Partner Views Blog

Last month Henry Blodget, CEO of Business Insider presented The Future of Mobile at their IGNITION WEST conference in San Francisco. In a nutshell mobile is taking off in a big way. Last year the number of smartphones sold exceeded the number of PCs sold. Readers of this blog know that we have been anticipating this for some time. The other piece of information that should be of interest for anyone with a restaurant, bar, pub or tavern is outlined in the Infographic below from lab42’s blog MarketResearch 2.0 Smartphone Foodies. (see below)

During the past few weeks there have been some interesting discussions on the Beer & Social Media LinkedIn Group on breweries and pubs using Twitter as part of their social media plan. If you are at all associated with beer, wine or spirits and social media you may want to check this LinkedIn group out. They are very active and I’ve found the members to be very helpful. Recently one of the members posted a question about starting and managing a Twitter account for a beer wholesaler and received a lot of great advice. I’m going to try and summarize and list the advice given. Now, this will apply to beer wholesalers, retailers, distributors, breweries, brewpubs, pubs, bars and anyone involved in beer and social media. In fact a lot of this advice will transfer to most other businesses. (For more tips look at my blog: 12 Social Media Restaurant Marketing Tips from The Bowery.)

As Sindi Lindberg of SindiwithanS and I are getting ready for our Social Media Marketing Workshop 101 for businesses in the food and beverage industry later this month I have been trying to think of all the ways to use social media marketing for restaurants and other businesses. One application I have been researching lately are QR Codes in marketing. Last week while out for breakfast I saw a sign by the cashier that said “Like us on Facebook” with a QR Code and thought this was great so I whipped out my android and scanned the code. The problem was the code didn’t bring me to the restaurant’s Facebook page, just to www.facebook.com which actually took me to MY Facebook page. I thought that even when it should be easy folks still aren’t getting it right, so I thought I’d write a couple of blogs on QR Codes.

In my last blog Social Media for Restaurants: The Bowery’s Facebook Success we talked with Michael V. Shamah, the Marketing Director for The Bowery in Myrtle Beach, SC, and he shared how important Facebook is to The Bowery’s social media marketing effort. According to Michael “Facebook is the best thing out there for bars and nightclubs.” If posting to Facebook was all that he did Michael could give his job to an intern and go sit out on the beach. Social media marketing however is a demanding mistress but I was able to get Michael to give me this great list of restaurant marketing tips.

Over the next few weeks as Sindi Lindberg of SindiwithanS and I are gearing up for the Social Media Workshop 101 at the Seattle Bartending College I will be taking a closer look at social media marketing solutions for restaurants, bars, pubs, taverns, bistros and other businesses involved in the food and beverage service industry. One of the great parts of my job is the wonderful people I get to meet and the amazing things I get to learn. I just got off the phone with Michael V. Shamah, the Marketing Director of The Bowery Entertainment Group in Myrtle Beach and he taught me a bunch of things. I met Michael through the Beer & Social Media LinkedIn Group and immediately was taken by his enthusiasm for social media marketing. I was also impressed with the Bowery’s nearly 5,200 Facebook fans. I asked him how he did that and off we went on a social media marketing whirlwind.