We are very pleased to announce the availability of our Closed-Loop Marketing (CLM) platform!

This landmark platform is ready for restaurant industry Merchants to use—providing single view of their Consumers, and only one database to manage! We take information from different applications or programs such as gift cards, loyalty and reservations, and combine it with data from the POS to gain insights into Consumer behavior and preferences. All of this information “fuels the loop” in our innovative platform. With these insights, for the first time Merchants can really know the value each Consumer brings and can create automated, targeted marketing to stay top of mind with their Consumers.

While it sounds logical and straightforward, the reality is this technology took some time to build, so we’re excited for this accomplishment but we’re already working to take our Closed-Loop Marketing (CLM) platform to the next level.

What we’re all about

Our CLM platform allows Merchants to bridge online to offline, or connect clicks-to-bricks.  So in other words, we help find Consumers, create a call to action, learn about their behaviors or preferences, and then remind them to come back with relevant communication and offers. In restaurant speak – we get butts in seats, more often and spending more!

The list of applications within our CLM is growing, but the ones available now include:

1. Loyalty
2. eGift
3. Guest Management which includes:
   • Reservations
   • Wait List
   • Mobile Notification
   • Table Management
4. Online Ordering

The loop continues to grow stronger and stronger as new Consumer information is gathered.  So how does all this information end up in one place to manage? revenuePWR™ sits at the core of our Closed-Loop Marketing platform, and integrates the data from different applications and allows Merchants to sort and segment their Consumers. In addition to the power of having all your information in one place, revenuePWR™ also allows you to do a ton more.

Additional features and functionality:

• Intelligent Marketing Engine (iME): sort and segment Consumers
• eMail: connect with Consumers in a cost-effective manner
• Text Messaging: mobile marketing to connect immediately with people on the go
• Social Media Manager: engage with your community in Facebook and Twitter – all in one place!
• Landing Pages: engage consumers and track effectiveness of marketing efforts
• SEO Services : SEO web page templates, applications link creation for placement on your web page, and Local Search enhancement

What it means to you

What does this announcement mean? It means no more waiting… the technology is deployed with some early adopters and we’re working to find more. We are making this technology available to all restaurants to stay competitive and drive sales!

What to expect

Our earliest adopters will be intimately involved with their POS dealer and ProfitStreams initially. As we expand the program, more of the process will be automated and streamlined, but for now we want to make sure it meets and exceeds expectations with more to come!

Pricing and implementation

We have several pricing options to meet different budgeting needs. In addition to a base licensing fee, choose “pay for performance” or fixed fee options are available. Our sales team is happy to discuss pricing in more detail and give you a demo of our platform.

Want to learn more?

Ready to make more money?! Call (888.502.6808), email, send a carrier pigeon or an owl – or just tell us how to contact you.

Our platform puts world class marketing affordably in reach!  Join the adventure with ProfitStreams!

At RetailNow, a large industry conference this year, we took the opportunity to ask people why they belonged to RSPA, the premier POS industry association.  We wondered what the attraction was around RSPA and if it was worth all the time and money for membership and to attend events.  After all, some have been RSPA members for over 20 years, so what keeps them coming back?

To answer the question, “Why RSPA?” we decided to ask the people who would know best – the RSPA membership.  With a camera operator in tow (special thanks to Cory “I Can Do That” Haas!) and a decent microphone, we wandered the show floor and asked people a question “Why did you join or why are you a part of RSPA?”  The video captures their responses and we’re happy to share it with you all!

The simple answer seems to be that there is no better way to -

1. learn about new developments in the POS industry,
2. network with other POS professionals and
3. position your POS dealership to be competitive against non-RSPA member firms.

For us at ProfitStreams, we’re a proud supporter of RSPA and their work.  We have been members for years and support their commitment to promote and support professionalism in the POS industry.

