1) Ask for link exchanges:

It never hurts to ask first. This does not always work, but what do you have to lose? Most people are still courteous and do answer emails. Send an e-mail with a short personalized note asking for a link exchange. If you are just starting out, it’s good practice to link to others first, wait a little while, and then ask for reciprocation. Look at the site first, if they do not have a blogroll or links to other blogs, then don’t waste your time. If their not linking out to anyone else, then they probably wont link out to you, much less respond to your email.

2) Quality content is key:

You have heard this one a million times before, but there is a reason why. Your content defines you and the message you are trying to convey. Quality gets noticed above anything else. Create newsworthy, thoughtful, intelligent content that has immediate usefulness. Give people a reason to share and bookmark your site. Give people a reason to keep coming back for more. If your blog is informative, original or interesting, people will keep coming back. If your content is recycled or of poor quality, your fighting a downhill battle.

3) Separate personal from professional:

Maintaining a balance is very important. There is nothing wrong with straying off course every once in a while. If posts of a personal nature are imperative to you, and must be publicly published with some frequency, create a new blog for it. The occasional blog postings of baby pictures or a family outing is nice, they expose the human side of you, which everyone reading can in some way, shape or form, relate to. The same goes for bloggers who must auto-import bookmarks and tweets into their blogs, put it on a separate page, or minimize it to your sidebar.

4) Be a two-way blogger:

There are two types of bloggers. One way bloggers and two way bloggers. One way bloggers are basically just talking to their readers. While there is nothing wrong with that, the more experienced you get, the more you move up the food chain. By nature, this will lead to less interaction with readers. This is especially true when you are just starting out. It’s crucial that you be a two way blogger. Two way bloggers engage with their readership, rather than one way bloggers who just talk to their readers. This means if people leave comments, take the time to respond. Go a step further, if the readers who leave comments have blogs, visit them, find a topic worthy post and leave a thoughtful comment in return. Encourage your readers to follow you on Twitter, or FriendFeed, and be sure to reciprocate the following. See what we are doing here? We are taking an interest in the reader.

5) Encourage comments:

Interaction with your readers, by encouraging commenting, is very important if you are seeking sustained long term repeat traffic. Ask questions in your post. Ask the readers for additional tips or thoughts on the story subject. Do not require registration. Make commenting easy and not a chore. Shine the spotlight on your blog’s top commentators. Most third party commenting applications such as Disqus offer sidebar widgets that will allow you to do this. There areWordpress plugins available as well.

6) Empower your readers with the tools for promotion:

Let your readers promote your content by bookmarking and sharing your content. Add to your blog and postings promotional tools such as social sharing and bookmark services. I would recommend addthis.com, but there are plenty to choose from. Lets face it, people tend to be lazy, why not make it easier for them. Also make sure to clearly place RSS icons and text links on your blog. This makes it easy and also encourages people to subscribe to your blog.

7) Don’t forget SEO, at least the basics:

By default if you are blogging, you are somewhat ahead of the game in terms of optimizing your content for search engines. But regardless of what type of site you run, paying attention to the basics of SEO will generate more organic long term search engine traffic. You must ensure that your page titles, headlines, url formatting, and content, all contain the blog topic relevant keywords or phrases.

8) Establish and build power passports:

Just as you would need to establish your credentials in the form of a passport when flying to a foreign country, the same is true with the territories we embark on in social media. Passports are the social profiles that we create on other social networking sites and platforms. Other than a blog for the most part, these are our online credentials. Your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google profile are all passports. More importantly, they are all sources that generate search engine traffic. The sites mentioned above are all authoritative. As a result, links established on those services rank higher in the search results. Consistency is the name of the game. All of your online profiles should share the same information. Make sure to use the same usernames. If possible, use the same profile pictures, logos, and contact info. Always link back to your blog, and your other passports. Maintain a recognizable, uniform presence across all social networks, professional and personal.

