Social Media Monitoring for Restaurants

For the restaurant industry, knowing what guests are saying about your brand is the probably the single most important aspect of your business these days. After the Domino’s PR nightmare last year, many restaurants and food service institutions are really starting to look harder at what is being said about their brand online externally AND internally.

People are talking about Restaurants online – and not only in Twitter.

As you can see, there’s A LOT of people talking about restaurants. There are both threats and opportunities within those mentions as well as an amazing amount of market research, competitive intelligence and so much more.

What are your guests talking about in social media?

You’d be surprised at what people jump to their mobile devices to tweet about. Everything from food, service, decor, parking, and even music is fair game. Let’s take a look at few mentions of unlucky brands, who we won’t name:

This is what your guests are talking about, and if you don’t know by know, others are listening. If someone sees this tweet who do you think they will choose when facing 2 restaurants next to each other? If you guessed the one not related to vomit, you’re probably right.

Some of the benefits of monitoring social media for restaurants include:

• Brand Monitoring – Listening to what people are saying about your brand overall
• Customer Service – Finding guest problems and offering a resolution can go a long way in improving retention
• Market Research – See what guests think about your products from the world’s largest focus group… the Web.
• Competitive Intelligence – Know more about your competitors than they often know about themselves.  Monitor consumer feedback on their latest TV/radio campaigns, monitor what menu items people like/dislike, and identify the venues where people are talking and make sure you’re also in the conversation.
• Promotion Tracking – Promotions hit the web fast. You can see if a promotion is working (or not) faster than ever before.  Gain insight into whether to keep the promotion going or abort.
• Employee Chatter – Knowing what employees are doing (or saying) can save you a ton of bad press. See Domino’s example again.

Whether your interest is in customer service or product development, start listening to what people are saying in social media and you’ll be ever closer to your guests.