• Location and Search
• Rating Services
• Group Discounts and Coupons
• QR Codes
• Social vs. Media

Location and Search –

Finding a restaurant has morphed to become a far more enriching experience. Location-based offerings such as Foursquare, Facebook Places, Google and Gowalla now leverage proximity, location and search aspects to include specials, reviews and reward systems. For the restaurateur, mobile marketing and social media are most effective when location and search are incorporated—this is a more keen need for this industry than almost any other. Nearly 40% of mobile searches are related to finding restaurants, so restaurants need to make sure they are being found in geo-search services. Consumers proved this year they want real-time options nearby and want reviews to be easily accessible. We see the mobile proximity marketing arena continuing to transform as smartphones become the norm.

Rating Services –

Rating sites continue to gain popularity among Consumers. Our expectation is rating sites are not going to diminish—Consumers view this input as far too valuable in making dining decisions. Yelp!, Google, TripAdvisor, Urbanspoon and Zagat all saw increased activity this year, and as a result restaurants are wise to pay attention to review sites because any Consumer can now be a critic. Now anyone can post a review (good or bad), so restaurants need to watch what is being said so they can engage appropriately. Restaurants taking the opportunity to take a bad review and turn it into a positive situation will see their efforts pay off.

Group Coupons and Discounts –

Love them or hate them, group discount and daily deal sites were a big part of 2011. While there are mixed results from a restaurant point of view, there is no doubt Consumers were ready to flock to the right bargain. According to their SEC filing, Groupon sold more than 28.1 million Groupons in Q1 2011 with over 83.1 million subscribers. They had slightly more than 150,000 subscribers mid-2009! This success spawned several new competitors, including local media companies, Living Social and others.

QR Codes –

The hype going into 2011 was that QR Codes would make a big splash. Unfortunately, we don’t feel QR Codes got the traction needed for broad adoption. We still feel the concept is yet poised for growth, but it may be an improved logo-based interactive tool which earns broadest attention.

Social vs. Media –

Restaurants started to change their perspective of how to use social. In the beginning, many used social media sites as just an extension of traditional media – it was just another way to advertise. In 2011, however, we began to see the transformation of restaurants using social to actually engage in conversations. Restaurants found they could connect more meaningfully with their community by using social from everything from responding to service questions, to identifying and engaging their brand evangelists.

As we wind down 2011, we can’t help but be excited about what 2012 will bring for restaurant social media. While social media made great strides in the restaurant industry this year, we feel the adoption of restaurant social media is still in its infancy. There will be more strategies, tactics and tools available than ever before to help restaurants be successful. We can expect a few bumps in the road and lessons learned, but it promises to be a fun ride.

The push by a Facebooking, Tweeting guru to use the latest and greatest social tech is huge these days. The challenge in finding relevant tactics, however, is that many of these experts have never seen the inside of a kitchen, serving area, or any back-of-house space—so how much can they help?

What seems to be occurring is Merchants are falling under the belief that there will somehow always be an endless stream of new Consumers constantly flowing through the door. This belief can lead to an acceptance of the endless loss of current Consumers and a decision to not invest in the retention of existing Consumer relationships. Tsk, tsk, tsk . . .

We agree new Consumers are important for growth, but if marketing efforts are pushing existing diners out the door in exchange for new ones at a discounted offer, what are we really doing to the long-term success of the business? Are Merchants getting caught up in a craze that is unsustainable? Will Consumers always be an endless stream, moving from one service to another and never returning? How do we take care of existing Consumers, as well as attract new Consumers?

What is well-researched and sustainable in the marketing model is returning Consumers are up to seven times more profitable than new ones, and tactics to entice existing Consumers to return are worthy investments—continuously it’s not just about marketing to new Consumers. Fox Business recently ran a post called “New Customers are Great, But Don’t Forget Your Old Ones” as a reminder, and we agree. <>

They provided three suggested profiles for a Merchant to view these interactions:

• Bonus Customer: A rare breed in Customer circles, and one that, if snared, may only be good for a few transactions, albeit high-value ones.
• Seasonal Customer: Infrequent visitors to the business, these are the Customers who push revenues past the break-even point.
• Bread & Butter Customer: The core Customers of the business; they like what you do and come back to enjoy it.

