Off the Pass: week of October 25, 2010

Malcolm Gladwell weighed in last week with an opinion on the much talked about “social media revolution”: Small Change – Why the Revolution Will not be Tweeted. Cue outrage from social media purists and believers.

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter.com, wrote a counter piece clearly stating that Gladwell is wrong: “Big change can come in small packages too“.

Jason Falls summed the argument up neatly, pointing out that social networks are passive motivators. Liking a brand on Facebook or re-tweeting your funny tweet to spread your brand to my friends costs me neither time, effort nor money. (If you don’t have time to read Gladwell’s article, interesting as it may be, read Jason Falls and save yourself a couple of thousand words.)

Whether or not social media can bring about real social change is a discussion way off topic for this blog. I will however say this: Offline connections are really important when it comes to marketing a restaurant online. You need to be awesome, your staff need to be friendly and caring, you need to aim to impress every single diner that comes through the door every single day. Real experiences by real people is what resonates with others and no online PR scheme in the world can save a poor offline experience.

“Keeping in touch”or “building relationships” with diners on Twitter and Facebook is pointless if they or their friends never come to your restaurant, but if what you do in the real world is good enough to attract people in the first place, social media can help you amplify that.

This weekend I took an hour to sit through a presentation very much on this topic (amplifying offline greatness through online means) by well known online wine dude Gary Vaynerchuk (@GaryVee). If you have the time, it is well worth listening to (and I am sure you will have a few genuine laughs in the process too).

While the revolution may not be tweeted, we are certainly in the midst of quite revolutionary change.

In other online marketing, technology and restaurant related news:

Chris Cosentino and Mark Pastore, owners of Incanto in San Fransisco, have written an interesting and for the restaurant reservations industry very relevant article called “Is OpenTable Worth It?” Well worth a read. Also see follow up blog posts on Chicagoist and here on your very own theblackboard.net: Are You Building Your Own Restaurant Business or Someone Else’s?

While I was away in Wales week before last, enjoying a healthy disconnect from the online fray, Bing (Microsoft’s search engine and although nowhere near in traffic, Google’s top competitor) and Facebook announced a partnership. Social search is here, but what does it mean? And did Google even flinch? Nah, doesn’t seem so.

Title of this very interesting post talks about “the evolving psychology of Facebook” but don’t let that deter you. It talks about the frighteningly low chance of anyone actually seeing the content you put on your restaurant’s Facebook Page. Is the effort put into generating “Likes” and posting content daily really worth it? What are your experiences?

That said, if you are putting effort into your Facebook Page, make sure you “do it right”. Building on their recent post about how not to use Twitter HubSpot has published a similar one for Facebook: The 9 Worst Ways to use Facebook for Business.

When it comes to Twitter, McDonalds is a very active brand working hard on engaging with their customers. This video Q&A session where Director of Social Media Rick Wion shares some of their experiences is really interesting. They are also currently generating a lot of buzz (or rather, their customers are which is every online marketers wet dream) around the cult McRib sandwich. Ogilvy PR shares their guilty secrets.

Bruce Palling, of Gastroenophile, asks timely “Have Food Blogs Finally Come of Age?” It is a dead given for me, today I get much more of my food and restaurant inspiration from the food blogs than from mainstream media. Last week also saw reports about more people than ever reading blogs in general, but what are your thoughts?

As for restaurant marketing, I still think running a blog with great content should be at the heart of every strategy. Not only does it add to SEO and building your online personality, it also creates a hub around which your social media assets can reach out and supplies great link fodder to feed your status updates with. Thing is though, it needs to be tied into everything you do, every day. Make your digital strategy goal to incorporate a little bit of online into everything you do, and you are on to something.

While on the topic of restaurant websites, let’s continue the “top mistakes you don’t want to do” theme: 10 Critical Website Mistakes That Boston Restaurants Make, a great post by MC Slim JB (@mcslimjb). It isn’t difficult these days to create and maintain a website, it requires virtually no technical skills whatsoever. Have any of the problems described in the post? Fix them. Here, start with buying this amazing restaurant blog theme from WOO Themes called Diner and ask a friend who knows a bit about PHP to install WordPress for you.

Restaurant online sales and reservations can learn lots from the e-commerce industry. Testing different layouts of a web page, what is also called A/B testing or split testing, is such an area. Which layout performs better in converting your visitors to diners, is the question being asked: What is the Optimal Layout of a Product Page?

On that note, Pizza Express seem to take the notion of testing and experimenting very seriously. Their refurbished restaurant in Richmond, opening next month to the public, will act as a “living lab” testing a few new concepts. Very exciting! It is perhaps a step towards applying more of a Google like thinking to running a restaurant (in the book “What Would Google Do?” author and visionary Jeff Jarvis gives as an example a restaurant where the menu adapts depending on how popular the dishes are, and where you can easily look up which wine other guests typically ordered with what dish…). More importantly though. Where do you think the best pizza in Britain is? Suggestions in the comments please.

Finally, speaking of Google, if you use Google Places to improve your findability in search there now seems to be new rules in place for what a brand must adhere to in order to be a “valid” page. Blog “Understanding Google Maps & Local Search” has the low down on the new “rejection algorithms“…

For fun:

In keeping with geek tradition (first tweet, first YouTube video, first rickroll… …from space) Foursquare pulls off an awesome PR stunt and make NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock Mayor of Space. Don’t expect any rewards for loyalty though as there aren’t many shops around…

Serious Eats asks, why are women depicted differently from men in food photography?

By the way, umami? So last year. Now it is all about kokumi.

Halloween are coming up! Check out these scary cupcakes, they look like they might eat YOU. Will you be doing anything special in your restaurant for fright night? Share great ideas and links in the comments!

That’s it for this week. Come back Monday next week for a new set of news in restaurant online marketing you shouldn’t miss out on. If you want to get updates of links and comments throughout the week, follow @manne on Twitter (news and blog links mixed with random chit chat ranging from Pod inspired low carb breakfasts to current events) or on Google Buzz (news links only).

By Magnus Hultberg in Blog, Off the Pass: Week in online marketing