One of the things I’ve noticed in my research is the overuse of restaurant website templates. And not just in Ohio, all around. I’ve found one particular template that was used over 100 times. All different restaurants, all different locations – but their sites looked exactly the same. Using a restaurant website template puts yourself in a position of looking like everyone else, which is a dangerous position when you’re competition has spent the time to create something unique and original for their restaurant website.

We’ve all seen the commercials on TV, the $5 website – with “100′s of restaurant website templates to choose from.” I see the financial appeal that a restaurant owner would have here. “All I need is a website with my logo, a photo of my steak dinner and I’ll be good to go” they probably thought to themselves. Problem is, the people that you are truly trying to attract online, the discerning internet user, is going to look at your site then look at a few others and make their decision based on a few factors. Pricing and location aren’t always the top of that list. Truth is, your website is the first look into your business. While a great website doesn’t mean you’ll have the best Pasta Carbonara in town, a bad website might mean that I’ll never stop by to find out.

A bad website or a poorly designed restaurant website template shows a lack of creativity that the consumer will see right away. Just as a slow loading website will turn away customers after 2-5 seconds, a poorly designed website might turn customers away if they can’t find the information they need. From a personal experience, I know my wife has been frustrated many times while looking for restaurants while out on the road. Sites built in Flash, poorly designed navigation structures and sites that weren’t optimized for mobile viewing are all disasters waiting to happen for someone trying to find you while on the road. We’ve actually refused a glowing recommendation from a friend because their website looked so bad. “This restaurant can’t be as good as they said.”

Is that fair? Maybe not. But it’s the reality. It’s the same reason you spent time decorating the walls in the dining room, putting accent lighting outside and made sure that your waitstaff’s uniforms looked ‘just right’. Why spend time and money doing all of these things when the customer is already there, but skimp when it comes to getting the customer to your doorstep? Your website is sometimes the first contact you have with a potential customer, don’t ruin that first exposure by using a cheap restaurant website template. Please?!

While having a bad (or non-existent) website has nothing to do with the quality of your food, service or decor – perception can be more important than reality. So if you think you’re saving money by putting together a $5 website from one of those TV commercials or using a hosting company’s free templates to put together a ‘good enough’ website design, think about some of the things that make a great restaurant website below

Contact Information & Directions

If you do nothing else, have your phone number and address littered all over your site. Most people coming to your site, especially those ‘I’m on my way now’ type of customers, need your number, your address or even better – a link to Google Maps for directions. Include your hours here as well to cut down on those repetitive phone calls. Phone calls about hours of operation have dropped to a nearly non-existent level at Young’s Jersey Dairy because that information is readily available on the web. How much does having a person sit by your phone cost compared to spending some time to put that on your website?

Mobile Friendly/Clean Website Design & Loads Quick

One of the things that irritates my wife the most when we’re out looking for a new place to eat is the inability for the website to load on her phone. Many restaurant websites are built using restaurant website templates built in Flash, which, of course, doesn’t work on iPhones, iPads, etc. Flash templates are readily available and cheap, so I understand from a cost perspective why restaurant owners would opt to use one of those for their site. But at least have some plain text on the site so some amount of information can be found.

Another important feature is having a clean design. Nothing frustrates me more than not being able to find what I need on a website. And considering I look at websites all day, I’m generally better at finding the information than the average user. If I can’t find the information quickly, and I know this company isn’t the only business like it in town? Sorry, I’m back to Google to find your competition. Which brings me to my next point..

Easily Found in Search Results

If I type your company’s name into Google and your website isn’t the top result, you’ve got a big problem. That means your site isn’t being indexed or you aren’t allowing search engines to crawl your site for content. Another thing I see pretty commonly among restaurants and small business websites is outdated information on Google Maps, Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc. If you have recently changed your phone number or address – make sure this information gets updated everywhere by using a service like GetListed.org to see what information the local search engines have on file about your restaurant.

Getting found when someone searches “great Italian restaurant in the Short North” is a whole other conversation. But get started with getting found when someone searches for you and building a loyal base of happy customers. Then I can help you add some tricks in there to start getting found for more generalized searches.