The profile that delivers consistent and repeatable revenue is the last one, the Bread & Butter Customer. The challenge, though, is how to stay in contact with those existing Bread & Butter Consumers while simultaneously investing to entice new ones. This is the essence of ProfitStreams Closed-Loop Marketing platform that not only automates promotional efforts, but also includes the ability to segment existing Consumers so the right offer gets made to the right Consumer at the right time.

We support this paradigm with core tools in our revenuePWR™ including our powerful Intelligent Marketing Engine (iME).  When you have a system able to analyze recency, frequency, and spend, you can deliver personally relevant marketing messages appropriately with special offers, and invitations automatically delivered to your best Customers on a recurring and continuously profitable basis, while also delivering new offers to new potential Customers.

Often your best Customers do not need a discount incentive to return; in fact, they’d prefer recognition or a VIP event. Aside from determining what offer to make, the strategy behind the initiative is to create a recurring connection with existing Consumers—ideally in a way they themselves have opted in for: text message, email, or even via a social network like Facebook . Once these special offers and invitations are in Customers’ hands, revenuePWR’s™ iME tracks results so you can see which offers appeal most to each segment.

Staying in contact with existing Customers using automation? A good thing . . . when using ProfitStreams™ entire suite of online and social marketing tools all feeding a single Consumer database, freeing you up to run your business—sheer brilliance!

It’s all from ProfitStreams™. Revenue Generating. Measurable. Guaranteed.

Mashable’s 13 Best Practices for Restaurants on Facebook

1. Be Transparent
2. You Must Respond
3. Educate Your Fans
4. Show Off Your Goods
5. Don’t Just Sell – Be Interesting
6. Share Your Press
7. Flaunt Your Social and Digital Savvy
8. Be Consistent Online and Offline
9. Don’t Give Away Too Much
10. Be Charming
11. Respect and Appreciate Your Team
12. Facebook Is Not Twitter
13. Target Consumers With Facebook Ads

Each of these could easily be a blog post by themselves, but we really like that Lauren had collected them together as a nice cheat-sheet for merchants that are just getting underway with Facebook.

We liked this because one of the underpinnings of ProfitStreams Closed-Loop Marketing platform is the ability to support restaurants and merchants with an effective and easy-to-use dashboard to manage online marketing—but especially social marketing—because of its potential as a high ROI channel for marketing investments. Getting tips from others who also keep an eye on this space is like finding a gold nugget!

We reached out to Lauren on Twitter and asked if she might be able to answer a few more questions for us. In a great example of the sharing intrinsic to social media, she responded to our request to answer a few more questions as a follow-on to her post at Mashable (Thank you, Lauren!)

Lauran, thank you for your responses—we know this will help restaurants take best advantage of leveraging social media—and we sincerely appreciate your time!

In summary, Twitter and Facebook seem to be great places for restaurants to focus their efforts, and particular tactics are likely to drive best results. A team can successfully manage an online presence and programming some of your posts can work wonderfully—but not all of them—a personal touch is needed.

Busy almost constantly

WOW! The event is now behind us, and what a great time it connecting with old friends, making new ones. The Point-of-Sale industry is fascinating and is always good to spend time with experts. As part of our wrap-up, we’ve just posted a series of RSPA pictures on our Facebook page showcasing our time in Florida. We also have a couple of videos from the show too (additional to the ones below) that are in post-production now, so keep an eye on our YouTube page (or better yet, subscribe to our page to be notified automatically when we update new videos!)

