Setting the Table by Danny Meyer - Book Review

Bought this book on the basis it was recommended to my by Amazon based on my other purchases so I figured for £0.01 it was worth a look. I will say however the first 60 or so pages I was thinking what on earth are people on about? but then it becomes interesting. The first section in my opinion which is less interesting is mainly about Danny growing up, his family and his student days travelling round Europe eating things. For me this is not something that particularly interests me but builds up to the point where he is deciding what to do with his life and his uncle says - well you love eating and food why not a restaurant? It follows how they started by picking the location but the developed problems with the infrastructure and so on which they learned from in their second restaurant. (ie coat room wasn't big enough for everyones coats and the kitchen was small and tight. He also states that a lot of his business decisions are about the opportunities you don't take as well as the ones you do take. He also points out the problems they had with human resources and issues as they grew and put into place round tables and staff consultations to try and head off issues before they became a majour problem. I would however say this book is more aimed at a business with staff ie a larger B&B or small hotel or perhaps as a learning tool for someone who intends on expanding their business to several properties. Therefore I would recommend this as an interesting read as well as a useful tool for someone heading in that direction. ISBN 9780462099255

Book Review of Bright Marketing for Small Businesses

Bought this primarily on the strength of the cover which is perhaps not the best way to choose a book! (the cover is the back end of a Zebra). The Zebra principle is that when you see a herd of Zebra running its the one at the front you see and all the rest merge into each other. However expected this book to be full of good advice for small businesses as well as practical ideas to go with the theory, sadly I was disappointed. This volume is about (a) theory and (b) assessing what you are doing is working however if you are looking for a volume which says "have you tried XYZ?" then this is not the book for you. Robert Craven states that 20% of your customers provide 80% of your revenue as a rough guide so look at your high spending customers how can you get more like this? however this is where it is left some advice on where to look and what to do would not come amiss. The most useful part of this book in my opinion was the link to the www.bright-marketing.com which I found up to date and quite useful - the password for the free articles and some free books is in this volume so could be worth buying to get the password. The second area which I found useful was page 158 (so took a bit of getting to) is the Bright Marketing Manifesto - this is 23 points about how to focus your marketing (these are not in order)
(1)Marketing is not a battle of the product; marketing is a battle for the mind of the consumer - ie to a certain extent what you are actually selling is irrelevant but you have to make the customer believe they want or need it.
(2) Don't compete on price! - I personally hear this everywhere and it is tempting to be the cheapest however there are two problems with this (a) you'll go broke (b) there is always a bigger company with deeper pockets willing to go lower - find something else to compete on.
ISBN-9781 85458 562 2

Considerate Hoteliers Group.

One of the things we were looking at as (a) a thing to do and (b) a marketing angle was to promote our green credentials. We looked initially at the Green Tourism Scheme started by Visit Britain however this is only open to Visit Britain members (ie we would have to pay £600 to be members of VB plus another £300 to be green I don't think so) so we started looking around and found http://www.consideratehoteliers.com their basis premise is that you do your best which unlike VB where they come and check your bins is a more realistic approach. I would also point out that they provide you with networking opportunities with other like minded businesses as well as green resources to help you know where is best to shop for example for green cleaning products etc. Their annual awards create a lot of PR and encourage hotels to compete and hopefully win in the green stakes! Plus the membership fee is far more reasonable at the 2011 price of £65.

Guerrilla Social Media Marketing!

Yes I know yet another book review however it is February which is our quiet time here in Harrogate so I am taking this opportunity to get caught up before the madness that is March starts. I also feel book reviews are important even if they show the volume isn't particularly useful in that at least I have prevented you from waisting your time and money on a volume better left unread.
This particular volume is not a technical volume ie set up your facebook page like this and so on, it is more an instruction manual of how to think about what you should say and do to improve your social media skills. For example you need to be interesting rather than be about what your product is. To a certain extent you are selling yourself, you need to be someone people want to listen to. For example I did follow a carpet company on twitter (notice I used the word did not do!) who all they did all day was tweets about how they love carpets - how dull is that? is this someone you want to listen to or speak to? I think not. For example as a B&B your tweets can be this show is on, this person is coming to speak at a festival, we have renovated a bedroom, we have new pictures on the web site and so on. Also think about search terms people search for things with twitter in a way that is not possible with Facebook to be aware of what people thinking of having a mini break would be looking for. So the most important thing is to be interesting. I would also say though the authors don't is don't over do it people don't want to be pelted from all directions with your stuff day and night to be frank you aren't that interesting.
I would say this volume is worth reading if you know nothing about social media and are looking for a place to start and a clear understanding of what its purpose in relation to conventional marketing is. However be aware it is NOT a technical instruction manual of what to do and how to do it. ISBN 10 - 1-599183-838 by Jay Conrad Levinson and Shane Gibson. Was also surprised that a volume of this nature was not out on Kindle at this time. www.camberleyguestaccommodation.com