Creating a Facebook Account to Promote Your Restaurant
Just follow these simple steps and in no time your restaurant will be in Facebook for everyone to find:
Step 2: Edit Your Profile:
Click on “Profile” in the top left-hand menu. Don’t worry about the homepage you see here yet – we’ll cover that later on, once you fill in your profile and add some friends.
Click on “Profile” in the top left-hand menu. Don’t worry about the homepage you see here yet – we’ll cover that later on, once you fill in your profile and add some friends.
Click on the “Info” tab and then “Edit Information.”
Add basic, personal, contact, and your restaurant information.
Step 3: Join networks:
Click on “Settings” in the top right-hand menu, and then “Account Settings.” On the Setting screen, choose “Networks.”
Step 3: Join networks:
Click on “Settings” in the top right-hand menu, and then “Account Settings.” On the Setting screen, choose “Networks.”
Find some relevant networks to join. Networks play a key role in helping you connect with people. You definitely should join a regional network (unfortunately you are allowed to join only one) and (up to five total) school or company networks (must have a valid email address for each). Joining a network will help people find you, and will help you rank higher in Facebook searches when the searcher is in a common network.
Of course, join the regional network where your restaurant is located. You want to target your efforts to local people; after all, they are the ones who will be spending their money at your place.
Step 4: Connect with friends:
Facebook’s goal is to help connect you with your friends, clients, prospects, and other connections. There are a few tools available to help you start connecting with people you already know.
Click on “Friends” in the top-left menu and choose “Find Friends.”
Of course, join the regional network where your restaurant is located. You want to target your efforts to local people; after all, they are the ones who will be spending their money at your place.
Step 4: Connect with friends:
Facebook’s goal is to help connect you with your friends, clients, prospects, and other connections. There are a few tools available to help you start connecting with people you already know.
Click on “Friends” in the top-left menu and choose “Find Friends.”
Now, this is very important. If you already have a list with your clients, can import a contact list, or you can have Facebook search your email address book, search for people in your networks, or even check out Facebook’s friend suggestions.
Please, notice the Upload Contact File link. This link will allow you to upload your existing client and subscribers list into your Facebook friends.
You can import your contacts stored in your email or in any other database that allows you to export with the format v-Card (a very standardized format).
If you have your client’s information stored in any database, just select the option Export and the format v-Card. Remember where you save the file. Then in the “Contact File:” field, select the “v-Cardfile” and Facebook will import all your contacts, check if they have a Facebook account, and if they do, it will automatically email them asking them to become your friends. Pretty impressive uh?
If the people don’t have a Facebook account, you can still select the choice for them to be invited to become Facebook users; however, I wouldn’t recommend you to do this since it can alienate some of your customers.
Step 5: Share information:
Facebook is great for sharing all sorts of information about you and your restaurant with your network, including photos, videos, notes, newsletters and links. From your Facebook homepage (what you see when you first log in to Facebook) or from your profile page, you will see a box where you can share your content.
Any content you share will be posted to the Wall tab of your profile, and will go out to the News Feeds of your friends.
If you have your client’s information stored in any database, just select the option Export and the format v-Card. Remember where you save the file. Then in the “Contact File:” field, select the “v-Cardfile” and Facebook will import all your contacts, check if they have a Facebook account, and if they do, it will automatically email them asking them to become your friends. Pretty impressive uh?
If the people don’t have a Facebook account, you can still select the choice for them to be invited to become Facebook users; however, I wouldn’t recommend you to do this since it can alienate some of your customers.
Step 5: Share information:
Facebook is great for sharing all sorts of information about you and your restaurant with your network, including photos, videos, notes, newsletters and links. From your Facebook homepage (what you see when you first log in to Facebook) or from your profile page, you will see a box where you can share your content.
Any content you share will be posted to the Wall tab of your profile, and will go out to the News Feeds of your friends.
Step 6: Use applications:
There are thousands of applications on Facebook that can help you share content and interact with your clients. To browse the applications just click on “Applications” in the left hand corner of the bottom bar while logged into Facebook. You can also visit http://facebook.com/applications to browse available applications. Popular applications include Photos, Events, Email and Calendar
Privacy Settings:
Social media is about establishing and building relationships, just like you do in your restaurant with your clients. In many cases, you may find that some of your connections will blur the lines between personal and business. It is very important to be honest and authentic when using social media to market your restaurant. People like to connect with people, not with faceless brands. Furthermore, these personal connections will lead to business, referrals, and word of mouth marketing for your restaurant.
If you are concerned about exposing portions of your profile to these different connections, Facebook allows you to customize your privacy settings to control who sees which portions of your profile.
There are thousands of applications on Facebook that can help you share content and interact with your clients. To browse the applications just click on “Applications” in the left hand corner of the bottom bar while logged into Facebook. You can also visit http://facebook.com/applications to browse available applications. Popular applications include Photos, Events, Email and Calendar
Privacy Settings:
Social media is about establishing and building relationships, just like you do in your restaurant with your clients. In many cases, you may find that some of your connections will blur the lines between personal and business. It is very important to be honest and authentic when using social media to market your restaurant. People like to connect with people, not with faceless brands. Furthermore, these personal connections will lead to business, referrals, and word of mouth marketing for your restaurant.
If you are concerned about exposing portions of your profile to these different connections, Facebook allows you to customize your privacy settings to control who sees which portions of your profile.
Visibility of every aspect of your profile (photos, contact information, education information) can be controlled via the Profile privacy settings. You can set each section to be viewable by:
Everyone
My Networks and Friends
Friends of Friends
Only Friends
Custom – customize who (which networks, friend lists, or specific friends) can or cannot access a portion of your profile
A great way for customizing your privacy settings is to set up Friend Lists:
You can customize privacy settings by Friend List
You can view news feed updates by Friend List filters
You can invite Friend Lists to special events. However, there is a limitation here, it must be a list of a hundred people maximum. This will only work if you have a small restaurant or you want to limit the invitations for some reason.
You can send messages to Friend Lists (another limitation of 20 people maximum ☹
More features coming soon – Friend Lists are continuously changing. Facebook will beef-up this underutilized feature.
Click on “Friends” in the top navigation to view your friends and view, edit, or create a new Friend List.
Look at your list of clients and decide how can you best split them into Lists that you can manage separately. For example, some of your clients may really enjoy your wine dinners. Create a list called “Wine Dinners” and add them there. Perhaps some prefer like live music. If you host live music events, create a list called “Live Music” and add there the clients that enjoy going to your place to listen to live music. Just be logical and think what kind of lists you can create to meet your client’s needs. You don’t have to create all the lists initially. You can start with one or two and then add lists when you feel appropriate.
Now let’s cover how you can use Facebook to your restaurant’s advantage. Keep on reading…
Now let’s cover how you can use Facebook to your restaurant’s advantage. Keep on reading…