Summary –

The conference went very well, and we met our ProfitStreams goals for the event. There was a great deal of interest in having the POS system integration to our platform. We had always anticipated this, but RSPA RetailNOW 2011 confirmed it!  The entire Streamer team pitched in to make the event a success. We met with several POS dealers and developers who expressed interest in our Closed-Loop Marketing Platform, and we’ll be connecting with all of them over the next several weeks.

Here is a link to a video thanking all the Streamers for their contribution to what we consider to be one of the most important industry events of the year.

Media Links –

Thumbdrives with the media pre-loaded

In the booth we had several videos looping, each presenting a different aspect or applications and our platform. Here are links to these videos, in case you didn’t get one of the cool little thumb drives we gave out in Florida:

• revenuePWR™ – the platform for ProfitStreams™ Closed-Loop Management (CLM) system
• Ordering – Consumers can place orders from ter computer of their mobile device
• eGift – Consumers can send friends a cup of coffee, a new shirt or anything a retailer carries
• Loyalty – Loyalty integrated to revenuePWR™?  Now there is something to talk about!
• Mobile Marketing – merchants can connect to consumers on what is fast becoming a preferred device
• Guest Management – Restaurants are a big push for the early launch of revenuePWR™ and our Guest Management application stack is pretty powerful

Our thanks to RSPA for a very productive industry gathering! We are already looking forward to next year!

Concept Rendering for RSPA Booth

Our booth will be in space #321 and the team has created a great presence, check out the concept rendering of the booth.

We’re also sharing some of our thought-leadership there with Teddi Davis, VP of Marketing, & Steven Groves, our Online & Social Marketing Strategist and author of “ROI of Social Media: Improving the return on your social marketing investment” (well… that’s me BTW) presenting Monday afternoon on how to develop a social media presence based on ROI. This is  a presentation that will speak to the attendees (POS developers and dealers) about how to use these tools and tactics in a B2B space as well as providing a discussion about how Merchants can do the same to connect to consumers.

The real news, though, is the debut of the ProfitStreams platform to the community at RSPA. We’ll be showing each of the following:

revenuePWR™

This is the core of the ProfitStreams platform and the element that really distinguishes what we do from the competition. You want email marketing that talks to text messaging? Boom . . . you’ve got it in revenuePWR™. You want Ordering to recognize Consumers from your Loyalty program? Pow . . . it’s in there. Need a website to publish your menu, hours of operations, and connect with Consumers? Look no further—we’ve got you covered. revenuePWR™ is the environment that supports a single view of the Customer.  You will not want to miss this debut.

Loyalty

Loyalty has the ability to learn from an integrated POS (we’ll be showing connections to Aldelo, POSiTouch, and a few others), what the Consumer likes and doesn’t like, what they spend, and how often they come in. From this data, it can segment the Consumer into any one of five buckets so a Merchant can make the right offer to the right Consumer, maximizing their relationship with the Consumer. It does a lot more and you can check it out in the product pages of the website at ProfitStreams.com—or just come by and visit with us! We’d be happy to share a demo with you!

Guest Management

When a restaurateur wants to connect with a Consumer, ProfitStreams Guest Management has all they need (well, we think so . . . ) Consumers can make a reservation from the restaurant website or a mobile device, be added to the wait list via mobile when they arrive and receive a page when the table is ready. Host staff can manage the flow of diners and tables through an electronic grease board.   New idea? No. Unique idea? Yep—the integration to revenuePWR™ makes all the difference in a relationship with a consumer.

Mobile Marketing

With 93% of the U.S. population in possession of a mobile phone, texting with Consumers is a sure-fire way to get engagement. Almost every message sent is read almost immediately and our stuff will let a Merchant run a real-time campaign using a half-dozen ways to connect with Consumers and feed results from the campaign to revenuePWR™, strengthening the relationship between the Merchant and the Consumer. Very cool . . .

