The online social media frenzy has added a new member: Pinterest. You may have heard of it due its explosive growth in popularity, or maybe curiosity got a hold of you and you are one of the millions of people that have joined the invite-only platform.

A network that has established such a large user base can be leveraged by companies as a marketing platform. Any business that has something visual to share can use Pinterest to promote themselves – and restaurants are a prime example of such a business.

A few companies have been early adopters of the platform. Whole Foods, for example, was one of the first companies to join Pinterest. They have since built a following of over 26,000 people by sharing images that convey the message of their brand.

Pinterest for restaurants is still very new, and joining in now still puts you into the “early adopter” category – giving you a competitive advantage.

But you can’t just jump in without a plan! Let’s delve a little deeper…

Pinterest for Restaurants: What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is essentially a visual online scrapbook, or pin board, where individuals can post (“pin”), browse and share images from across the web.

The visual format of the network has contributed to its explosive growth. While the network is still invite-only, Pinterest is the fastest website in history to reach 10 million monthly unique visitors.

But just having users isn’t enough. If you are going to be using a platform to target customers, you want to be targeting the right customers.

Pinterest’s customer base is skewed heavily towards females. The average age is between 25 and 34, and the average user has at least some college education. Some sources site the average income of users is between 25k and 75k per year; but also estimate that almost a third of the users have annual household incomes of $100,000 or more.

This means that there are plenty of buyers using Pinterest!

Pinterest for Restaurants: Why Pin?

We have already established that there is a consumer base on the network; and that the network is a very visual one. Also, the ability to share pins (“re-pin”) enables content to spread quickly.

Taking these things into account, if you go into Pinterest with a good marketing strategy, you can use it to…

1. Tap Into a New Audience. Because the user base is so large, and content spreads so quickly, there is a very good chance you will get your restaurant’s name in front of new eyeballs on Pinterest. And the best part? It’s free.
2. Create Brand Awareness. With a proper game plan and some consistency, you can establish your brand, and deliver your brand message. Brand awareness builds trust, loyalty and sales.
3. Improve SEO and Web Traffic. Content you post to Pinterest is linked back to the original source. This means that you can improve your search engine rankings through backlinks and drive visitors back to your own website (if that is where the content originated).

Pinterest for Restaurants: What to Pin?

Your pins are the center of your Pinterest marketing universe. What you pin will determine the kind of interactions you will have on the network, and if you will have any interactions at all.

At first glance it seem like restaurants can be a bit restricted as to what they can share on Pinterest. In reality there is a wide range of content a restaurant can pin…

• Images of Food. Did we already mention that Pinterest is a highly visual platform? All of the images you share should be high quality – but especially images of your food! If you are sharing items from your menu you want them to look appetizing – you want people to want to try them. And remember to link the images back to your restaurant’s menu! For an example, check out Arby’s Pinterest boards.

• Images from Events. If you hold events at your restaurant, images from the events are definitely shareable. This allows you to display just how much fun people have at your establishment. You can also share images prior to the event to promote it (i.e. flyers, images from past events, etc).

• Images of the Space. Atmosphere is extremely important in the dining experience. If you have a wonderful space that you want to showcase, show images of it! Mooo Restaurant, for example, displays both images of the dining areas and the private event spaces.

• Ingredients. More than ever, people want to know what their food is made of and where it comes from. Sharing the ingredients you use allows them an inside look and enables you to convey quality.

• Inspirations. If there is an inspiration for a drink or food item on the menu, why not share it? It gives your restaurant a more personal/human touch. This can also spur a conversation – Pinterest is a social network after all.

• Action Shots. You can share images of your servers or bartenders interacting with customers. Again, Mooo Restaurant is a great example. One of their pinboards, “Inside the Pastry Kitchen,” shows their pastry chefs at work.

• Images from External Sources. Got mentioned by a local newspaper or a blog? Pin it!

• Any Brand-Relevant Content. Really, you can pin anything that is in tune with your brand. For example, an Italian restaurant can pin images of Italy. This enforces your Italian brand – especially if it is consistent with the décor of the restaurant. Harry Caray’s in Chicago has a “Things We Love” board where they share images of all things Chicago.

Remember that you shouldn’t have solely promotional pins. Your goal is to spur an interest and create conversations. The more connection you make, the wider you can spread your reach. Some promotional content is certainly OK, but you want to mix in things that are interesting.

Pinterest for Restaurants: What to do After the Pin?

Your job isn’t finished once you pin an image to Pinterest. At least it isn’t if you are doing your job right.

Make sure to leverage other social networks by sharing your pins on Facebook and Twitter. You want to maximize your reach.

When people “like” or “re-pin” your images make sure to thank them. Begin to interact with other users on the network. It is important to remember that this is a social network, and it only works if you are being social.

Don’t stay in the silo of your own pin boards. Browse around and “re-pin” others (if it is appropriate). This is how you can begin to interact with other users. Remember, other users are people too. You can use this to your advantage by re-pinning industry leaders such as restaurant critics, food blogger or foodies with large followings. Maybe they will return the favor…and that spells success!

Twitter or Tweeter as we like to call it, is a social media platform that too many businesses fail to take advantage of.  Especially those that are in the service business like restaurants. Twitter allows businesses to easily connect and engage, get feedback, get ideas, and cheaply promote their business in less than 140 characters, meaning you don’t have to spend a bunch of time crafting lofty copy. All you need to do is get to the point, by tweeting things like “Our lunch special today is {insert special here}.”