9) Develop relationships with other bloggers:

Successful social media marketing/branding/self promotion or whatever you would like to call it, is always a two way street, never a one way. It’s actually about giving more then you get. When first starting out, it’s vital that you develop friends, a following and a network. This will take weeks to months, and that’s okay. As with life, offline relationships take time to form, grow and blossom, the same is true for online. Just because you decided to follow me on Twitter, or FriendFeed, does not mean we are instant friends. You have taken the first step, which is good because it shows that you have expressed interest in me or my content. The next step is staying on the blogger’s radar. Most likely some of the bloggers you decided to follow will already have an established and large active following. With that being said, sometimes you might need to stand out from the crowd to get noticed. The easiest way of doing this is by participating in the blogger’s circle. Leave thoughtful comments on their posts, retweet their content, and share their content. Fill the vacant slots on your blogrolls with links to their blogs. Lastly, show them some real link love. Write a blog post and positively link to them. Your network can make you or break you in some respect. Associate with the wrong people, and risk damaging your brand, and wasting your time in the process. Associate with like minded thinkers and doers, and propel yourself forward, it’s really that simple, I promise you. The name of the game is time. If you are willing to contribute and spare a lot of it, it will payoff in the end. These means do justify their ends.

10) Use your treasure chest wisely:

Learning about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site is just as important as anything else. It starts with a good analytics package. The treasure, your traffic data, lies inside. Two points I will touch upon with this is the ability to track search engine traffic by keyword, and the ability to find anyone and everyone who has a link to your site. Establish relationships/linkbacks with the sites linking to you. You can also gauge, track and readjust any SEO marketing efforts. The driving point here is you need direct access to url referral tracking. Use widgets such as MyBlogLog to help build community on your site. However, it also serves another purpose, which is that it tracks and reports incoming urls to your site (how people got there) and what they clicked and viewed on your site. Be as informed about your traffic as you possibly can. Never be too afraid to step out of your comfort zone and experiment with new technologies.

You have heard it before a million times, register a .com domain name. The domain spelling should be as equivalent to someone typing that word in a search engine. It should be relatively short and easy to spell as well. Try to avoid hyphens and or any unnecessary or unusual character variations. Most search engines still to this day give a lot more weight to .com extensions, as opposed to other TLDs. Keeping the domain name easy to spell and avoiding hyphens is more for branding purposes, than SEO. Search visibility can still be achieved with a confusing, long character riddled domain that makes no sense at all, but will someone be able to find it, and most importantly remember it without the assistance of a search engine?

2) Establish quality inbound and outbound links.

Search engines, more specifically Google, ranks your site based on the amount of inbound links it has from other sites. Spend time and get authoritative sites linking back to you. Inbound links from these sites are worth their weight in gold. Links from an authoritative site also influence ranking. More weight is given to these inbound links because these sites are considered a trusted and or leading source as they are considered the most influential on a particular subject matter, e.g.Wikipedia.org

3) Understand PageRank.

Websites that Google believes are important and influential receive higher PageRank. A Higher PageRank can influence better search results and rankings. Authoritative sites, for example, usually have a high PageRank. PageRank is worth taking note of, but should not be your main focal point. You can check a site’s PageRank by going here, or by installing the Google Toolbar.

4) Put relevant keywords on all of your Web addresses.

Make sure any content you publish on the web has the keywords of the subject or story headline formatted in the permalink/web URL. If your are writing a post, for example, about how FriendFeedwas just acquired by Google, you would format the URL similar to this, http://www.yoursite.com/friendfeed/google-acquires-friendfeed.html, or http://www.yoursite.com/google-acquires-friendfeed.html. Notice the sub-directory in bold has the keyword of the story subject. Take advantage of whatever you can to give as much URL mention of the target keyword as possible.

5) Headlines and page titles should always contain the target keywords.

In combination with having the relevant keywords in your URL, the same emphasis, if not more, needs to be placed on placement of keywords in your headlines and page titles. If you do no optimization at all, at the very least always practice these three guidelines. It’s also a good idea to put the relevant keywords of focus first in the headline and page title, and if possible somewhere in the start of your story content. Failure to practice these guidelines will leave your site buried pages deep in the search results, rendering it almost nonexistent, at least to the search engines.

6) Start a Blog.

