I’m baffled when restauranteurs and people in the food industry tell me they don’t see how their business could be affected by social media. It’s so plainly clear how social media and the food world tie together. The answer is summed up in a single word: culture.

Social media has become a vehicle for sharing culture. If you don’t believe me peruse your Facebook Newsfeed. You will find people sharing music, articles and art; you will see people explaining – in great detail – the rituals they perform (such as getting married or graduating). You will find people chronicling the milestones of their daily family lives. You’ll find people engaged in debates over politics and social mores.

More than anything, you will see people talking about what they ate, what they are cooking, and where they are eating. Art, rituals, social norms and food: these are the building blocks of culture.

Eating food is one of the most commonly shared and universally enjoyed experiences. Sitting down to a dinner with family and friends, going to your favorite restaurant to celebrate good news, sharing a new recipe with your coworkers, swapping snacks in the grade school lunch room: these are all important parts of our collective sense of culture. Food is important, not just because it is necessary, but because it’s personal to us. It is tied to so many memories and emotions.

The bottom line is this: if you are a restaurant or food mogul who wants to find success through social media, keep it simple. Remember how important food is to people and to our culture. Consider how lucky you are to be a part of an industry where people WANT to talk about you, because talking about food is already engrained in their cultural DNA. When you remember that, having conversations with people online will seem so simple, you will wonder why you didn’t start doing it years ago.

Being effective on Facebook means that you are posting relavant content that garners a response from your guests. You know that you’re doing a good job managing a page if you are getting likes or comments. I’ve watched many restaurant managers attempt to build up their own Facebook pages and then lose confidence as post after post went unnoticed (and sometimes their confidence was never there because they felt like they “didn’t know what to say.” Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered on that problem, too).

Feeling like you’re talking into an infinite void is certainly demoralizing. No one wants that. So here are some posting tactics I’ve used on numerous restaurant Facebook pages that nearly always elicit engagement (and don’t require you to hand out coupons).

1. Time your posts with the traffic

Studies show that 11am and 3pm during the weekdays are some of the busiest times for Facebook use, with 3 pm on Wednesdays being the busiest. Post your messages during those moments when you know you have a better shot at being seen.

2. Food porn works

People care about restaurants because they care about food. The food IS the message here, folks. I have never once put a gorgeous shot of a plate on a restaurant Facebook page and not gotten a response. The better the picture, the more likes or comments you will receive. Invest in a proper camera for the restaurant and commit to good lighting and beautiful presentation. And if an iPhone is all you can muster, my friends at Foodspotting came up with a useful guide to taking killer photos with limited resources.

3. Make fans the hero

People will often come to your Facebook page with questions. Questions like, “What do you recommend on your menu for someone on a budget?” or “I’m diabetic, do you have anything I’ll be able to eat?” It’s important that you answer these questions, but you will make your fans feel like rockstars if you let them answer the questions. Everyone loves putting in their two cents, after all. Last week, a follower of the Saltgrass Steak House Twitter account asked me this:

“what do customers on Weight Watchers usually order? I’m eating at Saltgrass for lunch.”

I could have consulted the menu team, but I did the following instead. This tactic led to twenty comments, five likes, and many more likes on the comments (which ranged from serious to hilarious). Best of all, I was able to show the Twitter follower these responses and he was able to order a great meal that met his needs.

4. Start a like party

We love weekends! Beer is delicious! These are statements everyone can get behind. Sometimes, people just want to be reminded that there are simple and positive things going on in the world. Your restaurant can be the purveyor of good vibes. Put out a fun, frivolous or happy statement and ask people to like it. You may be surprised at the results.

These are just a few of the tactics I have found work well for restaurants on Facebook. What would you recommend?

I spent three days at Nerd Mecca, otherwise known as the South by Southwest Interactive Conference (SxSWi). It was three days filled with learning, schmoozing, food truck nomming, QR code scanning, band listening and walking, walking, walking.

