We’ve posted some tips on writing restaurant marketing emails previously, but what’s also worth mentioning is the importance of closing the loop between emails and your website so they work together to increase bookings.

Emails build interest, websites take bookings

Short, punchy emails can be great at building interest, but ultimately it’s your website you need to get people to in order to fill your tables. So it’s best practice to end emails with a ‘call to action’ which is a closing sentence that tells your customers what to do next. For example, a simple call to action could be ‘Book your table now’ with a link back to your website.

Once your email has achieved its job of building interest your website then has to close the deal of persuading people to book a table. You’ll find some tips on improving your website’s conversion rate in this post.

The main thing to bear in mind is that your website has to make a good impression, with plenty of enticing snapshots and descriptive text, and make it easy for people to book. As well as featuring your contact details prominently, an online booking system (like ours!) makes it quick and easy to make a reservation.

Restaurant marketing always works best when the different elements work together. So remember to include plenty of calls to action in your emails and make sure your website entices people in and makes it easy to book a table.

Useful links
Tips on writing restaurant marketing emails
Designing a website that pulls in diners

Last week saw Yet Another Bogus Twitter App, TwitterNation Counter, do the rounds across the Twitterverse. Enticed by the promise to see which user was the first in a country to join Twitter lots of people authorized the app using the clever but oh so dangerously simple OAuth (Open Authorization) procedure. What they didn’t realise was that the app also put out a message spreading a link to the app on to all their followers.

While this app was quite benign, it is an excellent example of how easy it is to give total strangers access to your social media identities. You click a link, you are asked to authorize the app in a Twitter.com branded web page, and the click of a candy shaped button later you have allowed the developer of said app to get access to your personal information and possibly even send messages in your name.  You aren’t even asked for your password, which is what OAuth is all about: allowing other apps and websites access to your account without knowing your password, so you can revoke their access as quickly and easily as you gave it (and should you change your password, the authorized apps continue to work seamlessly).

It took years for most people to learn never to double click on email attachments from strangers, or even from friends if the message seemed off kilter. Based on what we are now seeing on Twitter (remember Twifficiency, anyone?) and Facebook (second most targeted phishing site) there is a new learning curve to climb.

Some advice, to minimise the risks:

• Don’t experiment with new services from your official brand accounts. Either wait and Google the service to see if other users have tried it, or experiment using a dummy account.
• Use common sense and knowledge about your friends and followers to make a judgement call on whether or not following that link or installing that app might really get you a new, shiny iPad. If it sounds to good to be true…
• Regularly review your user profile with regards to which services or apps you have authorized to access your account. If you aren’t using a service any more, always revoke their access. In Twitter you do this under “Settings”, “Connections” while in Facebook you go to “Account”, “Application Settings“.

Be safe.

In other online marketing, technology and restaurant related news:

Related to the above note on social media security, last week I got an email about updates to the Twitter URL shortening service t.co. In a push to increase clarity and safety, Twitter.com will start showing the domain behind a shortened link so you as a user more readily can see where a link will take you.

Great analysis on the battle for the local advertising market: Google Places vs Facebook Places, Search vs Social. This is a discussion you as a restaurateur can’t afford not to keep tabs of.

While the battle of location based marketing is interesting, what does it mean in real world terms? Check out these 5 ways restaurants (small businesses) can offer location based deals. Practical ideas you can leverage today.

In Chicago restaurant goers tap into the location trend and help each other find up to date information on waitlists at popular restaurants. Using an iPhone app developed for the purpose, waiting times are crowdsourced and plotted on a map for all users of the app to see. Very clever!

The secret behind successful crowdsourcing is to a) make it useful for all involved and b) make it as easy and effortless as possible to contribute. Gowalla, one of Foursquare’s major competitors in the location based social media world, recently made it real easy to describe the place you are in using something called “Highlights”, like little “rewards” you can award the place you are in if you like it. Personally I prefer the Foursquare way of leaving text based “tips” and “to dos”. As these require a bit of effort from the visitors there may not be very many of them, but the ones that are there really add value. It is more useful to me to know which dish is great, rather than “this place has been awarded the real good food reward by 12 people” (exemplified by my recent visit to Siam Central: drunken noodles and tamarind duck, yum).

