Restaurant Social Media: How Good Is Your Branding?

How good is your word-of-mouth reputation? Chances are if you aren’t actively participating in a restaurant social media campaign, you have probably fallen off the radar. In our last blog post, we reviewed some of the best restaurant websites in the industry. A large factor that contributes to the success of these websites involves customer interaction. If you don’t have a social media manager for your corporation, you are giving away business.

National Restaurant News Releases New Social Media Tool

The NRN website announced the release of Restaurant Social Media Index (RSMI) in 2011. The tool was invented to give an analysis of how customers are interacting with restaurant social media. Effectively, this will tell you how the general public rates your brand.

You may submit your restaurant for analysis here. The tool measures and reports on activities concerning your restaurant from the following platforms:

• Facebook
• Google+
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Blogs
• Gowalla
• Foursquare

By monitoring the activity of your friends and followers, you can tell how well your brand is doing and what customers think. The tool provides the following data:

• RSMI score out of 300
• Klout score out of 100
• Social media growth
• Ranks your website’s importance on major social networks
• Customer sentiment

RSMI Top 100 for the Third Quarter

RSMI released the Top 100 social media brands. Here is a quick peek at the top 10.

1. Starbucks
2. Wendy’s
3. Chick-Fil-A
4. McDonald’s
5. Outback
6. Jimmy Johns
7. P.F. Chang’s
8. Applebees
9. Chipotle
10. Pinkberry

It’s very interesting to see the switch of advertising from print and TV to digital media. For example, Chili’s discontinued three weeks’ worth of TV advertisement in lieu of an intensive social media campaign. The results were astounding. They went under budget and had better results than TV.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on these scores and report interesting findings in the coming months as this scoring becomes standard in the restaurant industry.

 

 

The 5 Best Restaurant Websites to Inspire You

It’s a peculiarity that some of the best restaurant websites aren’t necessarily for the best restaurants out there. In fact, some of the swankiest restaurants seem to be inversely related to some of the worst restaurant websites on the web. Restaurants are notorious for some of the worst web design on the Internet.

Why is that? Well, many of our chefs and restaurateurs aren’t exactly experts in web design. It seems that they sat down with a web consultant and were talked into some of the flashiest, noisiest, most over-the-top decisions in web design.

Fortunately, some restaurants are setting the bar a little higher. Take note as they lead the way in successful website design.

1. 1.      Dunkin’ Donuts

Dunkin’ Donuts has some of the best social media experts and web designers on their side. Every step of the way, they get their customers to interact with them and listen to them carefully as they develop their menu.

1. 2.      Wendy’s

Is it really any surprise that Wendy’s has some of the market’s share on superior web design? They are some of the first marketing geniuses after all.

1. 3.      Ruby Tuesday

Ruby Tuesday’s overall website is designed well and really shows the restaurant off without too much flash.

1. 4.      Pizza Express

Pizza Express has a simple design that really interacts with the user. It’s easy to navigate and their promotions are easily visible without being too in-your-face.

1. 5.      McDonalds

We saved McDonalds for the grand finale. This is web design at its finest regardless of how you feel about the food. The navigation bar is easy to follow. The front page has a clean, simple appearance along with some really eye-catching graphics.

If you feel that your website has been lacking traffic or the bounce rate is too high, check these guys out to see what they are doing right. It’s not hard to stand out in the crowd as one of the best restaurant websites.