Taking Control of Your Restaurant’s Online Presence

The World Wide Web has become seamlessly entangled in our lives; and this is true for you as a person as well as for you the consumer. When consumers are looking for somewhere to eat they now turn to the internet. When consumers have spare time they’re usually scrolling on social media. When consumers want to tell you something they head online. All of these facts tell you one thing, that your business needs to have a well managed online presence in order to properly interact with and reach consumers. Here’re the online elements that are essential to any bar or restaurant’s online presence.

Google

Your business can easily be found on the world’s most popular search engine and this is where many potential guests will first spot your establishment. It is therefore crucial that you go onto Google and “own” your business. Ensure your contact details, hours, menus, and website address are correct. Also, find the time to put up some, at least semi-professional, photos of your location to be feature when people search your establishment through Google.

Review Sites

Be sure to “own” your business on review sites too. You can use these platforms to respond to guest’s complaints and compliments; and do ensure that you show concern for both. Management photos are also available for these sites, so make sure your restaurant looks good where it’s going to be pictured alongside other local competitors. Yelp and TripAdvisor are the most popular review sites but there may be one specific to you local area that you’ll need to be sure you’re present on too.

Social Media

Be present and active on all popular forms of social media; mainly Facebook and Instagram, but this can also include Twitter. You can have all of your business accounts connected to your phone and can, therefore, always be there for your customers when they want to ask a question or book a table. This level of customer attention is key. Having all of your social media accounts connected to one device also allows you to post to them all simultaneously, ensuring that you’re getting maximum reach from all your posts, no matter which platform your diverse customer base prefers.

Website

Having your own website is becoming easier to do but, at the same time, a more and more underused asset. This is a mistake many establishments are making. Social media pages and review sites are good but consumers still prefer to view your own website. Creating and maintaining one is cheap and simple, and keeping it up-to-date is crucial.

Managing your location’s online presence needs to be incorporated into your daily tasks. With everything now available on your phone, and notifications receivable instantly by email it is becoming easier and easier to keep up-to-date with the goings on on the internet. You should make checking and responding to questions, complaints and requests a daily task; however social media is really something that should be check periodically throughout the day in order to keep up with the consumer’s growing need for personalized attention.

Keeping it all up-to-date is also key for online success and if you can accomplish all this then you’ll have successfully taken full control of your restaurant’s online presence and could see an increase in customer satisfaction and overall cover count; although you won’t be able to explicitly correlate the impact of your online activity to these measurements.