Last week lastminute.com released their “Plate of the nation” report, listing facts and figures and trends affecting eating out in the UK. I can’t find it available for download from the lastminute.com website, but do try and get hold of it as it makes for very interesting reading. The Independent has some of the information.

Larry at startingarestaurantblog.com reminds us that while the state of the economy definitely makes life as a restaurateur harder, it could be worse. And for some restaurateurs, it very much is.

Thinking about re-designing your restaurant website? Smashing Magazine recently presented a selection of appetizing restaurant websites that got their juices flowing.

On a similar note, Social Media Examiner lists the top 10 Facebook Pages and why they are successful. Some great ideas and practical advice on how to give your Facebook effort a boost.

Restaurant concepts come and go, here is one from down under that caught my eye: marrying a restaurant with art, with different photographers curating quarterly exhibitions. Great way to make your restaurant more of a “destination”, might this start a trend?

Are “foodies” going too far? Is there now a group of people taking food and restaurant visits to such extremes that it no longer is about enjoying good, honest food? Leave your opinion here: “Has the foodie backlash begun?”

Speaking of concepts and trends, have you ever wondered how trends in flavours and food grow and sometimes flood the market, becoming the one thing everybody talk about? Here is a clever explanation of restaurant trends in the guise of a job interview.

For fun:

I so wish Improv Everywhere would start a London branch. “How To Make Someone’s Day: High Five Escalator“.

Had only Facebook (and HTTP, and DNS, and IP, and networking, and…) been invented a wee bit earlier we could have had status updates from historical events and characters…

This is a cookery book to my liking: “Cooking for Geeks“. If any of my friends read this, Christmas is just around the corner!

That’s it for this week. Come back Monday next week for a new set of news in restaurant online marketing you shouldn’t miss out on. If you want to get updates of links and comments throughout the week, follow @manne on Twitter (news and blog links mixed with random chit chat ranging from the virtues of low carbing to current events) or on Google Buzz (news links only).

Basically, similar to Foursquare, Shopkick is an app you use when physically at a shop to show you are there and collect points. You can browse specials, earn loyalty points and get real money gift certificates for various actions.

While the name is distinctly strange sounding, the idea is quite genius. As much as location based marketing is all the rage right now, a lot of people feel it is tedious to have to manually “check in” to the venue they are in. Shopkick solve this by placing a piece of hardware in the store emitting a signal, and when a phone with the app installed “hears” the signal things can immediately happen.

Not only does this make the system fairly tamper proof (cheating becomes a lot more difficult than for example with Gowalla or Foursquare), it also makes it possible to “remind” people as they enter a location that they are in a Shopkick-enabled store increasing the chance that people check their phone for information.

I would love to see a restaurant using this. Handing out loyalty points, “Kickbucks”, for repeat visits and then putting barcodes to redeem the “Kickbucks” for their daily specials on the menus…

Check out this overview with step by step photos for a detailed explanation of how it works.

In other online marketing, technology and restaurant related news:

The discussion on Facebook Places continues. So far I have seen very little about actual usage, or interesting campaigns being done. I guess people are still thinking about how best to leverage this. Here a post with interesting perspectives from a few seasoned veterans in the online marketing world.

With the addition of Facebook Places you may have a Place for your brand created by someone else, as well as a Page that you maintain and build “fans” around. You can merge the two, see a good explanation of the process here. It is NOT recommended to do this if you are a restaurant chain with venues in different locations.

In light of all these location based social websites that have launched lately National Restaurant Association ask “Is it time to get geosocial?”

For an exciting example of how your location can be used to bring you relevant recommendations on restaurants, bars, spas and so on, take the local collective intelligence engine Hunch for a spin.

Recent changes in the way Google deals with “brand name searches” , they now list more than two pages from the brand domain if it is clear which brand the search pertains to. This makes it easier to “tidy up” a search result from negative reviews and mentions on other websites than your own.

Google also made some updates and changes to their real time search, showing how important they find searching Twitter and other social media sites is. You can now narrow real time searches geographically, focus in on a specific conversation and more. To me Google Realtime is without a doubt the best way to go and find not only what’s going on right now on Twitter, but also what was said a week or even a month ago.

Last week the layout format for Facebook Pages changed. Perhaps that triggered you to think about what your Facebook Page looks like, and how you can get more use out of it? Econsultancy has a list of 25 inspirational Facebook Page implementations.

