Traditionally for restaurants, hotels and other food and wine related brands, the lead up to Christmas is the biggest revenue generating time of the year. Unlike a number of other industries, it also offers the highest spike in social media use as social commitments go into overdrive.
And we all know what people who enjoy food and wine love to do – share!
They share information about their favourite bottle of wine, their latest restaurant experience, take photos of meals and talk with other passionate people on the subject; and they’re doing it all via social media.
So if you manage digital marketing for a restaurant, hotel, food or wine brand, now is definitely not the time to put your social media on autopilot or just go dark.
This is the time to capitalise on all this traffic and build strong brand ambassadors and your community.
The Holiday Season is the time to get creative, communicate and go viral.
How can you do this?
Keep a Human at the Helm
First thing to do is to put a person in charge of your social media – don’t just leave it on autopilot.
Its fine to have posts & tweets scheduled (actually it makes good sense), but ensure that someone in listening, monitoring, replying especially if a dilemma is encountered.
With all this extra traffic through your doors, the urgency of the moment; harried and tired staff; things may go awry.
Good customer service does not end once your customer has left the building [TWEET THIS]
Your social media channels are a perfect opportunity to offer customer assistance and if things do go awry, social media will be one of the first places a complaint is made – very publicly.
Having a responsible person on hand to monitor and manage social media, answer customer queries or alleviate a looming crisis, makes sound sense.
Have a crisis management plan
No point having a human at the helm if they don’t know what steps to take in a crisis.
Technically a crisis management plan should cover major events that threaten to harm the organisation, such as natural disasters.
However, an unanswered bad review or customer complaint can cause major damage, so create and rehearse a plan for recognising and dealing with a disaster.
As we mentioned, social media is the first place customers turn in a crisis situation.
The earlier your respond, the better!
Allocate resources accordingly
By now you realise that social media is a valid tool to connect, engage and build your audience, but it’s not free!
The platforms themselves may still be free to use if you don’t pay for advertising, but everything else costs – yes your time to create quality content, time to manage, time to measure and the list goes on….
If you’re not allocating resources to your social media marketing especially through the biggest revenue generating time of the year, chances are you’re losing out on valuable opportunities.
The Silly Season is an opportune time to boost your sales, customer loyalty and overall brand perception.
Until next time…..
