Social Media Final-docx

Final Project: Public Relations Plan Thai Country

Chris Haddeland

Social Media Theory and Practice

Professor Weidman and Professor Sivek

December 10, 2014

SOCIAL MEDIA THOERY AND PRACTICE FINAL: THAI COUNTRY 2

Thai Country is a restaurant located on Third Street in McMinnville, Ore. Thai Country is

one of two Asian style restaurants located on McMinnville’s main street, along with Kame

Japanese restaurant (Web results, 2014). Thai Country offers both lunch and dinner options six

days a week (Thai Country, n.d.). From living in McMinnville for the past 21 years, Thai

Country is the only Thai restaurant in McMinnville and is one of the most popular Asian style

places in the community. Thai Country offers dinning in the restaurant as well as take out.

The focus of this public relations campaign is to bring awareness and interest to the

restaurant through social media. The target audience for this campaign is college students in

McMinnville. College students are avid users of social media; 46 percent of people ages 18-24

post on twitter daily, 11 percent post daily on Facebook and 10 percent post daily on Instagram

(Bennett, 2014). One major issue with living in a college town is the turnover of students.

Linfield College looses students to drop outs, graduation and to other campuses and schools. To

fill its enrolment, new freshman attend the school every year. In 2013, 447 freshmen enrolled at

the Linfield College McMinnville campus (Incoming first year students, n.d.). By using social

media, Thai Country can reach these students, with a free service. This is especially beneficial

because with the turnover, Thai Country needs to acquire new customers every year, which is

generally more expensive than retaining customers (Stark & Stewart, n.d.).

The goal of this public relations plan is to increase awareness and interest among college

students in the McMinnville area. The overlying theory that will be used in this campaign is the

diffusion of innovation theory. This theory states how an idea, product or service is adopted. This

theory is a five-step process: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and finally adoption. The goal

is related to the theory by utilizing the first four stages. Bringing the audience aware, generating

interest will hopefully cause the potential customer to evaluate the restaurant. Although we


cannot force the audience member to evaluate the product, awareness and interest can spark

evaluation. After evaluation, the trial stage is set for the potential customer, where they can

personally try the food or conduct the trial through a current customer. If the customer passes

through these four stages they may adopt the product into his or her life.

The two objectives for this goal are: inform 800 target audience members of Thai

Country and gain 100 pieces of user generated content per month from the target audience. This

plan will be evaluated after three months of implementation. Evaluation of the objectives will be

done through views of Thai Country related posts and the number of user generated content

related to the restaurant.

To have a successful campaign, Thai Country must first develop three social media

platforms: a Facebook page, Twitter account and an Instagram account. Thai Country currently

has a Facebook account, but the account is a personal profile with no friends and has not had any

activity since 2012 (Thai-Country McMinnville, 2014). Another key is having a hashtag that is

universal among all platforms. #ThirdStThai is a short hashtag that most McMinnville citizens

and college students would understand and relate to the restaurant. This hashtag will allow for all

content to be connected.

The first strategy for the information objective is to inform the target audience of Thai

Country. To do this, a photo will be posted every other day on Twitter and Instagram. The photos

will contain pictures of various restaurant activities such as a chef preparing food, a waiter and

customers interacting or a customer happily consuming their food. The second tactic used to

complete this strategy is to post a fun fact on Twitter and Facebook daily. This fun fact will be

about Thai food, the culture or something related. The views, likes, shares and comments will

evaluate both of these tactics.


The second strategy from the information objective is to promote Thai Country’s food.

To do this, two tactics involving weekly specials will be used. The first tactic is to use Instagram

and Twitter to promote one of the specials each week. This post will occur at the beginning of

each week and will be linked to a Facebook post described in the next tactic. These posts will

contain a photo of one of the specials, showing how delicious Thai Country’s food looks. The

second tactic implemented for this strategy is providing a Facebook post at the beginning of each

week with the photo used on Twitter and Instagram along with a list of the weekly specials. This

will provide more information for potential customers, giving them the knowledge of what

additional plates will be available along with the traditional menu. Views, shares, likes and

comments will evaluate both of these tactics. The first tactic will also be evaluated by the amount

of click throughs from the link provided to the Facebook post.

If the first objective (and its subsequent strategies and tactics) is successful, Thai Country

will inform and generate interest from the target audience. Facilitating the first two steps of the

diffusion of innovation theory will allow for potential customers to continue the process and

hopefully bring in more revenue for the restaurant.

The first strategy for the user generated content objective is to engage in two-way

communication with the target audience. The first tactic to act on this strategy is to respond to

the target audience. This involves sharing all positive user generated content and respond to

negative comments in a positive and efficient manner. The second tactic used for this strategy is

to create a contest to supplement two-way communication. This contest will be a photo of the

week contest, awarding the top photo, chosen by Thai Country, a buy one entre get one free

coupon. To participate in this contest, a second hashtag must be used: #MacThaiContest. This

can help getting more people into Thai Country’s door, will hopefully get user generated content


and will allow Thai Country to engage in two-way communication with the target audience. The

first tactic will be evaluated on the amount of likes, shares and comments along with the

responses with Thai Country’s two-way communication. The second tactic will be evaluated on

how many participants the contest has.

The second strategy for the user generated content objective is to reduce the barriers for

posting about Thai Country on social media. The first step in completing this strategy is by

providing information on how to find the social media platforms. User names will be listed on

Thai Country menus, receipts and the social media platforms. This tactic is difficult to evaluate,

but can be linked to user generated content and follows on the various platforms. The second

tactic used for this strategy is to actively seek high profile follows. Inviting various members of

the college community who have large followings can do this. Hopefully they will respond to the

invites and follows and will start posting user generated content about the restaurant. This will

allow for others to promote the restaurant to our target audience who are not following or seeing

our posts. The amount of positive responses to our follows and invites is the factor that the tactic

will be evaluated by.

If the second objective is successful, Thai Country will engage in more two-way

communication and gain more user generated content. Through this the target audience can

complete the awareness, interest and the trial process of the diffusion of innovation theory. With

these steps complete all that is left is adoption. This step is reliant on the restaurant and the

experience the customer has.

By completing the two objectives, Thai Country will generate awareness and interest

among the target audience. From this point, Thai Country’s increase in customers and revenue

will come from the experience of the restaurant and the individual preference of the taste of the


food. With confidence in both of these areas, Thai Country should see an increase in college

customers throughout the future and growing revenues.


References

Bennett, S. (August 27, 2014). 70% of college students post to Snapchat daily (Twitter: 46%,

Facebook 11%) [Study]. All Twitter: The Unofficial Twitter Resource. Retrieved from:

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/snapchat-facebook-twitter-instagram-

privacy_b59632

Incoming first year students. (n.d.). Linfield College. Retrieved from:

http://www.linfield.edu/research/incoming-first-year-students.html

Stark, K. & Stewart, B. (n.d.). It’s cheaper to keep ’em. Inc. Retrieved from:

http://www.inc.com/karl-and-bill/its-cheaper-to-keep-em.html

Thai Country. (n.d.). Yelp Inc. Retrieved from: http://www.yelp.com/biz/thai-country-restaurant-

mcminnville

Thai-Country McMinnville. (December 9, 2014). Facebook. Retrieved from:

https://www.facebook.com/thaicountry.mcminnville

Web Results. (December 9, 2014). Restaurants located on Third Street in McMinnville.

Retrieved from: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-

instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-

8#q=restaurants+located+on+third+street+in+mcminnville&rflfq=1&tbm=lcl

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