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Final project presentation
Editor's Notes
- Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill will greatly benefit from implementing a social media strategy into the company. Though you are well known, having the ability to easily connect with customers will allow you to gain the respect and appreciation of returning customers while gaining new ones through brand recognition.
- In the modern world social media is inevitable, and you can be sure that guests will be tweeting, and posting on Facebook and Instagram about your restaurant regardless of its online presence. So why shouldn’t you use this to your advantage? Smokey Bones has the opportunity to not only keep its loyal customer base but to increase the amount of new customers through social media marketing.
- Social media can be extremely beneficial to a restaurant for many reasons. It can engage new customers with the experiences of past ones, and instill trust and loyalty with customers giving them the ability to comment on their experience, whether they be good or bad. A social media presence can also build credibility and increase brand recognition. Some restaurant owners and marketing teams are still hesitant about posting through certain social media platforms. It may seem easy to simply make a post, but most don’t know how to engage with customers through social media. Without a social media strategy in place there is no way to determine its benefits. To conclude whether a social media strategy was necessary, Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill requested the study of how social media plays a role in the restaurant industry. Though there are some risks associated with having a strong online presence through social media this research helps determine that you will benefit from having a more active social media existence. To help you make the appropriate decision the following presentation includes: Analysis of the benefits and risks associated with a social media strategy Suggestions for Smokey Bones to follow in their implementation of social media accounts
- Smokey Bones is a popular barbeque restaurant mostly located along the eastern states. While you have a website and are involved in some social media platforms if you can engage with your cliental more effectively and learn better social media marketing skills your customer base may increase drastically.
- There are many different social media platforms, and each come with their own benefits. Facebook provides easy connection with thousands of potential customers. Allowing customers to share links to the restaurants website and recommend it to friends. There is also the option to pay for advertising through their websites and have the stores account be seen by even more people. Twitter allows fast customer conversation and is an easy way to monitor the restaurants mentions. “Out of all brand mentions on Twitter, food and drink brands are mentioned the most with 32% share of tweets.” (Bach, 2015). Instagram gives anyone the ability to be a brand ambassador for your restaurant by posting pictures of their meals and experiences. Instagrammers can tag their location as well as provide hashtags making it easier for other people to find where they are and what they had. The lowest cost social media advertising is Snapchat. Giving its users an easy way to interact with large numbers of people. Though its only downside is the general demographic of users are millennials.
- Though a solid social media marketing strategy seems the most advantageous option to a restaurant, especially one as popular as Smokey Bones, there are other options. When your social media marketing is failing or you just want other options you can turn to things like loyalty programs and mailed coupons, but these options may prove to be more costly and less effective. A study by sproutsocial showed that people need to see a product on social media 2-4 times before purchasing it. (See Figure 1.)
- To benefit the most from social media each Smokey Bones location should have their own Facebook and Instagram account. Twitter offers more interaction with customers at a faster pace so the marketing director should either be responsible or place someone as the social media head for the company to be in charge of that account. Snapchat can be controlled by one account but each location will have the ability to post on the story daily. Each Smokey Bones serves different demographics based on their locations so adjustments will need to be made as necessary.
- Though there are many benefits that come with using social media to market a restaurant some risks can come with this constant customer contact as well. The benefits are: Gets the word out about your restaurant. By being active through multiple social media platforms a company, whether small, medium, or large, can expand its customer base and allow past customers to connect with their experiences. “Every day there are over 500 million Tweets, 4.5 billion Likes on Facebook, and 95 million photos and videos uploaded to Instagram.” ("10 Benefits of Social Media for Business", 2018). Gain customer insights. Learn what your customers like, dislike, want more of, who they are. Social media sites will be the easiest form of gathering information about your customers. Online ads. Social media ads are a low cost way to reach a large amount of people. You can also target a specific audience. For example, Facebook allows you to target your ad based on location, demographics, likes, and connections and gives you the ability to follow the performance of those ads. Build customer relationships. Social media allows you to create relationships with customer before, during, and after their visit. By creating dialogue you diminish any harsh feelings about a bad experience and enrich the relationships with regular customers. “This kind of social media dialogue between brands and customers is something traditional advertising cannot achieve.” ("10 Benefits of Social Media for Business", 2018). See what your competition is doing. Most businesses are already actively using social media sites. By involving your company is this fast acting marketing form you can see what is working for them and keep your company in the loop. Though there are many benefits of using social media to connect with your guests there are also some risks that come as well: Training someone to utilize the sites appropriately. Learning to use social media sites effectively can be time consuming and possibly costly to a company. Setting up a profile and account is easy but the person responsible must find out how to best engage with customers and be social enough to make it worth wile. Smokey Bones may have to invest in a social media consultant to get the company up and running. Negative feedback. While any feedback, whether good or bad, is beneficial to a business it definitely makes it harder to make the negative feedback diminish since it is public. Most people that have bad experiences with a company will feel obligated to share their experience with others, sometimes through social media. Smokey Bones must be prepared to handle these issues and not allow bad experiences to hurt the brand’s reputation. Harder to track feedback. Though not impossible, it is definitely harder to see whether the social media marketing strategy is helping a company. There are ways around this but it may not be as accurate as other information.
- Though Smokey Bones is an already established restaurant chain you would benefit greatly from additional and more managed social media accounts. By implementing a social media strategy you can take advantage of the many benefits that come with a social media presence. The recommendations for Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill’s social media strategy are: Open new accounts. Some Smokey Bones locations already have Facebook and Instagram accounts. The first step is making sure each location has an account set up and a designated person to monitor activity and provide feedback. This can be a general manager/ hourly manager/ or in some cases a trusted employee. Smokey Bones marketing manager, Sarah Kass, will be in charge of opening a Twitter and Snapchat account for the company and either updating the site herself or appointing someone the position of social media manager. Gain attention. After each location has an activated Facebook and Instagram it will be their responsibility to gain attention to the new account. People responsible for the account must be active by posting at the very least once daily and updating restaurant information and keeping up with customer comments. Bartenders can post pictures of new drinks on Instagram and tag the Smokey Bones account and location to connect. Since others can post to the Smokey Bones Snapchat it will be updated by employees as well as customers. Twitter posts must be made often and comments must be followed up with almost immediately for the plan to be affective. Offer deals for showing posts. To get a head start and ensure social media followers are aware of the new accounts for all Smokey Bones locations an offer can be made allowing followers a promotion for showing a Facebook or Twitter post. Locations can have weekly contests on Instagram posts by picking 2-3 commenters and giving away free appetizers or desserts. This may not be necessary but it will definitely gain your social media sites some immediate popularity. Monitor your social media presence. While setting up the accounts is the most important part you will also want to monitor the activity and see how the social media sites are helping the company. There are many social media management tools to help streamline your posts. “Social media managing tools can help marketers save time, stay organized, and optimize their efficiency.” ("Social Media Management Tools: What's the Right Tool for Your Business?"). Websites like HootSuite provide you with analytics reports, monitoring, and publishing tools, giving you the ability to manage all the social networks in one spot. Whomever is accountable for the Twitter and Snapchat accounts would be in charge of this as well, allowing them to monitor each locations Facebook and Instagram account as well. A social media strategy is the best next step for Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill. Since you are already established and relatively well known this will provide you with even more brand recognition and allow you to become connected with your customers more efficiently. Though it may be difficult to get started, once established the social media accounts will be an effective marketing addition to the company.