There are images of food and people everywhere on social media these days. Are these just big food Companies and brands with big pockets? No, this is an ongoing trend lately and how restaurants, big or small are doing social media marketing for their restaurants.
Social Media has become the main platform for interaction and customer acquisition for businesses. With over 2.77 billion people using social media worldwide, it’s only a matter of time when business that don’t use social media would soon disappear.
Narrowing down our focus, the food industry is greatly impacted by the immense power of social media in connecting with people. And if you’re not using social media marketing for your restaurant yet, then you’re missing out on a whole lot of effective publicity and that too for free.
90 percent of customers research a restaurant before dining — more than any other business type. Source
Let us look at some quick facts here: Customers today are looking up restaurant’s menu, orders food and gets it delivered all via the Internet. Every step of the food ordering process is replaced by the Internet in one way or the other. Not forgetting, another core use of social media for restaurants, is marketing!
If you own a restaurant and haven’t used social media marketing yet, then you’re missing out big time! But don’t worry, we have few tips below that you can use to kickstart social media marketing for your restaurant today.
The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing for Restaurants in 2020
Social media marketing is not just about posting images and you have your job done. When we talk about social media marketing for restaurants in 2020, it covers a whole lot of context in it and not to forget you’ll need to work on it consistently. Social media helps you engage and interact with your customers while widening your audience reach with the help of ads. Here we are sharing five tips to use with social media marketing for restaurants in 2019
Focus on fewer platforms: There aren’t many restaurants with an Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat and YouTube accounts. Even those with full-time in-house team will find it difficult to manage all these. Focusing on fewer platforms not only helps narrow down your focus, but also allows you to bring forth more quality than just rushing into tons of post without any depth in it.
While Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram remain the most common platforms to maintain when it comes to social media marketing for restaurants, you might want to check and decide if your restaurant would benefit more from a different platform say YouTube.
You need to keep your audience in mind and where they spend most of their time. For an instance, a regular video of your cafe on YouTube might just work wonders for your business as a regular Facebook feed. It all drills down to your content being consumed and building a loyal fan following.
Use quality Images: With quality, we didn’t mean just the value you should add (which is a must for all post), but also a key to a high-quality social media account is the use of high-quality imagery. Make sure that your images or post are not pixelated and goes well with your brand.
#foodporn is one largest hashtag on Instagram? It has over 190 million posts!
Social media marketing for restaurants in 2020 will depend a lot on the quality of their photos. If you can get a professional photographer to come on board and click a few shots, just do it, it’ll be worth the cost.
Here is an example of the right use of imagery for cafés and restaurant.
User Generated Content and Social Proof: What makes social media marketing for restaurant a strong and effective marketing technique is its ability to foster social proof. It could be in the form of simple straight forward likes, shares and reviews or a customer tagging your business in a photo. It tends to create a message of support to your restaurant and the best part, you get advertisement for free.
Restaurants and cafés are a huge hit these days with the younger generations just loving to share pictures of their latte’s and meal.
Businesses use these opportunities at their best by encouraging their customers to tag their restaurant in the picture or repost the images to their own social media page. This helps push social-proofing and allows you to create a profile with cost effective user generated content
Customer Service: 21% of responses on social media platforms like Facebook go un-responded. This creates a void and a negative image with your target audience, definitely not something that you would want. On the other hand, responding quick and acknowledging every single comment and messages helps build a great relationship and it builds trust knowing that our service is available whenever we need them.
63% of customers actually expect businesses to offer customer service via their social media channels. Source
Social media giants such as Hootsuite, uses social media platforms such as twitter to communicate with their customers and audience creating an easily available platform for everyone to share their experience and grievances if any. This not only speeds up customer service but also helps avoid a negative experience with your customers.
Targeted Ads: Social media marketing be it for a restaurant or any business, gives you the liberty of targeting the desired audience based on demography, age group, interest and more. In fact, the metrics on ads these days are quite detailed to give you a quick overview of user behaviors and target them accordingly.
2 million businesses use paid advertising on Instagram. Source
Not to forget, you can also track your ad performance and monitor the conversions.
Conclusion
Social media marketing has become a true must for the growth of any restaurant in 2020. There are tons of platforms you can choose from to promote your restaurant in a way you see fit.
In other words, social media has not only paved a way for promoting and advertising your restaurant but has also helped in bridging the gap between you and your customers.
So, the question comes back to you!
Can You Afford to Not Be on Social Media?
