Running a restaurant today needs you to focus on all aspects if you want to be successful. Make sure you create a strong social and digital presence and engage with your followers to convert them to paying customers.
Do you believe you are serving great food to your customers? Well, irrespective of how appetizing and good your food is, your efforts will go unnoticed if you’re not promoting yourself and getting your restaurant noticed.
That’s why it is extremely important for a restaurant to have a social media presence in today’s times given that your potential customers are spending a majority of their time on social media platforms.
If you haven’t explored social media to promote your restaurant, or if you have recently added social media to your digital marketing strategy, these 10 easy tips can help you get started.
One of the most important aspects of creating content is consistency. The same goes for your social media handles as well. There is a reason why people are following you, and if you do not give them content to consume regularly, you might lose a follower. Be consistent with your content and put out content regularly. Experiment with different forms of content and see what works for you. Today we have so many tools and apps to help us create different formats of content, explore them and see what suits your brand the best. A couple of user-friendly tools that you need to up your social media game are Canva for creatives, Vyond for animated videos, InShot for video editing and Linktree for content distribution.
There is always something trending, it can be a meme, a song, a movie, a new show, a scandal, or any sensational topic. Make sure you capitalize on such trending topics with relevant content and be quick. The thing with "trending" topics is that it does not stay "trending" for a long time. Just make sure the content you are putting out has a connection with your brand as well.
People are always interested in behind the scenes action. Whether it's a movie or a restaurant, everyone wants to know how it's done. Put up posts and videos regularly showing your followers what happens behind the scenes in your restaurant. This can be as simple as friendly kitchen banter, to showing how heated things can get in the kitchen. You can also showcase some dishes being prepared by the chef (without giving away the recipe, obviously!) and also speak about the history of a particular dish.
Employee showcase is another great content bucket to explore. Your followers are interested in knowing more about the people behind the counter. Showcase your employee's achievements, anniversaries, stories, or maybe even a personal favorite recipe (not from your menu, of course). And when we say employees, we mean everyone who put in their blood, sweat and tears to make your restaurant successful, so ensure you celebrate every one of them.
A restaurant cannot be successful without support from external partners and vendors. They can be your automation partner, POS system, raw material vendors or even your packaging vendors - every partner and vendor is instrumental in your restaurant's success. Give your partners a shout out on social media, and this will not only help in strengthening your relationship but also serve as great content for your followers.
With every post you put out, ensure you are getting your followers to engage with you. It can be through a small question at the end of the post or a poll that you can upload as an Instagram story. Experiment with different forms of content and different channels, and see where you can generate maximum engagement. These small things help the brand to stay on top of the consumer's mind later when they are making a purchase decision.
Contests are a great way to keep your followers engaged and create hype around your brand. Run contests on your social media handles and gratify winners with coupons they can redeem when they order from you or you could even give them merchandise like mugs, hoodies, bags etc, which helps create brand recall.
User-Generated Content is a great tool to have in your marketing arsenal. UGC can be anything from photos, to reviews, to testimonials, that users create and publish, which in turn promotes our brand. Firstly, we need to get them to generate this content, which can be done through contests, influencer outreach, or simply by asking them to share an image of the food and tag you to stand a chance to win some cool goodies or offers. Gratification is key. Secondly, we need to be on top of the UGC by keeping track of hashtags and mentions, and ensure you repost and showcase this content to the rest of your followers.
One critical factor in maintaining a good social media presence is managing responses. With regular content being put out and folks creating UGC, you will have followers commenting on your posts, and it is important to respond to this to ensure your followers know that you care about what they say. Thank them for positive feedback, and take any negative feedback or criticism seriously by responding to them and letting them know that you have heard them and working on improving those aspects.
Creating an Emailing List is not an easy task. Companies spend years building a considerable email list. But Social Media makes it a little easier to drive email signups by creating content that encourages folks to sign up and share their email ID with you. The easiest way to do this is by asking them to sign up for a monthly newsletter, where you will share a snippet of it on social media and ask them to sign up for the entire newsletter with recipes, or stories or even exclusive coupon codes.
Running a restaurant today needs you to focus on all aspects if you want to be successful. Make sure you create a strong social and digital presence and engage with your followers to convert them to paying customers.
This month, we're serving up exciting new features to help your restaurant run even smoother! Discover how you can schedule your reports on Atlas, our SOC 2 certification, universal image printing for bills & KOTs, clear error banners for menu pull issues, batch & expiry tracking for inventory and much more!
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