Ordering

The power of the ProfitStreams platform is designed to get “clicks to connect with bricks” and get butts in seats, but not everyone can come in for the whole retail experience. Ordering allows Consumers to place orders from somewhere else: at home in a browser, on a mobile, or even from a tablet such as the iPad or Droid-powered devices. The restaurant fills the order—pickup or delivery are options they could offer to consumers.

eGift

eGifts provide Consumers the ability to evangelize and promote their favorite businesses to friends, and eGift does it at the speed of electrons! Merchants give up the hassle of managing stacks of plastic cards, and Consumers can buy from the Merchant’s website or via Facebook! Consumers get their eGift immediately via email or text, so they’re happy as clams in the ocean.  Redemption is a snap, too, when it’s connected to the POS.

What else are we doing at RSPA? A bunch of stuff ,and we have a great little gift for anyone coming by the booth too – one we think you’ll find pretty handy (or thumb-y if you will)! Come on by and let’s connect; we’d love to show you our stuff.

Imagine you’re looking for a new home for you and your family. Where do you go first? As a potential home buyer, your likely first step will be the Internet. You’ll check your credit first, and see what kind of homes are on the MLS in the area you prefer.  If you know the area already, it’s simple. If you don’t, you’ll investigate online in search engines, social networks, and maybe a realtor’s website, all trying to gain an understanding of the neighborhood and community. These days, driving through the neighborhood has been replaced by a street view in Google Maps. Eventually you’ll settle on a few representative homes and then, but if you can’t find what you are looking for, you’ll look for a real estate professional.

How do you find one who talks your talk, and is interested in helping you as a buyer? You’ll find many real estate professionals are using blogs to showcase themselves and their business. By reading their posts, you gain an understanding of the real estate pro’s ability to communicate, what kind of homes or geographic area they specialize in, and a sense of their voice and the way they talk. By the time you’re actually ready to call them, having read their posts, you feel somewhat connected to them and know a little about them. Congratulations! You’ve demonstrated very typical online Consumer behavior. Real estate businesses like this model because as personal as the home-buying experience is, realtors want more Consumers who seek them out, plus realtors get Consumers they like because the Consumer has already self-selected themselves to work with the company.

Technology helps Consumers be more connected than ever and many businesses are taking advantage of that connection by seriously engaging a myriad of online communication tools—email marketing is no longer the only tool to make a meaningful connection with the Consumer. In the restaurant world, we use mobile phone texting, tweets on micro-blogs, posts in social networks, and posts in our own blogs. Each messaging media has its own peculiarities for how Consumers find, view, and consume content, and Merchants now have to confront a paradigm they’ve never been educated or prepared to do—think about the Consumer’s experience with the BRAND and how they (the Consumer) want to be engaged.

Studies have shown that by using social media as a part of our overall marketing platform, click-through to the Merchant’s site can go up dramatically. It also shows Consumer fatigue related to messages from brands is greatly diminished and using social engagement channels, a brand can increase the number of touch points by a factor of 5 or 10. What this means is instead of a single monthly newsletter going out, Consumers who opt-in to the brand on Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere can be messaged 5-10 times throughout the same time period and still have a positive perception of the brand and be open to receiving even more contact from the brand!

How this relates to turning the tables is by using social channels more aggressively, Merchants can better set Consumer expectations—dishes that take longer to prepare and are a favorite of the socially savvy Consumer can be positioned as an all-evening affair. allowing both the Merchant and the patron to schedule accordingly. But how are you going to know what your Consumers are interested in and likely to order? Make your entire experience available online: post your menu (always updating to a current version as soon as it’s active), share wait times on a mobile site openly and let patrons add themselves to the reservation book and then to the wait-list when they arrive. This exercise is not about hiding that the wait is 30 minutes . . . it’s bragging about it and backing it up with the service and experience the Consumer is looking for.

When the Consumer has more information, they can respond more in tune with the restaurants needs too—and like the real estate business—bring in more Consumers who know, understand, and want your modus operandi.

