Yesterday we hosted a webinar with Roger Drake, senior vice president of marketing and communications at Morton’s the Steakhouse, Yelp’s Business Outreach Manager Luther Lowe, and Andy Sernovitz, our SmartBrief on Social Media editor-at-large. The webinar was full of actionable tips and useful case studies — and by the end, questions were coming in faster than they could be answered. Since time ran out yesterday, we followed up with Drake to answer a few outstanding questions.
How do you get more fans and followers for your social media pages?
We do some giveaways (Morton’s cookbook) and also some contests asking for preferences of menu items or your favorite Morton’s story, and we encourage posting of your Morton’s photos on our Facebook page.
How do you empower your managers at a local level to embrace the Social Media aspect? Do you provide them with appropriate technology (hand-helds, flipcams, etc.) Specific examples would be helpful!
Our restaurant teams are busy exceeding guest expectations inside our restaurants, so we want them focused on what they do best. Some are heavily involved in social media as an interest, and they provide us with valuable content that we use on our official sites/pages.
Do you have an approval process for tweeting? Should there be one? If so, what is the process?
As a public company on the NYSE, we have to be very careful to protect and position our brand, and we can’t just let anyone have access to posting information under the Morton’s name on our social media sites. We always use the rule of thumb of using your best judgment, and if you don’t want everyone in the world to see it, then don’t post it. We have a limited number of people from our marketing and PR team who post under the Morton’s official name on our sites. Also some of our local PR firms post on Morton’s behalf as well, promoting our events and happenings at their local Morton’s restaurants.