Blogs are a major source and very relevant source of information for millions of people daily. Blogs are also influencing consumer’s decisions to buy products. Think about the last time you searched for something on Google. There is a high probability that you found your information on, or were referred from a blog. Search engines, specifically Google love blogs for the rapid amount of fresh and timely content they produce. Setting up a blog is very easy, and if tweaked correctly can be a powerful tool for search engine traffic generation. Configure your permalink structure immediately after installing your blog. Spend five minutes tweaking the basic admin settings. I would also recommend installing and using plugins such as the “All in One SEO Pack” available for WordPress. Now you can focus on producing the quality content that will get your site linked to and noticed. Give and get as much “link love” as possible. Become an expert in your field and let your content reflect that. Use the power of RSS to convert that search engine click into a return visitor.

7) Use keywords as anchor text when linking.

Anchor text is weighted highly in search engine algorithms and subsequent search results. Anchor text gives the user and search engines descriptive information about the content of a hyperlinks destination. Use Anchor text keywords, especially as often as possible when linking to pages. Avoid using “click here” at all costs, this will do nothing to increase or improve visibility.

Install Web Analytics software.

Flying blind is foolish. You need to first measure, and understand your traffic patterns and behaviors before you can seek to improve it. Installing Google Analytics should be your starting point.

9) Utilize Sitemaps.

Sitemaps, are basically a list of all the pages pertaining to a particular site. This protocol allows you to notify Google about URLs on your website that are available for crawling and indexing, that may otherwise have not been discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process. They also should help with getting your site crawled in a more timely fashion.

10) Use Google Webmaster Tools.

Google’s Webmaster Tools, allows you to see your website the way Googlebot sees it. The tools provide data on finding out which sites link to yours, finding search queries that list your site as a result and finding which of your site’s pages are indexed, and also showing you any errors Google encountered while crawling your site. Those are the core features, but there is more under the hood. The goal is to make your site as Google friendly as possible. The more data you are armed with and utilize, the better your chances are for higher visibility in search results.

11) Produce and publish quality content with some frequency.

Write quality content and publish on a regular basis. Sites that publish more frequently are seen as more reliable than sites that seldom do. This also helps for you to increase the amount of content on your site, which in turn yields more indexed pages, which then yields more visibility, increasing the quantity of search clicks to your pages.

12) Use Headline tags.

Headline tags (h1, h2, etc.) are a great place to use your targeted keywords, phrases and secondary keywords. Search engines recognize that headline tags are more important than the surrounding text, therefore they assign greater value to keywords found within them.

13) Don’t forget about the other engines.

Google, the gorilla, produces the biggest quantity of search traffic for the majority, but don’t forget about Yahoo & Bing. It’s at least worth the effort to stay current on both of their publishing guidelines. Yahoo has a resource for web publishers, as does Microsoft to help you better optimize your pages for their engines.

14) Consistency is the name of the game.

Focus on what works and run with it. There is not one single magic bullet for achieving better search results. It’s a combination of these practices and understanding what criteria the search engines look for when indexing your pages. Search is all about optimizing for the relevant keywords or phrase, master this practice and it will pay off. Don’t expect results instantly. It takes time to build up your content, establish inbound links, tweak and re-tweak.

15) It gets better by using social media.

Guess what? If you are active in social media, you are probably already ahead of the game. Social networking profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter all get favorably indexed, and always rank on the top of the search results. This is especially great if your goal is for personal branding. Being active and maintaining consistency, should easily allow you to own your name in Google. Social media is probably the most invaluable tool you could use for traffic generation, if executed correctly. User generated content and the applications that power them such as, blogs, wikis,video, social networking sites, bookmarking, microblogging, etc are the leading mechanisms for search engine traffic, and will only increase as time goes on.

“We recognized the opportunity to provide a free application to shoppers looking for ways to earn money as they shop and share with friends. This was the spark that became ShopBest,” said Devon Cohen, chief executive officer for ShopBest. “You can’t say no to free.”