You loved playing pretend when you were a child, so just for a moment go back to that simpler time, when the blatantly obvious was… obvious.

Imagine you’ve just started a business and have decided to split your $10,000 annual marketing budget equally between two options:

• “Precisely Measured Marketing” You know what works, and what doesn’t—and you can maximize your ROMI (“return on marketing investment”), or
• “Pay & Pray Advertising” Where you “pay” for advertising and “pray” it moves customers to visit.

What? This is too much to imagine? I can almost hear your thoughts, “who in their right mind would put money into Pay & Pray Advertising—especially, when the alternative is to invest in Precisely Measured Marketing?”

That’s exactly what you should be asking! I told you it was obvious! Unfortunately, Pay & Pray Advertising happens every day, from radio spots to coupon book mailers. For your Marketing Bucket List, let this exercise serve as a challenge to only include efforts that are measurable and drive revenue to your business!

Here are the top three to-do’s for developing your Marketing Bucket List:

1. Review all your advertising channels and ask one simple question, “Can I truly track the ROMI of this advertising method?” For example, while you may be able to observe coupons being redeemed by your customers, how much of your profit is that coupon eating? You need to measure it—if you can’t, how will you know?
2. Calculate how much you are spending on “pay & pray” advertising annually—which is any marketing you can’t measure.
3. Create a plan to reallocate dollars formerly spent on pay and pray to measurable marketing.

For example, you may have spent dollars previously on traditional media, such as radio spots or yellow page listings—where you can’t pinpoint the revenue impact to your bottom line. Instead, you choose to spend those dollars starting a Loyalty program. Now you’re able to collect customer contact information and even email extra special offers to your loyal customers. And that keeps them coming back, and spending more! Your new loyalty program and associated offers are not only measurable, but you’ve paid for the program by spending the money you would have spent on pay & pray advertising!

No more playing pretend, start working on your real-world Marketing Bucket List!

Need more help? We’ll have more ideas in upcoming posts, or visit ProfitStreams.com. Until then, market precisely!

Wait…

You are NOT using it? None of it? Really?

Wadda u thinking!?!

Even though restaurants top search lists and social mobile interactions, many are struggling with what social media means for their restaurant. Many have been slower to adopt to see if this social thing is a fad—but it’s not going away. Many restaurants have not yet taken the initiative, considered the options and sought out the technology, tactics or tools that can be used to take advantage of the unprecedented opportunities to connect with, and earn revenue from, an interested, engaged audience of diners that will willingly opt-in.

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) reign supreme in many a merchant’s mind. Many are a bit freaked out by how complicated it feels, and have concluded that social’s probably not really useful to business. After all, how many local people are there using it anyway? Probably not enough to matter, is there?

Let’s go back to that stat above—there’s a half a BILLION—yes, with a ‘B’—and you can bet, there’s a few of your customers in that number. In other words, this is big enough you need to pay attention! In this post we hope to break down myths and various misconceptions about using social media for business, and confirm why you really can’t afford to avoid it any longer.

Myth 1 – My customers are not using social media

A couple of facts first – Facebook alone constitutes a third of all Internet traffic, and most login everyday. YouTube delivers 100 million views daily. How many of your customers use Facebook or YouTube? Social works because this is where your customers are already! Social can provide any business a chance to connect with current and prospective customers.

The better question, is what’s the best way to connect with your customers? On Facebook there are thousands (I stopped counting after 2,000 names scrolled by) of restaurants positioning for consumer attention. Google reports 4 out of every 10 mobile searches concern restaurants, with consumers looking for information about locations and offers.

It’s probably time to time to get your head out of the sand on this one. Your customers are 1) mobile, 2) social and 3) looking for you.

Myth 2 – I don’t have time to post! Facebook, Twitter, YouTube? Where does it stop?

Priorities help here. You can’t boil the ocean and, likewise, you can’t be EVERYwhere consumers decide to comment or post about you. You can, however, be where they post most often though. Facebook, Yelp, and Twitter would be great places to start.