But you can’t just tweet about your specials everyday and not all restaurants have specials.

True, but there are all sorts of other easy things you can tweet about, such as photos of your food. If your manager, servers, or hosts/hostesses have smart phones they can snap shots of 7-10 dishes on a Monday and you’ll have tweets for the rest of the week.

It really is a shame that restaurants aren’t taking advantage of Twitter more.  So we’ve compiled 5 great blog posts on Twitter for restaurants to realize how easy it is to get started, how much it can benefit their business, and how to do it.

Twitter For Restaurants

1. How To Use Twitter For Business: 5 More Incredibly Interesting Case Studies

This blog posts profiles 5 businesses, both small and large, that have effectively used Twitter for marketing and to drive sales.  While it’s a bit older, this post is still highly relevant and restaurants and other businesses can learn a great deal from these examples.  One great example in this post is Naked Pizza who bucked the traditional pizza marketing model of direct mail and replaced it with Twitter.  They were so successful with Twitter that they created a custom button on their POS system to track twitter promotions and in May of 2009 they set a sales record, with 68.6% of sales coming from Twitter.

2. Twitter for Restaurants

This is also an older post but it does a great job of giving Twitter novices the low down on the popular micro blogging site. They explain everything from setting up an account to Twitter vocabulary you need to know.  For an even more comprehensive guide to Twitter download Twitter for Small Businesses, a guide from Twitter themselves. Also check out this video from Twitter.

3. 5 Twitter Tips for Restaurants

If you are already on Twitter and are tweeting & engaging with people in the tweet-o-sphere then this post will help you take it to the next level.  It has 5 great ideas for how to use Twitter to drive more people to your restaurant.  My favorite ideas are 1) tweeting deals that customers redeem by showing the tweet or saying something you promoted in the tweet so you can track sales that came from your tweets and 2) creating groups and tweetup specials.  Go read the blog post to learn what tweetups are and how restaurants can use them to drive sales.

4. 6 Twitter Hashtags Every Restaurant Should Use

Using hashtags (if you don’t know what they are read about them in Twitter for Restaurants) make your tweets more searchable and increase the number of people who see them.  It’s been shown that tweets that use 1-2 hashtags get twice as much engagement as those that don’t use them.  With that said be careful about using 3 or more hashtags in tweets as this can actually cause engagement to drop.  This posts show restaurants all the hashtags they absolutely need to be using.

5. 38 Twitter Ideas for Restaurants and Franchises

This post gives a nice list of ideas for restaurants for what to tweet about broken down by categories that inlclude:

• Customer Service
• Helpful Information
• Humanize your restaurant
• Social network integration
• Restaurant updates

Do you spend a lot of money on advertising for your restaurant? It's not unheard of to spend thousands of dollars on a single newspaper or magazine advertisement—an advertisement that might only bring five or 10 customers through the door. You know that good word-of-mouth recommendations are the best ways to get new customers, but it's difficult to track when word-of-mouth recommendations occur and if they truly affected customer behavior.

Email marketing in Indianapolis is a low-cost, effective way to reach out to your most loyal customers. Past customers who like your establishment enough to want to stay in touch can be powerful repeat business, as well as agents that drive new customers through your doors. Best of all, you can track email marketing, and keep records on what techniques were most effective—and which ones fell flat. If you are interested in starting a restaurant email campaign, Constant Contact provides the leading email marketing tool for restaurants. 

Menu Changes

Restaurant Events in Indianapolis

Alot has been written about Pinterest as a marketing tool. I’ve been saying ever since I discovered Pinterest a few months ago that I feel certain Google will buy the company. The viral image based social media site is just TOO HOT for that not to happen and Techcrunch agrees! 

In case you haven’t heard Pinterest is driving more traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn. So with all the attention and the crazy fast growth the site is experiencing, I say jump on board!

BUT use it wisely and don’t abuse it. There is a smart way to use Pinterest for local SEO.

DISCLAIMER: This is just a random Florist example I created – not a client.

1st of all, since Pinterest is so visual, it lends itself to local businesses that have visually appealing products and services. I picked a Florist for example, but spas, real estate, furniture, bakeries and other businesses could also work well.

If you are a business owner, get creative and ask your customers to get involved. Set up a contest and have them pin images of your products in action, after they buy them. Be sure to put your city in your description and name of the pin board. (And of course your full citation.)

The reason some SEOs are hot on Pinterest is they all say the links are do follow. I’m not sure when it changed, but I just discovered that now the image link is no follow. Which is a drag because part of the game is to try to get other people to pin your content and the image carries your link. But the top link is do follow, so be sure to click it with Chrome to be sure G picks it up. PLUS for local, another way to add some marketing juice is to create an image citation in the description with the full NAP from the Place page. 

PINTEREST LOCAL SEO and MARKETING RESOURCES

How To Use Pinterest For Local SEO Great post by Chris Silver Smith

Mashable has a ton of good articles about Pinterest

Some good contest and franchise business ideas for using Pinterest

And that’s where I discovered the cool Infographic filled with ideas for how to market your business with Pinterest. (Click image for more ideas)

Pinterest Infographic, an Infographic by Linchpin SEO