And if hacking FBML code in Facebook tabs is not something that gets you excited, here is a list of 12 tools that help you customizeyour Facebook presence. (Reminder: you can use Livebookings to take restaurant reservations on your Facebook Page.)

On the inspirational note, check out this post with examples of how you can use videos to promote your restaurant. Making nice quality videos and publishing them through social services like YouTube or Vimeo can help you reach new web visitors.

New statistics from “ShareThis”; the well known service to add social sharing links to your blog, website or newsletters; shows that email and Facebook are better ways to spread links than Twitter.

Carlo Platia reminds us, clear and to the point, of the importance of maintaining a guest database. It is a long term strategy that may make or break your business.

Interesting development in the field of social gaming (think “Farmville“…): reaching new customers through games where gamers earn virtual cash by buying deals while playing. Rather than battling for attention in crowded email inboxes, peddle your wares in a context that gets the attention…

Lastly, a reminder about the Grapevine Consulting series on blogger outreach where a new post has been published. Follow the series and take the real life advice to heart to make your blogger communication better for everyone involved.

For fun:

The Bon Appetit Foodists ate their way across America to find the 10 best new restaurants. Check out their list for some fresh concepts.

An infographic mapping the check-in data from London’s FourSquare community has been created by PhD student Anil Bawa-Cavia. Are you in a “hot” area?

If you are into Bollywood and really old, crap horror flicks, you might rejoice over the recent addition of full length movies to YouTube. With titles like “Invasion of the bee girls” (Not Safe For Work!) and “Wheels on meals” (Jackie Chan!) this is surely a site for B-movie lovers everywhere!

That’s it for this week. Come back Monday next week for a new set of news in restaurant online marketing you shouldn’t miss out on. If you want to get updates of links and comments throughout the week, follow @manne on Twitter (news and blog links mixed with random chit chat ranging from the best steaks in London to current events) or on Google Buzz (news links only).

This was illustrated in a recent episode of the Radio 4 Food Programme (listen from 16 minutes 50 onwards) in a report from a car park in South London where 100+ food bloggers had congregated to try out the delicacies of a particular burger van, knowledge of which had been spread on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites (The Meat Wagon is on Twitter with @themeatwagonuk).

With 100s and even 1000s of readers, these food bloggers can generate a lot of exposure after posting about their culinary experiences. Just imagine gaining this sort of user driven publicity for your own restaurant’s marketing?

How to reach out to food bloggers

People blog about food out of passion. Not for money, a free meal or to promote somebody else’s restaurant. So it’s imperative to build up trust and rapport with food bloggers before inviting them for dinner.

You can do this by subscribing to their blogs (this list of 50 food bloggers from the Sunday Times is a good starting point) and follow them on Twitter, getting a feeling for what they post and contributing to their blogs by posting helpful, relevant comments. After you’ve built up some familiarity, you can then broach the subject of whether they’d like to review your restaurant.

Bear in mind that food bloggers take pride in providing their readers with honest, objective reviews. They’re under no obligation to sing your praises if they didn’t enjoy their meal, as Cantina Laredo found out after inviting a few food bloggers (among them Lizzie of Hollow Legs, Chris Pople of Cheese and Biscuits) following a Twitter discussion on pricing of some of their menu items.

But if you have a delicious special dish or are confident that you serve the best Sunday roast around, inviting food bloggers for dinner can enable you to reach 100s or 1000s of their readers and gain a boost to your restaurant’s marketing as well as inbound links boosting your search engine optimisation.

Darika Ahrens (@Darika) at Grapevine Consulting recently acknowledged that in general, PR firms and marketers are not great at dealing with bloggers. She decided to be constructive about it, and write a series of blog posts focusing on the good, the bad and the ugly by simply talking to the audience in question and get the bloggers’ view on the topic. Sounds like a great idea, do check in with her updates.

Here you find a selection of links to the best blog posts following last week’s release by Facebook.

Dubbed Facebook Places, the simplicity of it disappointed some and was hailed as genius and radical by others. Rather than competing directly with the similar but still niche services like Foursquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR by offering any functionality around loyalty or gaming, Facebook Places simply lets a Facebook user look up the venue they are in on a map (using their mobile phone), and by “checking in” announcing to their friends that they are there.