This idea needs to be broken down into two buckets though: one is where you want to make sure you’re posting, and the other is everywhere else. If you don’t have time for additional social sites (like GrubHub, or Chowhound), at least go get your name or location set aside so someone else doesn’t. We call this ‘establishing your media assets’ for online marketing. Once you have the account, put in a polite message that your specials and offers are posted on another site and invite them there!

There are also some free tools that can be used to manage many, if not all of your properties from a single interface (check out Seesmic, HootSuite or TweetDeck to see what we mean).

Myth 3 – It takes too much time; I have business to run here

If you can afford it, hire a full-time marketer. The rest of us will start by taking a stab at managing our own presence.

The best way forward is managing the time commitment required by first learning the tactics for using social media to be present.  The next relevant tactic is learning how to scheduling some of your posts.

Myth 4 – We’re a full service dining establishment; our customers don’t tweet, blog or Facebook

See Myth #1. The user demographic for social media is very broad, but there’s no doubt early adopters are usually more affluent, more tech savvy, and enjoy sharing unique experiences with others in social media. Why not make it easy for them to do so? A recent article even goes so far as to suggest that affluent buyer have specific behavior that does not require deep discounts or fininacial incentives – their behavior on social networks is more about the brand connection ; 52% of the audience earning over $500K responded that the reason for connection to a brand in social media was about “I love the brand and want to follow it” vs. 44% of the general population wanting to connect with a brand for discounts and deal.

Myth 5 – We have a blog already on our website, why would I need a Facebook page?

If you have a half a billion visitors to your website, you may be sapping off your traffic, but if not, having the two won’t hurt – stats actually suggets it’ll help.

When planning an online presence, the strategy is to manage any Paid Media (buying ads online), and Earned Media (places people can comment to, and about you)—both of which should drive traffic to your owned and operated online properties, like your website and blog.

The Facebook Business Page devoted to your company can present a wide variety of content to draw the consumer in. Then, as they decide to make a reservation or order carry out, they do so at your site (which is just a click away).

Myth 6 – If you post too often, you’ll be annoying

Usually not the case – the people who have decided to ‘Like’ your page, become a ‘Follower’ or in some other way decide to pronounce their affinity for your restaurant, have opted-in to receive your messages. They WANT to hear from you. If they really like what you’re doing, they’ll be sure to tell their online friends too. Will they ‘un-Like’ you if you get too spammy? The short answer is yes, BUT a social message isn’t viewed the same way as being inundated with an email everyday. You keep your audience by posting relevant content on a regular basis, and your consumers will stay with you and share those messages with friends.

Myth 7 – We have to post about our restaurant every day?!

Oh yeah?! Sez who?!

Daily repetition of the same offer is bound to get boring, both for the reader and the company making the posts. So what do you post about? Events both small and large, or even about regular customers (ask first, and be polite) and, of course, special offers qualify as valid content. Consumer adoption of digital still pictures is huge, and they’d love to see your pictures too.

Share pictures and posts about your customers (with their permission), focus on the community around you and look for ways to entertain, educate and add value to the relationship with every post if you can. More than once a week is ideal and this expands as your base of followers grows.

Myth 8 – Once it is set up, our profiles and fan pages can be left alone, except for when we post links

Tsk, tsk, tsk…

See Myth #2. An idle profile is disingenuous, but a profile that is complete and directs visitors to their real target (a place to connect to your brand) is not. Once you’ve established the first two or three online sites you want to get started with, make sure you direct visitors there. On those targeted two or three sites, establish a routine to monitor and respond to posts. A few minutes here and there make all the difference.

Summary

There are a ton of tools out there to help you establish, manage and measure a social presence to connect to your consumers. By starting small, you can easily take advantage of social media to meaningfully connect with your consumers—and that’s good for business!