Tips on Creating a Facebook Fan Page for Your Restaurant

If you’re a regular user of Facebook you might have noticed an upsurge in fan pages for brands and businesses, as well as film stars and popular bands. In fact, there are now around 1.6 million active fan pages aimed at engaging with Facebook’s 400 million users.

Facebook fan pages can be an effective restaurant marketing tool for keeping in touch with customers, and even finding new ones. But simply creating a fan page because everyone else is isn’t enough. It takes planning and perseverance, and following these tips will help:

1. Update regularly –Updating your page once a month can make it seem a barren wasteland, rather than a vibrant community of foodies. It’s quick and easy to post links and updates to your page which then appear in your fan’s feeds, which can help it to grow ‘virally’.

2. Interact with your fans – Responding to people’s questions is a great opportunity for interacting with customers and building positive feelings towards your restaurant. You can also try turning the tables and ask your fans questions by running polls or quizzes e.g. what would they like to see added to the menu.

3. Promote your fan page – It’s unlikely customers will find it on their own, so advertise it on your menus, on your website, in your emails and on business cards to build up your fanbase.

4. Offer value - The key to attracting and retaining fans is to be able to offer them something of value they’ll be happy to see popup in their news feed. This can include special offers, recipe ideas and inside info on your restaurant itself, such as photos of recent special events and the people working there.

Facebook fan pages can be an excellent restaurant marketing tool for interacting and staying in contact with your customers. Just remember to keep it updated to gain the maximum benefit and to attract more customers.

Useful links

http://tutorialblog.org/how-to-create-a-facebook-fan-page/

By Louise Routledge in Blog, Restaurant Marketing, Social Media Marketing