More controversial, and adding to the constant buzz about Facebook’s privacy issues, is that similar to tagging your friends in photos you can also tag them with your check in. Yes, users can check other users in at venues, a very aggressive move on Facebook’s part, causing privacy organisations to go up in arms. This does however require that your friend’s privacy settings allow such activities, and they will be asked to approve the check in before it is posted. As usual though, the default privacy settings for this stalkers dream addition to Facebook assume you want to share your data. It is strongly recommended you review your settings, see a great walk through of the privacy settings, also available as a video tutorial.

Rather than shooting existing location based social tools out of the water (Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown and so on after all add a unique twist to the act of checking in that Facebook as of yet is not competing with and in fact they all integrate with Facebook Places) it seems Facebook set their sights squarely on the other two giants in small business local marketing: Google, with their own set of Google Place pages; and Yelp, the online review site who recently also added checkins to their core offering. This opinion is also echoed by HubSpot, emphasizing the huge market opportunity in local marketing spend going online.

That said, with Facebook having unprecedented access to all the data about our lives and friends, this move does beg the question, is it wise to spend marketing time and money on any of the smaller location based networks, or if it is time to delete Foursquare from your phone for good.

Foursquare, being the most successful location based social media startup so far, counters with “We’re here to reinvent what happens after the checkin.”

It is clear that Facebook is placing a huge bet on location sharing and has worked long and hard on the addition of Places. Along with the US release came an API through which developers can access the functionality and data, making it possible for sites integrating with Facebook to see where their visitors actually are. If you look at the Facebook iPhone app you will also see that the new Places icon is right in the middle of the screen. Furthermore, Facebook recently acquired Hot Potato, an iPhone app through which any activity (reading, music listening, tv watching…) can be shared associated with the user’s location so surely this is merely the first phase of a grander scheme. Makes perfect sense, as location is merely an attribute of what we actually do when we are there. It is what we do at a place, and why, that is interesting and engaging, not where we are.

So what are the consequences of Facebook Places for restaurants? With over 500 million active users on Facebook, location sharing in social media will now quickly pick up volume and go beyond the “early adopter” phase spearheaded by Brightkite, MyTown, Foursquare, Gowalla and others. As Facebook users start adding Places for restaurants, and checking in to restaurants adding comments and tagged friends, the amount of highly targetable and actionable data available to marketers will explode.

So might of course negative comments and rants, and with the ease and speed that they can now reach big networks of connected people it gets increasingly important to have a mental model and process on how to deal with such occurrences quickly.

While it has been said that a Facebook Page for a brand eventually will be able to merge with a Facebook Place for the same brand, initially this is yet another thing to keep track of and “claim” by your business, just like you can claim your Google Place page and your page on Yelp.

If you are a European restaurant, where beneficially this functionality has not yet been released, I recommend setting up one or more Google Alerts on variations of the phrase “Facebook Places restaurant” and read up on case studies, experiences and suggestions as our brethren in the US take the plunge into this new quagmire of terribly exciting local marketing options.

If you only have time to read one summary of the Places functionality, I recommend the “field guide to Facebook Places” published by Mashable.

Finally; as a visual way of presenting the market opportunity mobile, social media and location sharing create; this infographic by Jess3 captures it incredibly well. That’s a lot of people…

In other online marketing, technology and restaurant related news:

This blog is brought to you by Livebookings, Europe’s largest online marketing and reservations service for the restaurant industry. Last week we were proud to announce partnerships with several of the UK’s leading restaurant groups.

Recently released Ofcom report shows clearly how UK use of mobile web and smartphone rockets. Smartphone ownership almost doubled the past year and 13.5 million people now browse the web from their phones.

As an example of how location based social media does inroads into marketing and discount vouchers, Gap recently ran a 25% discount with Foursquare where all you had to do to get the discount was check in.

With the connection between a person “checking in” and actually really being at that place being vague at best (the new Facebook Places even lets you check in your friends, whether they are there or not), should businesses worry about “fake checkins”? No, says Kent Lindstrom, former CEO of Friendster and gives seven reasons why.

While location sharing is getting all of the limelight now, Mashable reminds us that there are other trends in social media we need to be aware of.

Facebook Places is only the latest push in a feature set that has attracted more and more people to the gigantic social networking site. Indeed, AdAge presents compelling numbers that various brands’ Facebook Pages now eclipse their websites and email marketing subscription databases. Also, through Facebook marketers get unprecedented access to customer demographic data. Coca Cola alone has over 10 million “fans” on Facebook, which is more than the location based services Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt have together… What is a “fan” on Facebook worth compared to the value of people going through the bother of visiting a website though? It isn’t like those 10 million Coca Cola fans listen intently to everything the soda maker says.

