maybe even make a quick business card or coupon with your Facebook url to send home with folks, because I don’t know about you but my memory sucks.
4. Another idea for Facebook and events. Let’s say you’ll be at the local high school’s football game this week. Use the Events app on Facebook to create an event. Invite all your fans to the event. Promote the event via posts to your page. Maybe even give a little something extra to customers who mention that they saw you on Facebook. Like American Express says, “Membership has its privileges.”
5. Promote peer-to-peer discussions. That’s what social media is about, right? So don’t just talk to your fans but facilitate discussions on your Facebook page. This can also be a contest situation, depending on how many people answer your discussions. Starting questions will depend on your audience, but could be anything from pitting 2 local football teams against each other (“Who has the best team, the Red Rangers or the Purple Penguins?”) to asking about fans’ favorite pizza toppings. No hard selling here, of course. Talk about what the fans want to talk about.
Stay tuned for more Facebook ideas soon. In the meantime, post comments here and tell us your Facebook success stories – and your fails. Those can be helpful, too.
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