Restaurant Guidelines for Investing in Social Media

Two smiling female restaurant staff at nice restaurant.

Whether you choose to do it yourself, handle it internally with another person or outsource it, the fact is that you should plan to make a substantial investment into your marketing to make sure it pays off for you.  The investment doesn’t always mean money – time is another critical element that gets overlooked.

Disclaimer: When I say social media, in this context, I’m talking about things like Facebook and other obvious sites, but also including reputation and video.  They’re social too.  😉

Time Investments

  • Facebook (And Twitter and other cool sites) requires 30-60 minutes a day to manage your community and advertising
  • Review sites require 30-120 minutes per week to monitor and manage interactions
  • Videos require 30-120 minutes per week to brainstorm, shoot, edit, produce and popularize

All your other marketing notwithstanding, between 4.5 and 9 hours per week (18-36 hours/mo) should be spent on these activities to get them to perform at peak levels.

On top of this, you should plan to invest in advertising to make all your time worthwhile.

 

Financial Investments

Does 18-36 hours per month sound like a completely unrealistic time investment?  It may be, given your already busy schedule.  If you would like to outsource the activities to a specialized marketing company, you can expect this range of fees in the market for this type of work:

  • Facebook (And Twitter and other cool sites) – $300-$1500/mo
  • Review sites – $200-$2000/mo
  • Videos – $400-$2000/mo

These numbers will vary GREATLY, dependent on the:

  • Experience and expertise of the company chosen to outsource to
  • Location of the company chosen and proximity to major metropolitan areas
  • Market focus of that company and their ease of providing the service to you
  • Size of their clientele and general sales approach
  • Time required to invest, including locality and ease of getting to you
  • How much of whichever service you want done (such as half of it)
  • Track record for success

On top of this, you should consider an advertising budget of between $250 and $1500 per month to achieve the results you’re looking for.

 

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About the author : Vision Advertising

Vision Advertising is a full-service marketing agency enhancing the online brand presence of business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies across the US. We focus on providing custom marketing services to address unique client needs, customer profiles, and budgetary concerns, created in-house by our team of skilled marketing specialists. This author profile is used for deattributed posts or when content is posted to this blog without comment.