Does Your Restaurant Really Need to Be on Social Media?
There are a great many benefits associated with marketing through social media, beyond just shedding a more positive light on restaurants.
- Expand your restaurant’s presence on platforms your guests are already on.
- Demonstrate your restaurant’s “personality” and really give your brand a unique edge.
- Enable satisfied and loyal customers to come together and share details (and photos) of their experiences dining with you.
- Share your own eye-catching photos and videos to brag about your food and drink offerings. Or give followers a backstage pass to the inner workings of your restaurant.
- Market to potential customers with specially targeted posts.
- Entice current customers to return with information about your menu, seasonal specials, and events.
- Announce upcoming events, changes to the menu, and new location openings to drum up early interest.
- Talk directly to guests and new diners interested in dining with you. Provide information about where to park, answer their questions about the menu or making reservations, and just generally be social.
- Unlike the work done in your restaurant, a lot of this can be automated!
- Social media is also one of the cheapest expenses you’ll have.
Also, let’s not forget about the direct feedback that comes from social media:
- Provide guests with a dedicated place to provide you with public or private feedback.
- Aggregate more customer reviews and ratings to help others interested in dining at your restaurant make a well-informed decision.
- Use analytics from these additional channels, as well as feedback collected from them, to improve your restaurant experience.
Needless to say, your restaurant has to be on social media. Without an established presence there, you’re just begging for guests — both satisfied and dissatisfied ones — to talk about you. Wouldn’t you rather be part of the conversation rather than crossing your fingers and hoping they all have good things to say?
Now, it’s time to talk about where your restaurant should do this.
Which Social Media Channels Should Restaurants Be On?
You’ll generally see three social media channels that all top restaurants are on — and with good reason.
Facebook isn’t just a place for families, friends, colleagues, students, and others to connect anymore. In fact, some would argue that Facebook has very much become a business-centric platform what with such a large emphasis placed on sponsored posts, live video, and Messenger.
Even if you’re not ready to or capable of paying for airtime in consumers’ feeds with sponsored posts, there are other ways to use this channel to make a strong impression:
Facebook has a lot of user data at its disposal. Because of this, restaurants should take full advantage of the geocentric features of the platform. Take, for instance, Deerfield Golf Club which publishes events to Facebook that show up in locals’ news feeds.
Capriotti’s has used its Facebook page as a way to communicate a mix of updates, including an announcement for a very in-demand rewards app.
This is a rather unique example from Carvel, one you don’t see too often with food service companies and restaurants. While the Reese’s paid promotion is a really cool use of Facebook for revenue generation, what you should pay attention to is the response to the post:
They’ve checked off so many boxes here. It’s a great-looking video. Has a catchy message. And they’ve genuinely engaged with followers.
Twitter may seem intimidating at first, what with the minimal space allowed for messages and the speed with which new messages appear in users’ feeds. But if your restaurant can build up a loyal customer base here, post regularly, and use eye-catching imagery, you can do very well on Twitter.
Lone Star Texas Grill has used this opportunity not just to announce a new location, but they’ve attached a great-looking image to draw attention to it.
Social media won’t work if you only talk about yourself. It’s effective when you listen to others and share content that your followers actually want to see. Twitter presents a great opportunity to do this since there’s so much content being created every minute. You can even use this opportunity to share a humble brag post like Lucille’s BBQ has done.
Starbucks is well known for its holiday cups, but it gets into the holiday spirit at other times of the year, too. This post shared on Halloween may not have been directly about the holiday, but it was certainly shared in a timely fashion. The image was sure to get people to stop in their tracks as they scrolled through their feed looking for something interesting to check out.
Instagram is slowly but surely becoming the go-to place to share high-quality and super enticing photos of food, drinks, and fun. And it’s not just restaurants getting in on the game. Thanks to Instagram’s tagging feature, guests can give your restaurant all sorts of shout-outs through a simple photo upload.
Notice how well-manicured Wendy’s Instagram feed is. It’s clear that they spend a lot of time framing, taking, and scheduling their branded imagery.
Here’s a great example of how one person — typically, a diner, a food blogger, or a publication — can become an evangelist for your restaurant. In this case, it was Eater Philly that brought Sugar Philly to my attention.
What’s especially nice about this tagging feature is that your photos can now end up in a variety of spots, including your own feed as well as when people do geo-related searches.
Instagram also has a number of unique features that restaurants would be wise to take advantage of, as Olive Garden has done here. This is a “story” that allows followers to take part in the post — with fun survey questions — while also getting a closer look at Oliver Garden’s renowned breadsticks.
It’s a great way to engage and leave a memorable impression.
Wrap-Up
There are too many stories that show up on social media about fights breaking out in restaurants, customers leaving nasty reviews on Yelp, and food contamination sickening what would otherwise be loyal guests.
To turn this narrative around, you have to be willing to direct it in a more positive direction.
This means taking control of your social media channels and establishing a presence that is as positive and trustworthy as the one guests have with your restaurant in person. This also means being in the right place and at the right time.
Visit us at Pedanco.com and learn more about how you can trial our services for free.
