Social media and your diners

The Facebook revolution saw the word ‘social’ gain a whole new meaning. People went from physically meeting one another to conversing through a new and vibrant technological platform.

It’s everywhere you look nowadays. Each site has a link to a Twitter or Facebook page and you feel a bit out of the loop if you don’t have an @twitterhandle. The volume of time it takes a corporation to respond to social media requests and comments has meant a rise in the number of social media management vacancies across most industries. But one has to ask why? And what’s wrong with good-old fashioned marketing strategies like leaflet dropping?

Well, they’re static is what’s wrong. People can’t communicate through a leaflet. Technology means people can’t be bothered to pick up a pen and write to you to complain or comment, they’d rather e-mail. But why e-mail when you can ‘tweet’ your message in 140 short, sweet characters? For free, no less.

The F&B industry has quickly spotted this opportunity and grabbed it. Many restaurants and bars whether stand-alone or backed by a hotel or chain now have links to social media pages allowing people to post comments openly for others to read and decide whether or not to eat or drink there tonight.

But while promotion is the aim, ineffective management of these sites can be detrimental to a brand’s reputation. People will have bad experiences – it’s inevitable. And they will want to rant about it. How then do you manage that in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands?

Transparency it seems is key. While a bad experience posted on a site can be risky, you can easily pull it back – through proper engagement with your audience, just like you would in a face-to-face situation. There’s no point having a site you can’t manage. If anything this is a firestarter for negative publicity.

Put someone in charge of the management of social media; not to remove critical posts but to actively follow up with the customer to listen to the problem and reach a resolution. And think about how you will translate this to the rest of your audience.

Everyone loves a scandal, but before your outlet becomes the victim of a public slanging match, rein it back in – call the customer and resolve it – you’ll note how quickly they publicly commend you for your speedy response.

But while F&B outlets can hugely benefit through social media because of the difficulties of reaching every customer on a personal level, everyone loves feeling a bit special from time-to-time – often difficult to convey via a computer screen. Nothing can ever truly replace the impact of face-to-face interaction so let's ensure this doesn't disappear totally!

Hannah-Farah Abdulla. Editor
Email: hannah.abdulla@itp.com