Clearly social media is a given part of any restaurant’s marketing mix today, but how are you going about it? Feel you need a social media MOT? This social media audit will help you review your activities to find areas of improvement.

Overwhelmed by how many websites and social networks you “should” be signed up to in order to protect your brand name? Mashable list seven services to help you register your name across a range of social media sites.

With your social media and blogging strategy firmly in place, an interesting way to build buzz around your restaurant is to reach out to food bloggers. But please, make sure you don’t go all PR steam engine on them. Here a great interview with blogger extraordinaire Sian Meades providing some valuable insights on how to go about your blogger outreach.

Sian (@SianySianySiany) then followed that up with a blog post describing in her eyes the most perfect PR blogger event she has ever been to: Motorola Milestone.

For fun:

If you are easily offended, do not follow this link. But if you feel you need help kickstarting your next social media push, this site is making your strategy up so you don’t have to. I told you it was rude.

Think you had a bad hang over last Saturday? Check these guys out for support. Little did I know owls are so heavy drinkers. (/via @SianySianySiany)

That’s it for this week. Come back Monday next week for a new set of news in restaurant online marketing you shouldn’t miss out on. If you want to get updates of links and comments throughout the week, follow @manne on Twitter (news and blog links mixed with random chit chat ranging from recent restaurant visits like the glorious Polpetto to current events) or on Google Buzz (news links only).

So, thanks to the UK public’s love of food and eating out, you already have a great head start in ensuring your emails are received and opened by their intended recipients – provided they are executed correctly of course. However, good opening and click-through rates don’t necessarily guarantee an increase in business…

Closing the loop in real time

The three most important questions to ask yourself before writing, designing and sending an email are:

1) What action do I want my customers to take when they receive my email?
Or in marketing terms, what is the ‘call to action’? e.g. Making a booking, becoming a Facebook fan or Twitter follower?

And

2) Can the customer actually complete that call to action quickly and easily?
Are you actually closing the loop on the sale? Growing your fans, followers and database right there and then? Don’t forget, your email recipients may not be opening your email when your restaurant is open, so make sure you include a link to make a confirmed booking online (not just a telephone number that may ring through to an answerphone).

3) Can my email recipients forward and share my email to friends and colleagues easily?
Don’t forget to add social network sharing links to your emails to increase distribution – if you have a strong call to action, people will want to spread your words to their friends. Make it easy for them by including a link to Twitter or Facebook.

You have a matter of seconds to attract attention and get the sale before they get bored and delete the email. Make your call to action obvious, measurable and immediately actionable – in real time.

For some great tips on planning and executing the ultimate successful email campaign, come along to our next FREE Livebookings Academy in London. Register online today at www.livebookings.co.uk/news_and_events

Knowing how to attract new customers to your restaurant’s website through these social media sites is crucial in today’s techno savvy world – generating both interest in your restaurant and covers booked.

Video summary of Livebookings Academy, 3rd of August 2010.

The fact is that anyone can post comments online, which are then shared with 100s or 1000s of people. This is great when they’re telling people about the delicious meal they had, but it also means that complaints can spread like wildfire and, potentially, harm your reputation.

How to use criticism as a restaurant marketing advantage

Facebook - If someone has posted a negative comment on your Facebook fan page the temptation will be to delete it. This can, however, backfire, if it triggers the customer into then posting worse comments elsewhere. The best policy is to respond in a calm, objective manner and explain how you’ll put right whatever it is that went wrong. The added benefit of this approach is that it can enhance people’s impression of you as a restaurant that listens to its customers and strives to ensure every customer enjoys their meal.

Twitter – Twitter applications, such as Tweetbeep or Twilert, will send you email alerts whenever your name is mentioned. You can then respond by sending a public reply by starting your tweet with the “@” symbol followed by the user’s Twitter name e.g. ‘@daveatron Sorry to hear you weren’t happy with your meal. If you can contact us we’ll explain how we aim to make it up to you’. As with Facebook, responding in a polite, helpful manner can help boost your restaurant’s marketing when the customer then posts a Tweet, singing your praises, on your excellent customer service.

