I’m finding that the biggest obstacle to getting restaurants to market their business is that, basically, they don’t have anything to say.

How many restaurant Facebook pages and Twitter feeds have been abandoned by their owners after just a couple of posts? Or go 6 months between offers?

If the menu hasn’t changed much, and you aren’t running a special, and you don’t do much in the way of community events…either you or your customers is bored of your message. Probably both of you are.

The most obvious solution to this is the proliferation of “holiday” coupons. Holiday is in quotes because a) they’re of the Hallmark variety or b) they have next to no correlation to your business, it just happens to be celebrated in the current month.

(Did you take advantage of that “Buy two dinners, get a free drink” coupon by taking your fiance to Golden Corral in February? Did you sleep on the couch because the Mother’s Day gift you got your wife was dinner at Piccadilly?)

The next most obvious solution is some mediocre discount that neither alters customer behavior (try a new item on the menu) nor provides much of an incentive (10% off? really?).

If you’re gonna go the holiday route, get creative. Make it buzz worthy. Nobody forwards 4th of July specials because, well, no one goes out to eat on the 4th of July.

Check back later in the week for some suggestions in building a conversation.