People regard food as their prime needs, so restaurants become the main choice for people to have the food. In the past, people liked to depend on the service, reputation and restaurants that have long history to find and choose restaurants, so that these matters caused brand new restaurants to survival toughly, if they wanted to be successfully, they had to spend lots of money on advertising and promotion. Nowadays, the technology is highly developed with the coming of information era; the social medias have come to the force. The invention of social media is the great contribution to the human society; almost all kinds of the industries are receiving benefits from this area. Therefore, social media have also impacted restaurants, and have made restaurants gain lots of benefits; however, some restaurants got failures because of the leak of perceiving social media. Therefore, the emergence of social media is defined as playing an important role in the world. Nonetheless, social media has both of advantages and disadvantages, and restaurants’ owners should take advantage of it properly and make appropriate plan to make own social media in control.
At the beginning, social media is a key for restaurant to open the door of success. Nowadays, people are crazy about social media; it’s like magic to attract people. People can find everything and information through the social media at all time everywhere, people like to share their information and daily life, and tell what the funny things are, the real-time news and especially they love to share what they eat, restaurants which they have been to and rate them. The interaction of social media between customers and restaurants improves the marketing of restaurants and survival environment. The traditional model of the business has changed to new model, which is based on IT (information technology). Social media is an indispensible part to the contemporary society.
Next, obviously there are some main benefits from the social media for the restaurants. It’s like miracle to save some dying restaurants to be profitable. Firstly, social media solves the major problem that is the costs of restaurants. If restaurant want to survival and make the profit, they have to spend a lot on advertising, now they can reduce the costs to post the advertisement on social media. Traditional methods of advertising like newspaper, television, hoardings etc., are expensive whereas social media marketing is less expensive as compared to traditional methods of advertising (Parikh, 2016). Secondly, if restaurant need to have good business and to be the well known, it's necessary for restaurants to have the brand building. Social media can help restaurants to display their visual identity and introduce themselves in order to let people know restaurants and find what they are interested in. In addition, social media is capable to spread the information very fast and reach wide range. Fox example, when someone sends a post of the food picture and says, “The food in this restaurant is very delicious” on his platform of social media, his followers will read this information and tags or share. This means that each person who reads your posts has the capability to spread the news farther within his own network, so information can reach a large number of people in a short time (Sandilands, n.d.). Thus, if restaurants’ owners can acknowledge the potential of social media and develop the advantage of social media, their restaurants will be popular and successful.
Finally, in contrast, Social media has the negative sides as the risks, which can harm entire restaurants. According to Sen, U, he presents, “Social media is a great way to build up a business, but it can tear it down again just as quickly (Sen, n.d.).” Firstly, The owners of restaurants have no way to prevent people to leave negative feedbacks and comments for the restaurants; the negative news spread faster and reach wider than the spread of the good news as the speed of the viral transmission, because the social media is public and restaurants can’t control what people say. As the consequence, restaurants will lose their customers because of the negative effects. Secondly, social media should often be managed and maintained, the professional workers have to take time to update the posts, interact with customers, deal with the feedbacks and maintain the equipment, the needs of senior labor and time make the costs increased. For example, the professional workers have to watch the real time dynamic of social media in order to update the information and reply the followers. In addition, it is a serious issue, which is the crisis of trust. Some restaurants hire lots of paid posters to leave good feedback in order to attract more customers, if customers find out the fraud, these restaurants could face bankruptcy. Overall, these serious issues as disadvantages are like threats to restaurants, but it’s an alarm bell for the owners of restaurants to figure out how to conquer the difficulties.
In conclusion, social media is kind of effective tool for restaurants, but it’s more about humanity, because social media is based on people. Human nature has both of positive and negative sides, which is same as social media. If restaurants need to attract more faithful customers and make them successful, the owners of restaurants have to make a plan and have a goal to make full use of the benefits that are from social media in order to eliminate fear of the disadvantages of social media. Be accessible. Be real. Stand up for a cause. Support a charity. Be proud of your team. Be a member of your community. Be funny. Be an authority. Be iconic. Be human. (Burns, n.d.)