Email Marketing List Signup

One of the most valuable pieces of information a restaurant or small business can have is a list of loyal customers, or interested customers. These people are already pre-qualified to like your business (they gave you their information, after all) – you just need to have the means to contact them. A well groomed email marketing list is just part of a great marketing strategy, but it’s an important one that often gets overlooked.

Social Media Links & Information

Lastly, have links to your social media outlets. This information is more likely to be fresh and up to date unless you are spending a lot of time updating your site with new content. (Bonus points if you are doing both!) Having a Twitter feed or a Facebook box on the side or the bottom of your site will allow your customers to continue to connect with you even when they aren’t on your website. After all, we can’t expect your clients to just hang out on your website every day, can we?

Unfortunately, the team that brought you Posterous joined Twitter awhile back and decided that today, April 30th, 2013, was going to be the end. Never heard of Posterous? This story doesn’t affect you one bit. But for those of you who built a platform and a marketing plan using Posterous, you’re in a bit of a pickle.

When I started my business in 2010, I met a couple of potential clients that had built their marketing empire using Posterous and wanted to make sure that anything we did was still built and hosted there. While I ended up not taking on those clients for other reasons, I wonder what kind of scrambling they’ve had to do since everything they’ve invested (both time and money) into Posterous is now gone.

You see, investing too much of your resources into one platform or one social media network is a dangerous plan. Think about all the bands that spent the early 2000′s building up their audience on Myspace. When the decline of modern Myspace civilization began in 2008, these bands and brands were again without an audience to talk to.

Everyone loves Facebook, right? And billions of marketing dollars are being spent by companies & brands there. What happens when you and all of your friends stop going to Facebook? (Shudder at the thought!) But that day is coming, eventually. Facebook will someday be the new Myspace, the old mall that no one goes to anymore.

What to do?

Well, first off – a single social media platform shouldn’t be your only marketing plan. Social media should be one of three sectors you spend your internet marketing budget on. Email marketing and website design are also equally important when it comes to creating, sharing and communicating about the content you have.

But even when you are using a three legged approach to marketing, don’t limit yourself to just one social network. Spend time on the biggies, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn – but also keep your eyes peeled for new social networks that pop up from time to time. If you find the next Facebook, you could be finding yourself being the big fish in a little pond very quickly.

So, in closing, we’ll miss you Posterous – but for those users of yours that trusted you to be the end-all-be-all of online marketing, I hope you’ve found a new home.

The three legged approach to internet marketing is a simple one. Each leg has its purpose and with out the other two, is somewhat useless. The first leg is blogging/content marketing, second leg – social media and the third leg, email marketing. Businesses that are successful with their internet marketing efforts have learned to master each of these three legs.

Leg 1 – Blogging & Content Marketing — (Creation of Content)

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘Content is King’ – as someone who does this for a living, believe me, I’m sick of hearing it. But it’s absolutely true. The time you spend cultivating and developing the content that goes into your blog and your website is absolutely worth every second. And for those of you who don’t spend time doing it, believe me, your competition is. And while their content might not be as good as what you could come up with, bad content is better than no content.

There’s a lot of different moving parts here as well, each of which require a lot of hard work. Researching what keywords you want to target/write about, curating a strategy on how often to write, and of course, actually writing the article are all things that need special attention and special skills.

Take Away:

Schedule in some time (1-2 hours a week, minimum) to create content for your site. And that doesn’t always mean new content, spend time updating the content that’s already on your site to ensure it’s still relevant and up-to-date.

If you aren’t a writer, that’s not a deal breaker. Again, any content is better than none. Consider outsourcing your writing to an experienced copywriter.

Leg 2 – Social Media Marketing — (Conversation about Content)

If your social media strategy is signing up for a Twitter account and having it be dormant for 6 months, you might need to re-think your strategy.

Having a presence on all of the major social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, etc) is a start. But a true social media marketing strategy begins with a message.

Defining your message on each channel of social media needs to be your first step. Whatever your message is, being conversational needs to be the focus.

