Facebook is improving restaurant listings on the site by letting administrators include menus on their Pages.
Facebook, the biggest social networking site, is enhancing its restaurant listing by adding menus to Pages. The move is widely seen as a push to compete with services like Yelp and GrubHub that have long offered such listings.
If you have a Facebook Page listed under the Restaurant/Café category, improve the page listing by adding what's most important to customers, Menus. In an official blog post last Friday, Facebook added a new option for any restaurant Page administrator to show its menu on the social network. There will be no changes to the information customers look for on the site, such as contact info, location, hours of operations and also comments from direct customers.
To make this happen, Facebook has partnered with Constant Contact to link the business data available on SinglePlatform with restaurant listings on its page. But businesses must already have their menus updated on online local business listing platforms. But for businesses without a SinglePlatform account, they can upload a PDF format of their menus directly on the Facebook Page. (Here's how)
"You probably already know that Facebook is an excellent tool for engaging loyal customers and spreading the word about business activities," Pete Chen, vice president and general manager of SinglePlatform, wrote in a company's blog post. "Having a menu easily available on Facebook is convenient for those who regularly interact with your brand there. No longer do they have to open a separate browser window or different app; everything they need is right on the local business Page."
The latest integration of menus into restaurant Pages on Facebook certainly threatens services like Yelp. Facebook's more than a billion users who use the site to share thoughts about a place or a company, will probably use the option more, which will be a threat to standalone companies. While Yelp offers reviews and ratings of local listings, Facebook comments and restaurant likes can also give an idea of the restaurant's services. It remains to be seen whether the latest integration will affect other companies in any way.