No matter how appetizing the food is, if you don’t drive traffic to the restaurant, your efforts will be overlooked. It is therefore essential as a restaurant to have a presence on social networks. In this article, we will learn 10 Social Media Tips for Restaurant Marketing.
Before we get started, here are some key figures on the impact of social media on restaurants.
- 63% of restaurants use social media to promote their restaurants as this was the most common strategy in 2018.
- 37% of social media users use social media to research brands, products, or services before making a purchase.
- 49% of consumers learn about food through social networks.
Your prospects spend most of their time on social media. If you haven’t already integrated social media into your restaurant’s digital marketing strategy, these 10 tips will get you started.
Why is social media so important to restaurant marketing?
Using a smart social media strategy for a restaurant might be a daunting task, but the effort will pay off. If you’re not sure it’s worth the hassle, here are a few reasons why social media is important in restaurant marketing.
- Brand awareness: More than 3 billion people use social media. Reach a growing audience on social media by posting restaurant photos, uploading new cooking videos, and providing behind the scenes and facts about your business.
- Interaction with user-generated content: The interactive nature of social media platforms allows you to increase engagement by sharing user-generated content (UGC). This includes pictures of people eating at your restaurant, testimonial graphics, or stories about how people found your restaurant. UGC recommends that other users access and share your content.
- Address customer concerns: Dissatisfied customers tend to worry about social media. As a business owner, this is a great opportunity to raise and resolve problems. You’ll get good news for yourself and build a positive reputation while increasing customer loyalty at the same time.
- Get Feedback – Use social media to start strong discussions and get helpful feedback. Ask your customers what they want to change, what new menu items they like, and what specials they bring back.
- Expand your reach: Use location tags from Instagram and Facebook to reach new customers who live in and around your target geographic area. It can also attract tourists looking for local restaurants.
- Following are 10 Social Media Tips for Restaurant Marketing
1. Create an important profile on social networks:
The three social media platforms that all restaurants need are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Facebook: 49% of people search for restaurants on Facebook.
Instagram: Instagram is the number one social media app for interacting with restaurant brands.
Twitter: Compared to other industries on Twitter, Twitter users have the highest interaction with restaurants.
When entering information about a restaurant on your social media account, provide as much information as possible. The information that you should provide on your profile is your location, business hours, phone number, and a link to your website. To name just a few examples. Make sure that any information you provide with these social media accounts matches your local listing, such as B. Google My Business, Yelp, or TripAdvisor. By making your social media profile and listing information consistently, restaurants can rank high on Google Maps for local searches.
2. Use video:
Social video generates 1,200% more engagement than the sum of text and images, so it’s imperative that restaurants incorporate video into their social media marketing strategies. Use videos to promote new specials, introduce employees, give customers a behind-the-scenes look, provide cooking tutorials, and ask and answer chefs’ and chefs’ questions.
3. Create a competition on social networks:
Creating a social media contest creates trust, loyalty, and engagement for your customers and followers. Social media contests that can be held at the restaurant include a year-round free dinner, free gift cards, and even free events like the Super Bowl party. In fact, 79% of people just like the company’s Facebook page for incentives and discounts. With this in mind, use contests to offer discounts to your customers and get more likes and shares on your social media profile.
4. Optimize your photos:
On Instagram, almost 93% of users say that the appearance of a product influences their purchase decision. That’s why posting attractive and beautiful photos on social media are everything. Potential customers need to be enticed and influenced to visit restaurants by the quality of the photos they post on social media. You don’t have to limit your photos to just groceries. If you’ve developed your own brand for a restaurant or have a visually appealing atmosphere, you need to capture that too.
Not only do potential customers value the quality of your food, they also want your restaurant to be viewed as a place where they can spend valuable time. Your prospect should say, “You need to go to this restaurant right now!” After seeing your photo.
5. Respond to the evaluation:
Reputation management is everything for a restaurant. If a bad review is not reported, potential customers may wonder if they should come to your restaurant. Fortunately, 71% of users say they are likely to recommend a company that is quick to respond to social media. So, did the customer leave a negative or positive review on social media? Try to answer them as soon as possible. In some situations, a quick response to a negative review can quickly resolve the situation and allow the user to withdraw the negative review.
The reviews also let you know what your strengths and weaknesses are as a restaurant
See how you can improve because your customers love it when you respond and take the initiative to improve.
6. Facebook advertising:
With 93% of social media advertisers using Facebook ads, this is the most popular form of social media ads. The reason Facebook ads are such a boon to restaurants is because of their numerous targeting options. You can use Facebook ads for geographic targeting. That means you can only advertise to people in your area. This is very important as many restaurants use a variety of promotional tools, such as television advertising, to waste their marketing budget on a non-local consumer base.
If you’re running Facebook ads in a restaurant, use resources like Facebook Business to better understand the full capabilities of Facebook with ads.
7. Post at the best time:
This is especially true for restaurants that post on social media, as the saying goes, “timing is everything”. For restaurants that specialize in brunch, posting pictures of Eggs Benedict and Mimosa at 10 p.m., when most people are getting ready to go to the bar or to bed, isn’t best. You also need to make sure that your users know when they are most active on social media in order to increase their engagement and spread your news accordingly.
8. Re-sharing customer content:
What’s better social proof of your restaurant than your own customers posting about your restaurant on their social media? Take advantage of the opportunity to re-share customer content about your restaurant as more people will come into contact with your restaurant and you can build your social proof and brand awareness. You can also share content that you didn’t have to create yourself. This makes it easy to collect content that you can share on your social media profile for later use.
An easy way to influence and find content posted by customers is to include hashtags in your bio, such as Roscoe’s famous chicken and waffles. Clicking on a hashtag will bring up different photos with that hashtag, giving you multiple options for reposting.
9. Influencer Marketing:
Like sharing customer content, influencer marketing works with people who have great influence, audience, and authority on social media. An example of influencer marketing is when an influencer posts a photo of a restaurant’s meal on a page. When using influencer marketing, influencers tend to induce conversations with the content, which increases engagement. In addition, influencer target groups have increased their reach and, through the use of social proof to transform this target group, also increased brand awareness and conversions. All of these can lead to more foot traffic in your restaurant.
10. Cross-promotion of social media channels:
You shouldn’t rely on a single social media source for your restaurant. So if one of your social media channels is getting more engagement and engagement than the other, cross-promotion is perfect. For example, if you have a lot of likes on your Facebook page and you have some followers on Instagram, you can take advantage of your Facebook audience by creating posts that drive traffic to Instagram.
Get the most out of your social media activities:
Social media as a restaurant is one way to stay on the minds of consumers. You want to keep an eye on your restaurant as users check their cellphones for ways to satisfy their appetites. By implementing these 10 tips, you can increase engagement, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic to restaurants across all social media platforms.
Conclusions from restaurant marketing:
Restaurant marketing is a constantly evolving process. As you get used to interacting with your customers online, you will find new strategies that better fit the way you run your business.
You can use the strategies above one at a time to see what works and what doesn’t deserve ROI. You can also try your own method to resonate with your audience.
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