So when promoting the content on your site, remember to be conversational, and know who you are being conversational to. LinkedIn is more of a professional crowd than Twitter. Pinterest is more of a female audience than Facebook. Your content may be a great fit for all of these networks, but how you present it needs to be different.

Take Away:

Just having content on your site isn’t enough, you need a way to encourage conversation about it. But you need to be aware of who you are having a conversation with and how to talk to them. Take the time to research who your audience is on each network and how to cultivate content for them. As you begin to hone your message, more people will ‘follow’.

Leg 3 – Email Marketing — (Distributing Notice of Content)

This is the leg that gets the least love. But as we established earlier, a two legged stool isn’t the most balanced approach. If social media marketing is the sexy red sports car that everyone wants, email marketing is the Honda Civic. Often overlooked, but is still as reliable as ever.

Quick poll – I would imagine you know a handful of people that aren’t on Facebook. You probably know even more people that aren’t on Twitter. But how many people do you know that don’t have an email account? Until something more universal comes along as a communication tool, email will remain something that everyone has and everyone uses on a daily basis.

Email marketing is still a very viable use of your marketing budget and time. 60% of consumers have made a purchase based on an email they received from a business. That’s a pretty good percentage to market to, don’t you think?

By building a list of loyal customers and potential customers that you can send your great content to, you are creating an opportunity to connect directly with decision makers. You don’t need to hope that they log on to Facebook to see your message in their News Feed – your email shows up on their phone, their laptop, their tablet and their computer, immediately.

Take Away:

If you haven’t already, start collecting email addresses on your website, on your social media profiles or in your store. While you work on building your list, think about the message that you want to share with your subscribers. Just like anything else, don’t be ‘spammy’. Send useful information to your list and they will continue to read it. When it comes time for them to buy, they’ll know where to go.

With that, I get to see a lot of companies doing everything wrong. Here are 5 things I see brands doing that make me shake my head. Especially when I think about the budgets that go into these failed social media marketing efforts.

Don’t Monitor & Respond

There is one particular company I know that is horrible in this regard. They post interesting links 1-2 times a day and when I try to engage them in a conversation about it – no response. I also have monitored other people trying to interact with this company and get no response.

What’s the point of being on a SOCIAL network if you aren’t going to be social? Imagine yourself with a client or customer – if you shared some information with them in a conversation, then stood there dumbly as they tried to engage in a conversation – you’d look like an idiot. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn – these are all just extensions of ourselves and our messages.

This concept is especially scary for brands that use social media automation. It’s easy these days to ‘set it and forget it.’ But while using an automation tool can help you save time by scheduling your posts to go out throughout the day – forgetting to stay on top of responses is something that you can’t schedule ahead of time.

Tip:

If you are like me, the only person managing your company’s social media networks, invest in something like Hootsuite to help monitor all of them in one place. Or, at the very least, install the respective apps on your device so while you’re waiting in line at the store, you can be in touch with your potential clients.

Only Talk About You & Your Brand

I know we all meet these types of people at networking events. The “It’s All About Me” guy/gal. How much time do you really spend engaged with someone like that? My answer generally is, as little as possible. And the people who follow your brand on your social media platforms aren’t much different.

If you spend all your time talking about yourself and not spending time talking to your network, you’re going to get lost in the mix.

Tip:

There are many 80/20 rules out there, but I like to follow a 80/20 rule as it pertains to talking about yourself on social media. Spend 80 percent of the time sharing important or interesting links, educating your followers or talking to/about your clients. Spend the remaining 20 percent of the time talking about you and your brand.

Be careful not to abuse that 20% either. Don’t use it all on sales, deals or talking about your products. Your followers will see right through that. Be creative about how you talk about your brand and products or services. Use case studies, portfolios or videos to share what makes your brand special.

Annoy/Spam Your Followers

One thing that really annoys me about email marketers is the lack of manners. If I met you and you took my email address from my business card, does that mean I opted in to your email list? No. Yet, time after time, I get signed up for random email lists that I didn’t opt-in for.

