There’s an interesting article in today’s Dispatch about how some restaurants are taking their online marketing campaigns more seriously these days, and the new DeepWood restaurant is their prime example. The planners behind Deepwood set up a site/blog at deepwoodroad.com, but I haven’t really seen any sort of community outreach at all. A quick search on RestaurantWidow.com, ColumbusFoodie.com, and CMHGourmand’s Blog for “deepwood” yeilds zero results. There’s dozens of great food bloggers in Columbus. Perhaps there has been some sort of outreach from DeepWood, but I’m not seeing it, but I’m also not seeing anything on Myspace (possibly not quite their demographic, but it wouldn’t hurt, right? Hell, Latitude 41 has a myspace page) or on Facebook either. Setting these things up aren’t really that time consuming or hard to do, and they help to broaden your reach with the younger demographic. Reaching out to the local blogging community can be a great way to grab some cheap online media coverage.
And of course, my biggest personal question is why there’s been no outreach on ColumbusUnderground. Back in April there was a three-page discussion that popped up about this new restaurant, and it’s not uncommon for business owners of all types to drop by Columbus Underground to answer questions and address a curious community who can easily become engaged and dedicated customers. It’s even more common for new businesses to email me press releases. I’ve not heard a peep from them at all either way. What gives?
Meanwhile, the new Russian restaurant Hawa Russia has unintentionally gone viral thanks to ColumbusUnderground. What started out as a discussion about mainstream media coverage given to chain restaurants over independent restaurants has turned into not one but two separate dinner meetup events to check out this new independent Russian restaurant and to support the start of a new local business. On June 22nd and June 25th, groups of 20-30 people from ColumbusUnderground.com will be meetuping up at Hawa Russia to dine in and pay for full priced meals. I’m estimating between $900 and $1200 will be made by Hawa Russia during those two hours on two days. Just from the unintentional effect of one group of people on one website. Imagine what can happen when someone actually orchestrates these types of things.
Send me an email if you’re an orchestrator: walkerevans@columbusunderground.com. Let’s talk.
Honestly, even on the DeepWood site itself, I’m not seeing much community interaction/outreach…
The layout is definitely more “website” then “blog”, and though there is a blog backend there, including comments, it looks like most of the comments are from friends and family of the staff.
You’d think there’d be at least SOME random interaction following a Dispatch article highlighting them, but unless they’re screening comments and just haven’t released them all yet, it doesn’t look like it.
That said, as far as reaching out to the CU and local bloggers go, it’s entirely possible they just didn’t think of it or hadn’t taken the time to do it – the key players look to be from out of town (minus the sous chef), and maybe they’re not well acquainted with Google.
Yea, I wish some of these restaurants would reach out to me too. I don’t do food on my blog, but I’d gladly pimp for a free meal.
Seriously though, I know of one restaurant that reached out to a food blogger friend of mine. So there are some restaurants that make an effort.
Walker, mark my words. One of these days I’m going to make it to one of your meet ups. One of these days.
[...] inspired by Walker’s restaurant and blogging post. And possibly taken a bit too far. But I am serious about the offer. [...]
I’ve had plenty of restaurants and bars and stores all reach out to me through ColumbusUnderground over the past few years for help on promoting themselves, getting involved in the community, and hosting events to get people to check them out. Which I guess is why this Dispatch article surprised me. What DeepWood is trying to do is great and all, but it’s hardly anything new.
Hello everyone! Walker, you’re absolutely correct on several counts here respective of outreach that needs to be done. I do hope everyone will hang in there with us as we work with the co-owners at DeepWood to get that going.
Bottom line, if you’ve ever worked in a restaurant (or better yet *run* one), the days are very, very long. In opening one, we can multiply that times a gutted interior with a lot of construction and reconfiguring work, setting up new business and operations processes, hiring dozens of people, selecting and contracting purveyors, and getting a kitchen and menu tested and ready to roll within two months.
I’m stunned Amber and Brian were even willing to take our advice to attempt to get into the blogosphere given their time constraints. Please know they are committed to making it work more deeply for their guests and their restaurant ‘family’ — they just wanted to at least get something going in the way of reaching out before opening and clarifying the meaning of the name.
I do hope this helps clarify the dearth of interaction for the short-term. It could be a bit before you see lots of action given the usual time it takes for a new business to get its rhythm but want to stress that these are really good people bringing genuine, personal commitment to a large undertaking in a very vibrant neighborhood.
With respect to the design of the blog — it’s WordPress, with the most visual customization possible in order to closely match the concurrent restaurant website at http://www.DeepWoodRestaurant.com. The intent was to introduce and then reinforce a brand identity by graphically tying them together.
The complete menus and wine list and more are to be posted in just a few days — per Amber’s request.
Food and beverage bloggers, please know they’ll be in conversation with you very soon and everyone is thrilled you’re interested in the total story.
Best, Chris Shirer
keep in mind, amber’s on the cusp of opening her first restaurant. with 30 some employees. and everything else that goes along with that (including securing benefits and health coverage for employees).
setting up myspace and facebook pages just because everybody else has, isn’t always smart… in fact, the me-too approach rarely is.
further, the dispatch quoted her as saying, ‘…but i’d never heard of a blog.’ so it shouldn’t come as a surprise then that she’s not ‘reaching out’ — she’s a restaurateur; and, by her own admission, one that’s very social-media savvy.
rather, the assertion that what deepwood’s doing is ‘new,’ comes from shirer of madision & smith. amber simply had the ‘idea’ that she wanted a way to tell the story; sounds like the platform suggestion came from them.
having met and talked with amber on multiple occasions, i can testify that she’s an unequivocal sweetheart. and i don’t that think that anything ‘gives,’ walker, rather it’s that she’s busy taking care of the nuts and bolts of sizeable restaurant operation… and i’m looking forward to supporting her in that effort.
That’s exactly what I was thinking – their marketing strategy is neither new nor very strategic. Having a blog is so 2005. That said, I’m going to cut them some slack – I’m sure there’s no Deep Wood marketing department and I bet the staff and owners are pretty busy right about not. Although that’s no excuse.
Thanks for the responses everyone.
I’m not trying to specifically give DeepWood a hard time. They just happened to be the prominent restaurant in the Dispatch article, so they were the default example.
A lot of restaurants could do more in the way of online community outreach. And while I agree with Ryan that the “me too” approach is never a good idea, simple customization and semi-regular updates can take something like a myspace page or facebook profile and really make it your own.
I talked about this a bit when the Lantern published an article on the local music scene. The 18-25 demographic today is receiving information much differently that the same demographic just 3-4 years ago. No one is picking up weekly alternative newspapers, and very few of them are seeking out information from traditional websites. They want content delivered to them instead of being required to seek it out, and businesses and marketing efforts need to change to adapt. I’m sure this may not be the exact demographic for DeepWood, but they’ll grow into it.
Outreach, outreach, outreach. That’s all I’m sayin.