Providing a Valuable Service

The executive team at ShopBest identified online shopping as the fastest growing segment of the retail industry and harnessed the potential of patent pending technology to provide a unique opportunity. Their mission was to provide consumers a way to earn money by doing what they normally do; shopping and sharing.

“ShopBest was designed to eliminate the negative aspects of network marketing. There are no overpriced products to sell, no inventory to stock and no high pressure selling,” explained Cohen. “ShopBest is safe, easy and effective with free registration and cash back savings on over 1,800 retail sites.”

The ShopBest Experience

At its core, ShopBest couples the power of cash back shopping with multi-level marketing that allows users to connect to each other, share valuable retail insights and make money. An interested shopper downloads the toolbar and shops online while the program identifies participating stores, collects cash back points, identifies special discounts and stores the information for the participant’s next experience.

As shoppers browse for items ranging from toiletries to automobiles, points are accumulated on the toolbar that can be used to trade for gifts or money. ShopBest even awards shopping points for sharing free toolbars with other users.

ShopBest’s Mission

ShopBest is a multi-level marketing company which combines shopping and saving with exclusive retail offers that are available for use at well-known websites. ShopBest leverages online retail with social media to help people make money by rewarding shopping habits and new user referrals. The organization also gives back, contributing 10% of its corporate profits to selected children’s charities recommended by valued distributors. Founded in November 2009, ShopBest is planning a national launch for March 2010 in Las Vegas.

This week Business Leader also named Pierson Grant CEO Maria Pierson one of the Movers & Shakers for 2009. Along with business partner Jane Grant, over the past 15 years Pierson has grown the agency into one of the top independent public relations agencies in the country. The Movers & Shakers Award was bestowed upon leaders who generate significant business growth for their company, demonstrate business achievement in the industry and/or community and make an impact in the community. Another Pierson Grant client, Kelley Shanley, CEO and president of the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, was also named to the list.

Pierson has orchestrated award-winning PR and marketing campaigns for clients, most recently winning a national Clarion Award in the category of Online Marketing Campaign for the Joffrey’s Beta Test on behalf of Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company. In the community, she is the current president of the Coral Springs Community Chest Board of Trustees and is active with Broward Women’s Alliance, Leadership Broward Alumni, Junior League, March of Dimes Building Our Community Awards and the City of Coral Springs Public Relations Advisory Committee. Pierson also commits her time and expertise to the national Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights (PACER) Center’s Bullying Prevention Project Campaign. For more information, visit http://www.piersongrant.com.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (November 16, 2009) – Teachers all around the country are struggling for funds to buy school supplies, but one lucky teacher in Peoria, Ill. hit the educational jackpot. Third grade teacher Christine Rivan of Thomas Jefferson Primary was awarded the grand prize for her entry in Catalogs.com and Nasco’s “Tools for Teaching” contest.” The contest asked teachers around the country, “Why does your class deserve to win a gift certificate from eNasco.com and how will you put the school supplies to good use?”

A committed teacher with a career that has spanned 17 years, Rivan described the overwhelming need for financial assistance due to a devastating fire that destroyed her beloved school.

In her entry, Rivan emphasized her commitment to restoring the supplies to her fire ravaged school. “The community and district have been very kind attempting to donate or purchase whatever possible, which is difficult in these economic times,” Rivan wrote. “Honestly, if I won this money, I would simply turn it over to the principal so that all of our teachers could share the winnings because this fire happened to our school, and we all lost a lot.”

Her essay was circulated around Catalogs.com offices and tugged at the heartstrings of every person who read it, garnering her entry the most votes. As the “Tools for Teaching” grand prize winner, Rivan receives $2,500 worth of school supplies from Nasco.

“We were overwhelmed by the touching stories we received, almost 1,000 entries in all,” said Leslie Linevsky, co-founder of Catalogs.com. “Christine’s earnest plea to help her school survive a tragic fire and her selfless wish to share the winnings with every teacher at Thomas Jefferson Primary is what won her the grand prize. We wish her luck rebuilding the school and helping all of these students succeed in their education.”

