What comes after the website?

There is no doubt that the future of restaurants’ advertising communication is the Internet. Today every 10th Hungarian has a Facebook profile, but only every 250th bar or restaurant has one. It is a mistake to miss out on opportunities like this, especially if we consider that registering is free and the time spent with maintaining the profile will make returns already in the medium term. The number of Twitter-using Hungarians is also on the increase. With this service anyone can report their current activities using only 140 characters as in text messages.

When this article was written there were about 200 Hungarian restaurants on Facebook. Some of them only created their profile, uploaded a few pictures and never returned. In other cases we can see that the spell was broken only after the enthusiasm of the first few months. If somebody is looking for examples how to run a Facebook profile professionally, they should check out how Pastrami, Mák Bistro, Menza, Árnyas, Szósz Park, Kistücsök or Déryné do it. All of these places have 500-2,500 fans and they are actively communicating with them. These restaurants daily report on dishes, base materials and upload photos. Fans can also upload pictures to the gallery and share their experiences with each other, write about their wishes, rate the restaurant and discuss topics in the forum.

The restaurants react to practically all the messages on the message board, and thanks to this constant interaction guests feel that their opinion matters. How can restaurants show their character on Facebook? Well, they find the way: if you click on Weekend Offer, Sommelier or Our Menu on Kistücsök’s profile windows pop up in which the place’s design and atmosphere are also presented; Menza has a topic called ‘Wish List’ where fans can tell what they would like to eat and some of these ideas have already made it to the menu of Menza; Árnyas declared that from the day the number of their fans reaches 5,000 all fans will be entitled to a 50-percent discount until next February’s Greedy Thursday – at the moment they have 700 fans who receive a 15-percent discount. MÁK Bistro does not even have a classic website: visitors can only see their Facebook activities on the web page.