Social media are essential to promoting your restaurant. Marketing and public relations agencies swear by networks including Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and Foursquare. While it is important to promote your restaurant on all of these platforms, some interactions are worth more than others. I’ll break down the value of each user, post, tweet and check-in, which will help you prioritize your social media efforts.
Yelp
A Yelp review makes you the most money, at $9.13 each. Each Yelp user is worth $21.21. People visit Yelp to hear what others are saying about a certain restaurant, and the platform is structured so that each restaurant has its own page, with all content talking about the venue on one page.
Customers don’t have to track down tweets or posts to read reviews, and they don’t have to follow or be friends with strangers who visit your restaurant. Each positive review on Yelp brings about $10 — an excellent reason to pay attention.
Foursquare
Foursquare brings the second-most money into your restaurant. Each check-in generates 40 cents. While that seems a drastic drop from Yelp, it takes only 25 check-ins to earn an additional $10.
Yelp requires time for a customer to sit down and write a review. Checking in on Foursquare takes less than 30 seconds. A regular customer might leave only one review on Yelp but check in on Foursquare every time the person visits your restaurant. That’s the reason each Foursquare user is worth $40, more than each Yelp user. Foursquare is also similar to Yelp in that reviews for each establishment are posted on the restaurant’s page, as well as how many people have checked in.
Facebook is easily the largest social network in the world. Each Facebook user is worth approximately $118.34.
Facebook users update their content frequently, more than they do on Yelp and Foursquare, so each post or share about your restaurant brings only 2.4 cents worth of business. Facebook is unlike Yelp and Foursquare in that you’ll see a post about a certain restaurant only if it’s from a friend, and when you’re viewing your news feed. You can see how many people are “talking about” your restaurant, but you can’t always see what they’re saying.
Twitter is an excellent way to reach out to customers, interact and provide a different level of customer service. However, each tweet sent by an average customer is worth less than a penny. Of course, this depends on the level of influence of the tweeter. If a large name such as Michael Symon positively tweets about your restaurant, it more than likely will bring a significant amount of business.
However, if a user with fewer than 200 followers and a Klout score of less than 20 were to tweet about your restaurant, it would be worth about one-tenth of a penny. This happens because tweets are sent out even more often than Facebook updates, and they show up only in Twitter feeds and on a user’s profile. Tweets about a restaurant can be viewed on the its Twitter page only if the restaurant retweets them.
Instagram users are worth about $20 each, but it’s unclear how much each Instagram photo is worth. It’s safe to say each Instagram photo posted on Facebook is worth 2.4 cents and each tweet one-tenth of a penny. Instagram is quickly becoming the second-largest social network, and Facebook’s recent acquisition of it will only make it grow more. It’s incredibly important to keep an eye on Instagram and how much it can affect your business’ marketing strategy.
Sara Petersen is the content and marketing manager at Punch Mobile Marketing. Punch’s mission is to produce the best mobile-marketing content and solutions for foodservice providers to succeed at the mobile level. Read the company’s blog, follow it on Twitter and “like” its Facebook page.