Catalogs.com and Nasco also announced the runner-up winner and three finalists. The runner up winner received $1,500 worth of school supplies and each of the three finalists received $500 worth of school supplies:

SECOND PLACE: Kathryn Quigley, Dillard High School, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
FINALIST: Bhavna Rawal, Northbrook High School, Houston, Tx.
FINALIST: Kekai Bryant-Williams, George Washington Preparatory High School, South Los Angeles, Ca. 
FINALIST: Geri Ellner Krim, Brooklyn Collegiate, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Entries were judged on each entry’s persuasiveness, creativity, clarity and demonstration of need. Visit and read the winning entries and the profiles of these five amazing individuals.

1. # #

For 13 years, Catalogs.com has been the Internet’s trusted authority on catalog shopping, attracting more than 800,000 unique visitors each month. The comprehensive website allows consumers to preview hundreds of catalogs and provides the opportunity to receive a specific catalog, shop major and specialty retail websites and find money saving offers from hundreds of merchants.

A North Carolina native, Lennon had been with Pierson Grant for more than five years before opening the Raleigh office.  In her new position, she will be actively involved in strategic planning for the firm’s clients in restaurant and hospitality, high tech, healthcare and education, as well as new business development in the Raleigh market.  A resident of Raleigh, Lennon is a graduate of Elon University with a bachelor’s degree in corporate communications.  She is actively involved in the Junior League of Raleigh and a volunteer teacher for SAFEChild NC’s Circle of Parents program.

About Pierson Grant Public Relations

Pierson Grant Public Relations is a full-service, award-winning PR firm based in Fort Lauderdale that provides representation nationwide for corporate clients in a variety of industries including consumer brands, real estate, restaurants and hospitality, the arts, financial institutions, healthcare and more.

The agency also has extensive Spanish-language capabilities. The agency’s Director of Hispanic Outreach is an experienced professional who works solely in Spanish, generating publicity and reaching out to Hispanic communities on behalf of clients.

Pierson Grant recently established High Impact Digital, the agency’s digital arm which provides leading edge counsel and successful implementation of online strategies. The agency’s Director of Digital Strategy who oversees High Impact Digital is veteran blogger Mike Fruchter.

For more information on Pierson Grant Public Relations, visit PiersonGrant.com or call (954) 776-1999 in Fort Lauderdale or (919) 376-1737 in Raleigh.

###

Chances are that if you are a restaurant, especially a well known, recognized one, people are talking about you online. Make no mistake that there is chatter happening. The question is what type of chatter is it? Good, bad or in between, and how do you plan on dealing with it?

Note: Although this post is about how restaurants can use social media, the tactics and strategies I outline can be used for any industry.

Look and listen first: who is talking about you and what is being said?

Talk is happening everywhere, forums, blogs, comments, review sites, Twitter and so forth. Starting with the basics, Google Alerts should be setup to track any keyword/brand mentions.

The next step is monitoring Twitter. Twitter is the real time watering hole for all types of chatter. It is often the first place that a rant or rave will be mentioned, and from there it can quickly go viral in no time. Once something starts to spread on Twitter, it’s often hard to do the right damage control. It’s imperative that Twitter is monitored heavily and should be priority number one for brand monitoring.

Automation is key, let the tools do the work. Set it and forget it.

Search Twitter for your brand’s relevant keywords and set up RSS feeds to track them in Google Reader. You should also utilize Tweet Beep, a free service that will automatically email you hourly updates when a specific keyword or URL is mentioned on Twitter. This is a tool I heavily rely on for brand monitoring, it works extremely well and allows me to bypass going to Twitter’s website to search.

Conversations are everywhere, that’s where BackType fits into the mix. BackType is a free service that indexes millions of conversations from blogs, social networks and other social media platforms. You can search the BackType website or set up email alerts, it’s not real time but it’s close enough.

These are at the very least the minimum amount of tools you should be using. There are plenty of other tools out there, but they all pretty much do the same thing. My personal preference is using Google Reader or NetVibes as my social media dashboard. The other route is paying for a reputation monitoring service. One that I use and highly recommended is Filtrbox.com. The service monitors a wide scope of the social media sphere, and sends me daily email reports with mentions of the brands that I’m tracking. They are reasonably priced compared to their competitors as well.

