Note: This is the second post in the Social Media for Restaurants series. If you’re new to the series, start with the first post.
Last week we talked about the core factors you should consider when making a restaurant social media strategy. Now, we’re going to give you some ideas that will help you excite your followers, bring back diners, and bring in new ones.
Use visual content
Visual content like images and videos are very powerful when it comes to digital marketing. It attracts people and can leave a lasting impression. As visual content is especially appreciated in social media, you should definitely make arrangements for posting images and videos.
One of the easiest ways of creating visual content for your restaurant is by photographing your restaurant’s food, ambiance, etc. You can either hire a professional photographer for this (which is advised as it will be of high quality) or, you can do it yourself if you’re capable.
Posting some “behind-the-scenes” pictures (captured by employees, for example) will also grab the attention of your followers. It will also humanize your brand and add a personal touch to it.
Offers, promotions, and contests
This is another interesting way that you can use social media to boost engagement and potentially increase sales. You could do special promotions where you do a promo code giveaway to people who follow all your social media pages, share your posts and such.
Particularly on Facebook, the introduction of the “Top Fan” feature (people who interact regularly with your page gets automatically recognized as top fans weekly by Facebook) opens up various avenues to increase engagement. By giving top fans something like a special discount, you can boost engagement.
Encourage User-generated content
User-generated content is extremely powerful. It’s basically the word-of-mouth marketing of the internet. You can encourage user-generated content in a variety of ways. You can create a hashtag with your restaurant’s name and ask diners to upload pictures with that on the caption, maybe even choose a “best photo” and give them a discount code, etc. Providing free wifi is also a great way of encouraging user-generated content.
In addition to this, you can also talk about relevant buzzworthy topics to generate engagement, participate in local food festivals and such and hold contests on social media relating to that, ask for customer feedback generally or about a particular dish that you offer or plan to offer, etc.
Check out Part 3 we talk about how you should represent your business in social media.
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