When you start talking to a social media guru it’s easy to get lost in the jargon. The epicenter of any social media marketing effort lies with Facebook. It’s proliferation is immense and not up for argument (although some try.) Just posting your facebook page for your restaurant is the right move, but, like anything else, you can always do better and more to interact with your customers. And that’s exactly why you should be using social marketing: to interact with your customers.
Beyond commenting and posting, facebook has other ways to kick up the marketing a notch or two. One of my favorite is based on FBML which stands for FaceBook Markup Language. It allows you to create custom tabs on your facebook page for promoting different items. These tabs can be used as landing pages to do many things. First you have to install it. Here is a great tutorial on installing and using FBML.
Once installed, you need to figure out what to promote. Here are a few suggestions on promoting your restaurant and its features using FBML and other facebook apps.
1. Email Subscription from Facebook. Using a service like BRIO, MailChimp or other email marketing system, you can easily cut and paste subscribe code on your custom page. Design it right and you’ll increase the number of subscribers exponentially.
2. Promote new features or events with a custom design. Link people to more information on your website.
3. Boost reservations by linking to your website.
4. Add events and upcoming specials.
5. Weekly specials page that lists new dishes, discounts, etc.
6. You could have a coupon page on fb specifically for facebook fans.
7. Create a page for non-fans that gives them reasons to “like” you.
The ideas are truly limitless you just have to put them into action. What are some other ideas or things you’d like to see on your favorite restaurant’s facebook page?