Additional platforms and services to be monitoring:

The services I mentioned above cover most of the social media landscape, but not everything. It’s also a good idea from time to time to scan the services mentioned below. The last three on the list monitor pretty much the same social media platforms. They are popular, their user interfaces are different, and they are definitely worth a notable mention.

• Search engines, the main one being Google
• Google Blog Search
• Technorati advanced search
• WordPress.com search
• Micro-blogging applications such as Posterous & Tumblr search
• FriendFeed advanced search
• Delicious search
• SocialMention.com
• Social Media Firehose (Yahoo Pipes)
• Spy.appspot.com

Now that you have looked and listened, it’s time to learn:

So what about all this Twitter chatter?

People who are talking about you on Twitter or any social media network are mainly two things, existing customers or potential customers. Follow back everyone who talks about your brand in a positive manner. After all, these are brand evangelists, it’s word of mouth marketing, and it’s not costing you a dime. Reciprocation shows that you as a brand have taken interest in your customer. Be responsive to this and when applicable engage them in a conversation, or at the very least send them a quick thank you note. You should also identify and develop relationships with your loyal brand endorsers because these people are essentially an extension of your online marketing dept. In addition to engaging these people, reward them with a gift card to your restaurant. Tokens of appreciation go far and are always remembered. If you think they are talking now, just wait until that gift card arrives in the mail. The positive stuff is pretty much a no brainer, but always remember social media is all about the conversations, unfiltered at that. Responding to negative chatter is equally important as well, use these social media tools wisely to handle crisis situations, and avoid a PR nightmare. In the online environment, word spreads at an alarming high frequency, and once it does, there will be very little that you can do no matter how much you try to correct the situation.

Twitter for the most part is a customer service tool as I outlined in the previous paragraph, but it can also be used for marketing.

• Announce the new menu or drink specials of the day
• Promote a happy-hour event or special restaurant event
• Start a promotion called Twitter Tuesday (or tweet ups)
• Solicit ideas for new menu items or specials of the day on Twitter.
• Offer a special prize for people who follow you on Twitter by a specific time and date, to be entered to win a free bottle of wine or gift certificate.

Brand your restaurant’s menu and marketing material with your Twitter account url. Take it a step further and have your Twitter url printed on customer receipts. If you are a QSR (Quick service restaurant) brand your social profiles at your POP (Point of Purchase).

Start a company blog:

A blog can be used for the same things as Twitter, only in much greater detail. Twitter has limitations where as a blog has none. Pictures and videos are just two examples. Use your restaurant blog to showcase customer testimonials, pictures from a specific event, menu items, food & drink recipes, employee bios and over all anything and everything that relates to your restaurant. The possibilities are endless on what you can use your blog for. A suggestion I give to clients in the industry is to start a weekly “Ask the expert” series on your blog. If my restaurant was a Sushi restaurant, I would encourage my customers to ask a Sushi related question and let our star Sushi chef answer them on the blog. The other purpose of a company blog is to generate new content, content that will get indexed in search engines and give potential new customers a way to find you on the web. Every blog post is a gateway into your website, so be sure to optimize your content with the correct keyword branding, post titles, tags and so on. Encourage your patrons to subscribe to your RSS feed and to share your blog’s content. Install ShareThis so that your patrons have an easy way of distributing your blog content.

Reviews, Reviews, Reviews!

Chances are your restaurant is already on review sites like Urbanspoon and Yelp. If it’s not, be sure to encourage your customers to post a fair review. Ask your brand endorsers on Twitter to leave a review, as well as customers in your restaurant. Remember nowadays everyone is a food critic. These online review sites are a big source of customer information and they are global reaching. There will be negative reviews, not everyone can be pleased, no matter the caliber of service you provide. If there is a negative review left, try to reach out to that customer and correct the situation if possible. The goal with a negative review or reviews is to get them buried on page 10. The only thing you can do for this is to provide good service atmosphere and food in the hopes of getting good reviews in front of it. Your brand endorsers will always leave a great review, encourage all of them to visit these sites and post a review as often as possible.