It’s a given that SxSWi is filled with great information about what’s next in social media, marketing and technology, but I also managed to find some really excellent panels on the future of food media, social marketing and their ongoing intersection.

So, fellow restaurant marketers and social media lovers, if you weren’t fortunate enough to attend SxSWi this year (or maybe you’re just more sane than I), let me impart to you some of the lessons I took away from the awesome presentations I saw.

1. Crowds or Communities: What are you building through your marketing?

The very first presentation I watched was given by Thomas Knoll. Knoll walked the audience through the differences between crowds and communities. One example that resonated with me as a restaurant marketer was this: “Crowds want benefits; communities want to belong.” That thought reminded me of a blog post I wrote a while back about how we as restaurant marketers can avoid creating entitled customers. After listening to this presentation, I truly believe as restaurant marketers we need to be more creative in interacting with our social networks so they feel like they are a part of our parade versus hanging out on the sidelines waiting for a few kernels of candy.

2. Dining in the Digital Age: This is happening. Get used to it.

This was, by far, one of my favorite presentations of the entire conference. The panel featured Brian Canlis of the incredible Canlis Restaurant in Seattle, as well as representatives from Urbanspoon, Facebook and Groupon. This group reminded me of how important it is to consider all of the potential social media touch points throughout a guest’s visit: before, during, and after the meal. At Canlis, Brian has his “phone girl” (his words, not mine) monitoring Twitter for realtime mentions of the restaurant. Brian says this gives him an opportunity to talk to guests about their dining experiences. This kind of interaction could potentially alarm a guest, but it certainly beats reading a person’s complaint via Yelp days later. What do you think of this tactic? Would you recommend it?

3. Location is evolving

There were lots of different presentations centered around a single theme: location based services. Specifically, how to use it, how to optimize it, and how it’s going improve in the future. It seems that services like FourSquare and Gowalla are seeking to become more predictive in how they anticipate what users like and where they will visit, potentially making suggestions to users on where to dine or shop. This could be a very powerful tool for restauranteurs.

4. One Groupon does not fit all.

It’s hard to ignore the $15 billion elephant in the room, so naturally lots of conference discussions turned toward Groupon. There doesn’t seem to be a general consensus yet on whether or not Groupon is a godsend or the devil incarnate, but after listening to several of the company’s representatives I realized this: Groupon’s model is NOT inclined to handle the marketing needs of fine dining restaurants, or, in other words, restaurants with high food costs and a customer base that isn’t motivated by discounts. And at SXSW, for the first time ever, Groupon subtly admitted that. I’m interested to see how this Goliath will adjust to meet the demands of fine dining.

5. And the biggest lesson I learned at SXSWi: “Hospitality is a relationship, not a marketing strategy.” Quoted by Brian Canlis. How easy this is for us to forget in the restaurant biz, but how true!

Were any of you at SXSWi? If so, I’m sorry I missed you. What did you learn?

I thought to myself, “That’s pretty cool. I like ice cream. I should grab my man friend and get in on that deal.”

That was over a month ago. I have yet to cash in the deal. I have yet to even visit my local Ben & Jerry’s, which is phenomenal because I just told you that I like ice cream. In fact, I LOVE IT. And more importantly, I have a pulse so therefore I love free stuff.

From a restaurant marketer’s standpoint I should have been a slam dunk to act on this deal. I’m an avid social media user, I love the product, and I am definitely enticed by discounts. So what went wrong?

I’m human, that’s what.

I’m a human so therefore I am busy, distracted, tired, unmotivated and lazy. There are any number of things I could be doing besides taking an extra special trip to Ben & Jerry’s to get that free scoop, no matter how much I might like the free scoop.

This is the inherent problem with location-based marketing. I’ve run several deals now through both FourSquare and Facebook Places for some very popular restaurant concepts and they simply fall short of the hype. Admittedly, some of the deals weren’t as attractive as they should have been. But even the most amazing deals still fail to draw the traffic we believe they will.