Internet in general – The internet is a vast place and you might think that tracking what people are saying about you is an impossible task. However, you can set up listening posts with Google Alerts. You’ll then receive daily emails telling you whether your restaurant was mentioned and where. You can then politely respond to comments, protect your brand and use criticism as a restaurant marketing advantage.

Using it as feedback – It’s natural to see negative online comments, reviews and criticism as a bad thing. But rather than cursing the fact that anyone can post anything, start seeing ths feedback as valuable customer insights.

More often than not, a negative review is based on customer expectation and business delivery not matching up. There is perhaps a gap between what your marketing promises and what your business delivers . Use the transparency of social media to tap into what customers really experience and use the insights gleened to improve your business!

If you have followed our instructions on how to add Livebookings to your Facebook Page, you do have a custom tab.

As a Page administrator you need to be aware that Facebook are about to change the layout of Pages, launching a new format the 23rd of August.

Basically:

• Custom boxes in the sidebar to your Page will disappear.
• Column width for tabs is made more narrow (520 pixels).
• The “Boxes” tab will disappear.

You can already preview these changes in the Facebook Page editor tool. Make sure that you review your Facebook Page to verify that everything still works, and that all content is accessible after the changes.

The HubSpot Blog has a great post explaining what you need to do, also check out some helpful tips in the comments, like using the “About” box in the sidebar and the “Info” tab to link to custom tabs and other websites.

There are a few compelling reasons why Livebookings need to support this, the biggest of which simply is because so many of potential guests today clearly are using Facebook. More and more people turn to Facebook to share experiences, get trusted opinions on places to go to from their friends, and even follow brands for the latest news and offers.

Another good reason is that OpenTable also do this, and then of course we have to follow suit. I have to hand it to them, they make an excellent job at being where people are: mobile platforms and social networks like Facebook are clearly important business channels for restaurants today.

In the case of OpenTable, they have built a Facebook application that can be added to your Page (provided you are an OpenTable customer of course). We have decided to take a slightly different route, and while it may be a bit more technical in implementation, it allows for far more customisation and even allows you to publish any information or design elements you want next to our incredibly easy to use booking tool, supplying the same great experience as on your website.

Even if you are a restaurant group, using the same Facebook Page shared between several restaurants, you can design your Facebook Page reservations tab to allow for easy selection of a restaurant, and then the diner can book their table direct through Facebook.

Are you on Facebook? Check out the instructions on how to add Livebookings to your restaurant’s Facebook Page right here on theblackboard.net. If you try, leave your questions and experiences in the comments of that post!

Before moving on to this week’s news round up, I recently read an article on Groupon (“Growing with Groupon may be tricky for businesses“) that made me realize the potential dangers of doing massive discount offers in an online space. While it can bring tremendous volumes of new business it can also bring a business completely to its knees, trying to cope. It is a bit like the real world equivalent of being “slashdotted“, a tech geek term referring to what happens when a web site with lots of visitors links to a smaller website, flooding their web server with unexpected traffic making it impossible to access it.

If you can’t accommodate for the upsurge in customer demand, not only may you miss out on the effect of your promotion, it may even lead to very negative comments as a bad experience spreads so quickly over Twitter, Facebook, review sites and other social networks today.

Randomly the article also made me think of some of the insights from the great post “Understanding the Digital Natives“, about people growing up breathing and thinking social networks, viral like spread of interesting ideas and online games. To a lot of young people, everything is a game. Spend an inordinate amount of time finding the best deal, then make sure to really get as much as possible out of it. Quoting from the Groupon experiences article:

Greg Gibbs, owner of Chicago Bagel Authority in Lincoln Park, felt this pain firsthand when he signed on with Groupon for a deal-of-the-day in January. His promotion, which cost $3 for an $8 voucher good for any menu item, sold nearly 10,000 Groupons, 10 times more than the top end of Gibbs’ expectations. …

“We just don’t get the kind of customer that we want to come back,” said Gibbs, who saw patrons put items back if their total exceeded $8. “It’s a lot of people that come once for the discount, nobody tips, and they’re all trying to squeeze it into the exact dollar amount.”

Good advice in the article is to make sure you have thought through your goals around the promotion before you take the plunge, and made sure that you collect details from the guests so you can work towards getting repeat business once the voucher campaign is over.