Food is visual, visual, visual!

Your restaurant should have a YouTube channel and photo sharing channel, ideally on a site like Flickr. These social media platforms have two important things, search, and passionate communities. You can use video to showcase restaurant events, provide a visual of your existing menu or new menu items. Do a biweekly show on some of the menu items you serve in the restaurant. Showcase your kitchen talent and break open the kitchen doors. The possibilities are endless, use your imagination. These videos can be embedded on your blog and shared throughout the social media landscape. The same goes for photos. Take pictures of your guests, let them share their experiences with images on your blog. Take pictures of your menu items, signature drinks, kitchen staff, and everything that represents your restaurant.

Embrace and prepare for mobile, it’s here and it’s not going anywhere:

With the advent of the iPhone and the mobile digital revolution, it’s essential that you pay attention to this. Starting with your website, make sure its optimized for mobile devices. We talked about review sites earlier, well guess what, they have iPhone applications, and they are very popular at that. That’s why it’s essential that your restaurant be on these sites. The bigger picture depending on the type of restaurant you operate would be to develop an iPhone application, one where people can easily view your menu options, contact information, and more specifically to place orders. Just look at how much success Pizza Hut is having with their newly released iPhone application, with over 100,000 downloads in the first month. The bottom line is embrace mobile every which way possible.

Get as much data as possible from your customers:

Online this mainly refers to email addresses. Your website should be collecting people’s email addresses. Encourage your existing customers and potential customers to sign up to be notified about any upcoming events at the restaurant. Send out a monthly newsletter informing customers about what’s happening at the restaurant, new menu items, special events, new store openings and so forth. Reward people for subscribing to the newsletter with a gift card or free glass of wine when they come in. Include quality information in your newsletter such as the recipe ingredients of an upcoming or existing menu item, maybe accompany that with a link to an online video or photographs of the dish. I have only touched upon the surface here, but I’m sure you get the picture by now.

In closing:

I could go on and on with this post but I will stop here. Restaurants have an advantage over a lot of other industries that use social media. Why you may ask? Social media is about story telling and visuals. Food is very visual, both physically and emotionally. Food evokes conversations, experiences, memories, and stories that people share. This is what social media is all about.

That’s where Pierson Grant Public Relations of Fort Lauderdale and Raleigh saw an opportunity for Tampa-based Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company. The result was a successful viral campaign that has received a national Clarion Award from the Association of Women in Communications in the category of Online Marketing Campaign.

“Our goal was to grow traffic to Joffreys.com using social media while generating positive reviews, links and endorsements of Joffrey’s Coffee,” said Maria Pierson, CEO of Pierson Grant which recently launched a High Impact Digital division. “We stay on top of trends and have a deep understanding of Web memes.”

Pierson Grant added a new twist to the fact that programmers, Web developers, bloggers and Web 2.0 gurus are constantly beta testing new software.  The agency developed and launched a beta test Web application where anyone with a blog could sign up to “beta test” java – the coffee variety.  Once bloggers signed up, they were shipped a sample of Joffrey’s coffee for them to “beta test” and received a trackback link on the site recognizing they were a part of the test.  The Web application was designed to look exactly like a typical “Web 2.0” beta page and was a humorous and fun play on a popular Web meme.

“The pairing of a beta test with java was a natural,” Pierson said. “The results were amazing including a sales increase of 50 percent for Joffrey’s in the three months after the test began and a 256 percent increase in traffic to Joffreys.com during the time surrounding the test.”

In addition, more than 1,500 bloggers participated and more than 7,000 mentions for the campaign were posted throughout the Internet.  There was coverage on Mashable, CNET, KillerStartups , Marketing.FM, MattsCuppa, MoBuzz TV, Marketing Over Coffee and 150 more creating millions of impressions across platforms.

The campaign also won the Edward Bernays Award from the Gold Coast PR Council in South Florida.

Pierson Grant, with an office in Fort Lauderdale and Raleigh, is one of the top independent PR firms in the country. The full service public relations agency recently launched High Impact Digital which provides a full menu of creative online media applications including social networking and search engine optimization.

###