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How to monitor online discussion boards
By Karyn Johnson
February 28, 2011
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See what’s being said about your establishment online
Over the past decade it has become easier than ever for diners to get the scoop – both good and bad –about your restaurant. Thanks to the evolution of search engine technology, it only takes a few keystrokes to find out what is being said about your business online.
Consumers are increasingly influenced by “virtual word of mouth” on discussion forums and social network sites. While it may seem like a negative that disparaging, anonymous reviews of a business can be posted online for all the world to Google, restaurant operators can capitalize on the increased use of discussion forums.
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Established publications, such as the Michelin Guide and Zagat, have reported restaurant ratings from trained experts for nearly a century and reported an average of consumer restaurant ratings with select witty comments for more than 30 years respectively. Now, they are competing with unfiltered consumer reviews on websites such as Yelp, Chowhound, Urbanspoon and various city-specific sites. Yelp, for example, boasted more than 33 million unique visits to its business review site in July 2010, with 29 per cent of traffic (nearly 10 million visits) being restaurant related. Urbanspoon averages more than 10 million unique users per month, with more than 1.2 million monthly users just from Canada.
How can you use this trend to your advantage? Make sure you’re monitoring raw consumer comments to learn where to make product and service adjustments. In addition to visiting restaurant review and discussion sites on a regular basis, set up a Google Alert for your restaurant and your competition so you receive a message in your inbox whenever they are mentioned in a news article, website or blog. Google offers an online how-to at www.google.com/support/alerts.
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With increased exposure to discussion boards, savvy consumers have grown much more leery of overly positive restaurant reviews because they may be posted by businesses attempting to self-promote. Discussion forums are also notoriously riddled with catty remarks seemingly seeking revenge for less than satisfactory dining experiences.
Foodspotting.com stands out because it tries to keep things positive and gets right to the point by focusing on good food finds. It also allows multiple images of food to be shared in the same discussion thread so consumers can essentially illustrate their experience or preview food options. Since its launch in early 2010, Foodspotting has already grown its content to include more than 230,000 “spotted” foods from 450,000 users. Operators may not be able to control the images that are posted of their restaurant’s food, but they can easily see which images of their food – or their competitors’, for that matter – are eliciting responses to identify how to more efficiently approach marketing and brand imaging.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And, fortunately, recipe-making is the restaurant industry’s strong suit. Consumers now have foodservice information at their fingertips to help them make more informed purchasing decisions. Even if it causes consumers to be more demanding through potentially embarrassing public complaints, operators can tackle these obstacles by doing exactly what consumers are already doing: monitoring online discussion boards.
Karyn Johnson is an associate at fsSTRATEGY, business strategy consultants to the foodservice industry, and graduate from The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. For more information on fsSTRATEGY or to learn more about purchasing the Top 50 Canadian Full-Service Restaurant Chains Menu Analysis study, visit www.fsstrategy.com or contact nextsteps@fsSTRATEGY.com.
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