June 28th, 2010
Location-based Marketing
I read this blog post yesterday on Location based marketing, and thought it would be useful to post this for customers and regular readers of our site.
While most of you know about FaceBook and Twitter, how many understand Google Buzz, Four Square and other similar sites?
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/5-emerging-social-media-sites-to-watch-in-2010/
My partner Sean is a strong believer in location-based marketing as a lynch-pin to your social media strategy. I’ve been a bit slower to come to this conclusion, but do agree that it is very important trend to follow. I’ve been an avid Four Square user for about 6 months right now, and while at first I thought it to be simple, and perhaps even silly — I now check-in to lots of places.
I won’t try to introduce and explain Four Square to you now, but if you own a local business, especially a restaurant or business with a high customer flow, this service could be a great social media marketing opportunity for you.
I’m the “Mayor” of Moes in Peachtree City, and would love to see them emulate Starbucks with special offers for their “Mayors”.
If you are interested in talking more about location based marketing and how social media of this type can energize your business, email or call Peachtree SEO today.
June 28th, 2010
Mobile Websites for Restaurants are Critical!
I’m on vacation with my family in Washington D.C. – doing all of the usual tourist things. We’ve hit the monuments, museums, White House, and today we toured the Capital Building. After a few days of eating out constantly, we wanted to have a pizza or two delivered to our hotel room.
Instead of booting up my laptop, I used my iPhone (still a 3GS) to find local pizza restaurants in the Dupont Circle area of Washington D.C. To my surprise, I could only find a few, and those that came up either had no website or one that was definitely not optimized for mobile visitors.
In a city like Washington D.C. with millions of yearly tourists, visitors will search for dining options on their phone. If your business wants a piece of all of these local searches – get on the mobile bandwagon!
Recommendations:
1. Mobile-friendly website – these are cheap and easy to create. If you don’t have one, ask me, as our team will build you an optimized restaurant-centric mobile website in less than a week. Even better – the pricing!
2. Lots of HONEST local reviews – Google, Yelp and other local directories - c’mon people, fake reviews are so obvious and generate complete distrust, that I would be hard-pressed to order from that restaurant. Whether good or bad, lots of reviews are key. I can overlook a few bad reviews, as no one can please everyone all of the time. What scares me more is trying a place that has no feedback!
Make sure your menu is friendly to an iPhone, Black Berry or Android user. If not, you run the very real risk they will just jump to another site to find what they are looking for. Clearly label hours, address and directions on your mobile site, as these are the most common items requested by mobile users.
