Social Media for Online Start-up

My individual client is a local online start-up* that relies on user-generated content to rank plates at restaurants and facilitate restaurant discovery throughout the nation. It differs from UrbanSpoon and Yelp in that it focuses on the menu offerings only rather than the combined experience of menu, service, and dining atmosphere. The offering launches in August so I will have the opportunity to provide some social media and WOMM recommendations that they can incorporate into their initial marketing strategy.

Their offering will rely heavily on mobile technology since they position themselves primarily as a phone app. They can also be accessed from a website but it should be optimized for mobile access or tablet access rather than from a standard laptop browser. My initial recommendations for mobile technology include QR codes, partnering with other apps, and of course their own phone app for android, blackberry, and iPhones.

They can utilize QR codes by having their partner restaurants add QR codes next to ordered food items on the bill so that by scanning the QR code the user is able to rank the dish and share with other app users immediately. In terms of partnering with other apps it would be great to partner with a cooking or menu app so that users could see how to cook similar items at home if they liked a particular menu item. The option to find similar menu items or see what other users liked who ranked a certain plate highly will be intrinsic to the existing phone app. Overall, there are a lot of mobile tech opportunities for this company and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

*Can't name the start-up online but will share in class.