Your social media marketing shouldn’t be any different. Just because someone ‘liked’ your page – that doesn’t give you carte blanche on annoying them. Engage with your audience, don’t sell to them.

Tip:

Every time you put something out on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc – imagine that you’re actually handing that information to one of your customers. Would you feel awkward repeating the same message every five minutes to a group of your customers in the store? So why do it online?

Post Once Every Few Months, Sure – That’s Enough

Nothing is easy these days. Social media marketing, along with other forms of internet marketing, is something that needs to be worked on consistently. You can’t have a mentality of “I’m here – now let’s be successful.” Even the most established brands and companies have to build their following patiently. There are many large companies out there today that have far fewer Facebook fans than my family’s business of Young’s Jersey Dairy. When a national brand doesn’t have the online following like a small dairy farm in central Ohio, you know it’s not just enough to show up.

Every social media outlet has their own gauge of how much you should post per day. I would suggest at least one thing per day, per network. But you have to figure that out on your own. Listen to your fans/followers. If they are hungry for more, give it to them. If you see that your Twitter followers don’t want you posting 10 times a day, scale it back a bit.

Tip:

Know your audience. What do they expect from you? How often do they want to see what you have to say? These are things you’ll need to figure out on your own. There isn’t an across the board standard – it’s up to each company to establish a plan. Biggest thing? Be consistent.

Expect Massive ROI in a Short Amount of Time

It takes time to get your message out there. Every Mom & Pop, LLC is out there using up valuable online space that you should be taking advantage of. There’s a lot of competition, so you need to find your voice over time to establish yourself as someone worth following. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of very large national businesses that haven’t figured it out, so don’t expect that you’ll find overnight success either.

Social media isn’t going to replace all other forms of your marketing anytime soon. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very important, but it isn’t the end-all-be-all of marketing, yet. Set attainable goals and realistic outcomes with your social media strategy. What is one Facebook fan worth to you? If you get 50 followers on Twitter – how do you convert those followers in to business (or repeat business, if that’s what you’re after)?

Tip:

Know that businesses around the globe spend billions of dollars trying to figure out how to monetize social media. Hiring full teams of ‘social media experts’ and spending massive dollars on analytics software doesn’t make a successful social media campaign. Your brand has to have a message that resonates with your current and future customers. Nail that and the ROI will come, I promise.

When the internet seemed to be at a standstill on Monday, I was oblivious to the problems that what seemed to be thousands upon thousands of people were panicking that their websites were down. The only reason I knew that it was going on was because a friend of mine called me up and asked if there was anything that could be done while GoDaddy resolved the hack (or ‘infrastructure malfunction’ as they called it on Tuesday. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be done because GoDaddy’s own site was down throughout the outage.

What I did preach to my friend (other than switching away from GoDaddy as soon as possible) was trying not to rely heavily on any one company to manage your online presence. Especially one as big, and as hated as GoDaddy seems to be.

It’s dangerous to have all your proverbial eggs in one basket. For example, say you started your business in 2009. You didn’t want to commit the capital into working with a web designer to put together, so you put together a nice looking Facebook page and used those handy dandy custom loading tabs to present your company in a unique way. Until 2011 when Facebook got rid of that format and transitioned everyone to the current Facebook timeline. All that work, down the drain.

Or what happens when Facebook is no longer the cool site to hang out on? Then what? You’ve invested a lot of time and money on a site/company that is no longer relevant.

As it pertains to purchasing domains, DNS servers & hosting (GoDaddy’s real problem) – I’ve always told my clients not to go with large companies that have a lot of enemies. While they usually have a better support staff when things go wrong, they usually attract a lot more problems. I use smaller, but more reliable companies like MediaTemple, NameCheap, WPEngine & VPS.netto manage my domains and hosting for my various sizes of clients. These companies don’t spend money on flashy commercials with scantily clad women, so they have more to invest on the things that really matter – infrastructure and support.

And more importantly – spend time building your online empire in a lot of different places. Facebook, Twitter, Web Sites, Pinterest – as many as you can manage. That way, when one company lets you down, you aren’t totally in the dark.