3 Ways to Grow Your Restaurant Customer Base with Facebook Timeline !!!

Today’s lesson is on how to grow your page with three new features – Messages, Build Audience and Tagging.

1. Messages – the new reservation?

With the new Facebook Messages for business pages, your customers can contact you privately through your page.
This new tool (located in the top right when you click Admin Panel) is huge for restaurants because it gives you a personal, yet Facebook-friendly way to answer questions about your menu, promotions or even to take reservations.
MustHave - Someone on your team to handle customer messages. Facebook automatically turns this on with the Timeline switch, so be sure to turn it off if you won’t use it. It’s a check box in your Admin Panel > Manage > Edit Page > Manage Permissions.

2. Build your audience (or likes).

If you have a page with less than 5,000 likes, you’re in luck. You can use some cool tools under the new Build Audience feature. Here’s how it works:

• Import your email contacts. You can import as many as 5,000 email contacts with the new Build Audience tool. To access this, click Build Audience > Invite Email Contacts. You can import from your email account or upload a list of addresses.
• Invite your friends. Do you have lots of Facebook friends? Use the Share Page tool under Build Audience to ask them to support your business page.
• Share your page in a group. If you are still trying to move fans to your page from a Facebook group, you can use the share page feature under Build Audience to invite them in a couple of clicks. Don’t forget to share your business page with any networking or charity group you are a member of to promote your business.

MustHave - Don’t do this too often. It’s enough to share your page to announce a new menu orgift certificate promo that benefits your favorite charity.

3. Enable tags for more customers.

Whether it’s music on the patio, happy hour or your Easter brunch, your customers are documenting moments on Facebook with tags (Facebook’s way of identifying people and places). Here are a few ways your customers may use tags:

• Check-ins - Your customer can “check-in” at your restaurant  with their mobile phone (like our team did in Las Vegas last week) to let their Facebook friends know where they are. And they can “tag” anyone they’re with.
• To share a photo - Your customer may take a photo at your Easter brunch, Mother’s Day meal or Cinco de Mayo celebration and tag it to share it with their friends and family on Facebook.
• To let someone know what they’re missing - Your customer may tag a friend who couldn’t make it to girls night out or to your annual BBQ.

Why Tags Matter to Your Business

Everyone that visits your Facebook page gets a personalized view. They will see a “Friend Activity” box on the right side of your page. If their friends are actively sharing tags or comments about your business, this builds your credibility.
We see this is a great opportunity to grow your customer base and number of page fans, especially establishments with a frequent customer base such as bars, coffee houses, cafesor any restaurant with daily specials.
MustHave - You have to allow photo tagging on your page to maximize this business driver. Simply go to Admin Panel > Edit Page > Manage > Manage Permissions and check the box that says “People can tag photos posted by your page name.”
Next Steps: Don’t forget to check out our Facebook page to see how we’re making the most of Timeline and check out how you can make your menu more Facebook friendly.