The fact is that even if you have an incredible offer there are a number of human factors that can derail your location campaign. People are increasingly bombarded by messages in social media land. Your FourSquare deal is just another echo in that restaurant discount chasm that seems to grow deeper by the day as restauranteurs struggle to stay afloat. And, quite frankly, people have much better things to do then stop what they are doing and go out of their way to check in at your store.

The cold fact is location marketing will never be a restaurant marketer’s saving grace. If you were thinking that it might be, stop now. We can’t all be A.J. Bombers.

But does that mean location-based marketing isn’t worth the gamble? Despite my recent foibles, I’m going to say no. I still plan on trying different deals in different markets. Like everyone else in the food industry I’m slowly wrapping my brain around ways to make blue bloods like FourSquare and newcomers like FoodSpotting into profitable opportunities. I don’t have it all figured out, but I have learned two important lessons:

1. The deal has to be incredible. Like, stupid incredible. Don’t be lazy with the deal. Be bold and a little daring. Be willing to give some push back with your operators or managers on a deal if you feel like it will increase incremental sales. Prove the deal’s potential worth by showing that you understand your guests and what they want.

2. Deals need to marinate. It’s really easy to say, “Let’s try this deal for a month then pull it.” There is safety in a short time frame. In my experience, it takes at least two months for a location-based deal to gain any traction. That’s a good amount of time for the initial adopters to help spread the word and for your traditional marketing around the deal to take hold.

Maybe I’m just doing it all wrong. Fellow restaurant marketers, what have your experiences in location marketing been? I’d love some sound advice myself.

One of the reasons people like to eat out is because it’s a very community-oriented event. There is lots of sharing involved. People share plates, share appetizers, share bites and share sips.

Businesses often wonder how they can make their content “go viral” (go viral, by the way, is one of my least favorite phrases in the English language, but that’s another post). The basic principle for making something spread around the internet is to make it easy for people to spread it around the internet. It’s what I call the shareability factor – or, how easy is it to share your web content?

Many restaurant websites miss out on the opportunity for customers to share marketable or useful content. Here are some ways to increase the shareability of your web content.

Menues that travel

Any restaurant worth its salt has a menu on its website. Most restaurants, however, have downloadable PDF versions of menues on their website that are only good for single-use printing. Your menu is the most important element to your restaurant’s story. Make that story easier to tell by turning your menu into a shareable piece of content that can be posted to Facebook or emailed to a friend. Share This widgets are one way to achieve a more shareable menu, but there are lots of other options too.

Provide media that means something

Instead of adding some lame background music to your restaurant’s website (trust me, you aren’t creating any “ambiance” but you ARE annoying the crap out of people), why not add things that people care about? People mostly care about the food, what your restaurant looks like, and how to get there. So give them more photos of your dishes to pull and share, maybe an embeddable POV video of your restaurant’s layout, and perhaps add a Google Maps API so they can email their friends directions.

Share the good word

Review sites like Yelp, Urbanspoon, and Open Table are great ways for people to find out about your restaurant. I know restaurants are leery of review sites, but if you’re confident in your concept and product (and you already sport some good reviews online) then why not show off a little? Provide links to popular review sites so people can get a true sense of your restaurant at the decision-making point. And if you happen to have a few poor critiques, that’s no big deal. As long as you’re active in responding to critics in those spaces it shows you have a commitment to customer service. Having links to these sites also encourages people to leave good reviews once they dine with you.

Make use of bad cell phone habits

Look around your restaurant. Everyone is covered in the faint glow of mobile device light. It’s a sad commentary on the decline of civil society. But hell, it’s also a great sharing opportunity! Consider a table tent that encourages your diners to check in with you on FourSquare, become a friend of your Facebook page or connect with the manager on LinkedIn. The online connections these folks make in your store will grow exponentially as they share your content and you share in their good experiences.

Go back to the store, pull up your site online. Make an audit. Get creative. Are you enabling your customers to share the good word about you?