I’m sure this isn’t a new topic, but I thought I would talk a little bit about brand management online for small businesses.  Many small businesses believe that because they are not using the internet that their business is not being talked about online. This is frankly stupid.  There are many sites out there like yelp and zagat that allow users to create profiles for businesses, services, restaurants, etc. and then vote on their experiences. Also people have their own blogs (like this one!) where they can rant and rave about the guy they bought their new car from or the mom & pop coffee shop they went to last week.  And this doesn’t include forums, wikis, twitters, facebooks, and what have you that let people say pretty much whatever they want.  In other words, just because you are not online talking about your small business doesn’t mean that other people aren’t.  To that end you need someway to monitor what people are saying about your company, or website (if you have one) online.  There are a couple of options here: 1. would be to spend every hour of every day doing google searches, crawling over tweets, facebook, yelp, and all of those other sites mentioned above 2. pay someone to do this for you 3. dupe an intern into doing this for you 4. pick up some software that you have to pay for to do it 5. use Google Alerts.  For most small businesses options 1-4 are pretty prohibitive.  So I’m gonna talk about Option 5.  Google Alerts. Alerts is a free system provided by Google that allows you to enter various keywords and then get either a daily digest or an instant email when something is posted with those keywords.  So what I usually do for my clients is to create a Google Alert with their company name inside of “”. This means that by and large if someone write an article, posts on a forum, etc with that company name I will get an email about it. (I usually create these an instant alerts as I want to know ASAP when someone comments about a client). Now sometimes these will not be talking about your business especially if you have a common word as your company name or if it is a common company name.  But the nice things is that these alerts work just like google so if the company was AlteredGames and it is based in Missoula, the alert would be “AlteredGames” + Missoula. This would return all mentions of AlteredGames and Missoula.  You could also add other identifiers so you knew it was your company.  Next I like to set up an alert or two that is a daily digest and is more concerned with the industry or area. So if we were doing a restaurant in Missoula, the alert might be: “local restaurants” + Missoula. This just lets me monitor what’s being said about the general area, and may provide some good places to drop a link or a comment about the business to help drive traffic.

These are just a few tips for a very powerful tool that Google provides. The biggest thing is just to remember, if you are doing your job right SOMEONE is talking about you online even if you aren’t. And in this day and age it is important if you are not the one leading the conversation that you are at least aware of what is being said.

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Recently here in Montana, two friends of mine who happen to be brothers decided to open a restaurant.  Now, their family has a long history in the restaurant business so this was not done a whim and a lark.  Anyway, I have spent many hours over beers talking about the business with them, especially marketing and ways they can bring in more business.  And since that is the point of this blog, I thought I would start this off by talking about some of those suggestions/ideas that I had:

1. Setup a twitter feed for the restaurant and include the url somewhere in the menu.  The restaurant can use this to keep customers posted on what is going on, can offer promotions unique to twitter followers, let customers know about exciting news  like “just got in 100 lbs of fresh Alaskan crab”.  This technique has two main goals. The first is that the followers feel like they are the In Crowd at the restaurant getting exclusive deals and insider information.  The second is that it keeps the restaurant always on customers’ minds. This way when they are trying to make a decision on where to go for dinner they will remember the tweet from earlier that morning.

2. Keep a Blog. Now this sounds really simple, and not a unique idea, but it is still a fantastic idea for restaurants.  Post about anything restaurant related, whether it is a new recipe the exec chef is working on, a way to add a little unique flair to a normal dish that anyone can make from home.  In the case of this restaurant they are a Silk Road specialist, so a topic for them could be ways to add a little Silk Road flair to any common dish.  A post about something as mundane even as the difference between a smidge and a pinch when cooking.  The idea here is to turn the blog and by extension the webpage into a must visit site.  Especially if you can set up a schedule so every M-W-F there will be a new blog post (remember a post can also be a repost from another blog which will help with reciprocal linking), you will get users checking on a steady basis.  If you use a little bit of know how you can even tie in your blog to you twitter page that automatically informs all followers of the new post.  If you have users checking your blog on a continuous basis, they are also checking your webpage and thinking about coming to your restaurant.  The recipe posts are especially great because people are going to remember that dish and think about getting it that night. Memory is a great thing when it comes to food.

3. Post to Allrecipes.com  There are a LOT of recipe directories.  Use the recipes that you are posting to your blog and post them in these recipe directories.  Make sure to include links to your blog/website/twitter accounts in your signatures so people know where to look as well as increase SEO work.  While on these sites make sure to get involved in the conversation on those sites. Make suggestions to recipes. If someone posts about your recipes be sure to follow up.  The idea is to build your audience and your own web presence not JUST in your local area.

4. Monitor yelp.com and other review sites.  A major task of having a web presence is maintaining that presence and reputation.  For those who don’t know yelp is a social website where users can write reviews mostly of restaurants, bars, etc.  It is really important to make sure that people are posting positive reviews here.  If they are not, this is a much better way to find out then those little cards you have people fill out on your way out the door.  If you have loyalty cards, make sure to post a link to your yelp account so that they can post good reviews.  If a patron wants to send a ‘good job’ to the chefs, let them know they can go on google.com or yelp and post a positive review.  Poll your twitter or facebook followers to find out what review sites they use the most and focus on those.

5. Google Alerts is a GREAT way to keep track of what people are saying online about you.  You can set it to send you emails either once a day or immediately.  For very important keywords like: “The name of my restaurant” you may want that coming ASAP so if it is good you can immediately respond back with a thank you or if bad you can address it immediately.  Other topics you may want to track are “Indian food in Nashville” that way you can see what bloggers are posting about that, or if people are saying there are NO good Indian restaurants in Nashville you can jump into that conversation and tell them where you are located.

6. INSTALL GOOGLE ANALYTICS. In case you missed that it’s: INSTALL GOOGLE ANALYTICS.  You can use GA to track the keywords which is good to know what people are looking for when getting to your site, but even more important is the clickstream.  This lets you follow their course on your website.  If you realize that on average people are going to the blog but are not visiting the menu at all that’s interesting, if people are landing on your specials and not your main beautifully designed page, that’s a problem.  And this will let you determine that and figure out if for some reason other pages on your domain area are ranking higher in google than your main landing page?

Oh, and finally I guess I should probably mention the restaurant that inspired all of these ideas: Silk Road Restaurant.  If your in Missoula, MT I really recommend you stop in. And if you do, mention that Scott sent you.

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