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Marketing your restaurant online is a GREAT idea! Just to give you an idea how much potential there is - at Overture/Yahoo they get 26,045 searches a day for 'american restaurant'. Yes, that is per day. 'Chinese restaurant' is 19,975 searches per day. At theGrubClub.com one restaurant menu was viewed over 400 times in one month. The interest in finding restaurants online is growing at a staggering rate!.

So how do you get your piece of this pie? The first step is to have an online presence. If you don't have a web site for your restaurant go to www.TheGrubClub.com and post your menu there. Make sure to add a complete description of your establishment which may include type of food, location (downtown, suburbia), dress code and hours of operation. This site is free and once you have been approved for online publication you get your own web address. Something like: www.thegrubclub.com/a/your-restaurant-name. You can use this for all your online marketing and print advertising. Don't forget to give it out when someone calls and wants you to fax your menu to them. Sometimes it is actually easier for individuals to look up your menu online rather than receiving it by fax. You can also post it on you r door so that your customers may refer to in the future and also tell their friends.

Now start getting the word out online. The most important aspect of web advertisement is getting the attention of search engines. You want your potential and repeat customers to be able to find you easily if they cannot remember your web address. For example, if they type in 'your restaurant your city' into a search engine like Google or Yahoo , you want to make sure your web marketing is up to par so your restaurant will come up in - at least - the top ten. The other thing your want is to have your restaurant mentioned on as many websites as possible with a link to your menu.

Blogs are a good place to start. Blogs are web sites that are actively being updated and commented on and Google loves them. Find blogs about restaurants, restaurant reviews or your local area and then ma ke comments relevant to the subject . Make sure to mention your restaurant and give out your web address. Do not under any circumstances post something not pertaining to the subject. Such action may result in upset ting the administrator of the site not getting your comment posted . Blogs are a great way to get information out to the public but the subject matter of each blog must remain complimentary. It is probably easier to comment about regional subjects and add your info at the bottom. ie, give directions to an art fair and sign it Bill James - Bill's Restaurant - www.thegrubclub.com/a/bills-restaurant. Be helpful and people will wonder about your restaurant and possibly check it out. It also helps with the search engines to have a link to your restaurant. A good place to search for blogs is www.technorati.com.

Forums are similar to Blogs except they are specifically for online discussions about a general area of interest. Unlike blogs there is no hunting for a forum. Sometime, it can take some work to find a forum about your subject. Since you are a restaurant you can start with http://www.foodservicei.com/forums/. People coming to this forum will be those in the industry but not patrons ; however, the participants don't really matter because you are actually working at getting links to your web site. I f you can find a forum about your city, area or region , you will be able to comment about events or issues and you might also get direct interest in your restaurant. Either way you win. You will need to register with most forums to make comments but they usually want minimal information about you. The biggest challenge to forums is finding them. Most restaurant forums are really just a place to post reviews. Technically, they are not really forums - they are travel guides.