In other online marketing, technology and restaurant related news:

Speaking of Groupon, there has been a bit of buzz about OpenTable’s foray into the voucher world with their new scheme “Spotlight”. While OpenTable is considered uniquely positioned to offer up deals based on real time restaurant availability (we of course would like to point out that there is at least one other company in that position…), the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Twitter, as always, featured heavily in last week’s online marketing news. New feature: “fast follow“, get updates via text messages from Twitter users without being a Twitter user yourself. Would drive me mad, but maybe makes sense as a way to follow news and deal tweets from brands?

Twitter recruits heavy hitter advertising sales people from Facebook and Yelp, time to really ramp up the sales efforts in their schemes to monetize the fast growing social network?

Larry Edger writes a good restaurant perspective on the use of Facebook and Twitter, the advantages and differences between the two. He also emphasizes the fact that with a strong and thought through social media strategy, you get a good chunk of “mobile marketing” as a bonus as social media often is consumed while on the go and has excellent support for location based publishing.

And if that isn’t a great segue to this post from Econsultancy on the importance of having a social media strategy and not a Facebook fumble, I don’t know what is. Using social media to drive business is a long term game, which requires you to be in it for the long haul with a thought through and consistent effort. Taking the easy route and just being on the most talked about social networks du jour may not at all be the right thing to do.

Foursquare is definitely the most talked about social network right now, and Zagat just hit 50,000 followers begging the question if Foursquare now is mainstream. I would respond a clear “no” to that question, but I still do think that the location based marketing trend is one of the most important ones for restaurants to keep a close watch on.

To get started with that, check out this post on how restaurant brands get value out of location based networks like Gowalla, My Town, SCVNGR and Foursquare.

Discussions on social media and privacy issues continue, and rightly so. Does Foursquare have a “stalker problem”? Well, if anything, social media is a “stalker playground”, but it is important to keep in mind that for most of the time publishing of personal information is willingly made in order to stay in touch with friends and relatives. But yes, there probably will be many more occasions of people unwittingly sharing a little bit too much.

When it comes to trust online, a recent study shows the importance of being honest in your brand communications. Quality content and stellar customer service isn’t enough, apparently, you have to *gasp* be honest and fess up to the fact that there are negative as well as positive sides to your business. Nobody is perfect, and we automatically get suspicious of a too polished surface.

Restaurant marketing isn’t the only discipline evolving as a result of social media, search may also be changing. With the amazing spread of the Facebook “Like” button, could “Like” replace the “link” as the best bet on what content really is most relevant to people? Don’t hold your breath though, while Facebook search is growing rapidly, it is still but a fraction of Google. I also think it is important to keep in mind what intent is behind a search, in order to consider it of potential value to a business.

With that in mind, check out this great overview of how to increase your organic search traffic through getting the right keywords into your content. If you find that topic interesting, I’d like to remind you about one of the most popular posts here on theblackboard.net: “Get more restaurant reservations by writing great content“.

It is easy to forget about the old work horse the email newsletter in all this social media hype, but don’t disregard it yet. A few weeks ago there was much talk about Ben & Jerry’s, the world’s coolest ice cream brand (pun intended), ditching email completely for social media. Turns out it wasn’t entirely correct. Kate O’Brien, Ben & Jerry’s Global Marketing Manager, sets the record straight and shares some valuable experiences in this Econsultancy interview.

If you do run a newsletter as part of your online marketing strategy, make sure you get the details right. Copyblogger shares 5 reasons why no one reads your email newsletters, and what to do about it.

For fun:

Spitalfields Life interview Fergus Henderson, of St John fame. Excellent post on the virtues of being a bookworm, and living out your restaurant management strategy through books.

Most interesting restaurant review I have read in a very long time was posted by Anthony Silverbrow (@Silverbrow) last week as a result of a lovely visit to the River Cafe. It starts “Am I a tosser?”, and only gets better from there.

Finally, a fantastic example of a viral social media marketing campaign. Perhaps you saw the HOPA girl, who quit her job through a series of photographs… Well, turns out it was a hoax, and a masterfully executed one at that. Made me laugh, and made her famous.

That’s it for this week. Come back Monday next week for a new set of news in restaurant online marketing you shouldn’t miss out on. If you want to get updates of links and comments throughout the week, follow @manne on Twitter (news and blog links mixed with random chit chat ranging from my love of pork to current events) or on Google Buzz (news links only).