Help Me Help You!
How restaurants can get the most from working with bloggers
One of my favorite movies ever, Jerry Maguire, has so many great lessons, but perhaps my favorite is the very simple message of collaborative partnering. What could be clearer than the words “HELP ME, HELP YOU!”?
Let’s say you are a restaurant and you have reached out to local food bloggers to come in for an evening of tasting. You have picked the date, selected the menu, and you think you are ready. I arrive, along with my blogger friends. It’s great to see everyone. The event starts and ends. Everyone seems happy. However, when you, the restaurant (along with your PR people) review the activity on social media you are shocked to find out that there were a total of 3 tweets, and even fewer Facebook posts. You feel ripped off. You spent money. You come to the conclusion that utilizing bloggers to help promote your business is a waste of time. But before you jump the gun, let’s see if you did everything possible to make the event a success.
Here’s my checklist for hosting a successful blogger event.
- Provide an invitation that clearly states your intention. Include the who, what, where, when, and perhaps most importantly, why, for the event.
- Provide social media links for all hosts. Include Facebook and Twitter, as well as any other relevant social media links. Bloggers want to connect with you, make it easy for them to do so.
- Ask bloggers and their guests to sign in, and provide name tags for the bloggers and their guests. Ask them to include their Twitter handles on the name tag. This gives the bloggers a better chance to network. A strong blogger network benefits the restaurant owner as bloggers are usually happy to re-post and re-tweet their friends.
- Provide printed menus with the descriptions of all menu items.
- Provide fun and interesting facts about the food and venue. If you are using grass-fed beef, say so. If your pie is a family recipe, let the world know. Bloggers are foodies at heart, and no detail is too small.
- Be photo-friendly. Set aside an area for photos and provide one perfect plate of each dish for photos. Make sure that the lighting (natural light is best) and set up (background) are ideal for photos.
- Recommend post locations - i.e. places you would like bloggers to post and link back to. If you want some extra ‘love’ on Foodspotting, let them know. While most bloggers will do this on their own, if there is a network you would really like to focus on, it’s good information to provide.
- Encourage live tweeting. It does not hurt to offer a small incentive (maybe a gift card) for ‘most RTs’ or ‘most creative tweet.’
- Send a follow-up email to bloggers. Thank them for their attendance.
- Provide comment cards for bloggers. If you are really interested in honest feedback, like whether your dish is too salty, this is the perfect format for bloggers to provide their honest, unpublished feedback.
No one really knows if hosting a successful blogger event can ‘SHOW YOU THE MONEY!’ as a business. However, helping bloggers post the best feedback on their social networks and blogs will go a long way to improving how your restaurant is represented in the online foodie community.
Jodi
