Thrive in Restaurant Social Media Management; 8 Ways to succeed in Facebook and Instagram

If you have a newly launched restaurant, you probably have thought of opening a social media page to increase its popularity and gain more customers. That’s just normal for modern businesses. Social media visibility is the key in getting the value of your business across your customers. In fact, according to research, the most common platform for restaurant advertising in 2017 is social media and is utilized by 75% of restaurateurs. So yes! Almost each restaurant owner would be utilizing the social media space to market their business. Thus, it’s just practical for us to talk about how you can successfully achieve your marketing goals through two of the top social media sites: Facebook and Instagram.
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Let’s get started!

1. Set up a Complete Page

A compete Facebook and Instagram page containing all relevant information about your company is essential. If you miss something on the relevant information, you could be losing potential sales and customers. For example, if someone wanted to order a family meal for delivery but can’t find your contact number, then more likely, they will just order from another restaurant. Always make sure to include contact details, short description, website link, and address or else all your posting efforts will be put to waste.

2. Strategize and Find your Customers

Invite potential customers from the same geography. Getting them like your page increases the chance that they will try to dine in your restaurant and if they had a great experience it could mean free recommendations to their family and friends. It is important that you don’t just invite and invite and invite randomly. Make sure that you have a strategy. Lean about how to gain influencers and those that could possibly spread the word about your restaurant.

3. Take and Post Great and Relevant Photos

Photos are the soul of Instagram and that is what appeals most to the public in terms of restaurant. Take quality, appetizing photos and it will do the work in inviting people to dine in your restaurant. With most of the people being visual, they would more like remember your food if they saw a photo of it compared to when they saw it in the menu. If you post a content with a photo, that increases the engagement on that post. Relevant photos are not only about the food. Take and share photos of the place too! Let the followers who are browsing on your page feel the inviting ambiance of your place. You can also share photos of happy and satisfied customers and accommodating staffs! Use photos to narrate stories!

Organize, Participate and Engage

Initiate contests and events that will engage customers that will build relationship and loyalty. You can launch a simple caption contest or trivia contest about your restaurant or just a first 50 to follow. For Instagram, you can host a contest wherein they can take a picture of themselves dining in your restaurant. Make sure that the prize will also benefit you. For example, a free meal or discount coupon would allow new customers to experience eating on your restaurant and possibly come back in the future. 

5. Monitor, Monitor, Monitor

Opening a Restaurant page, posting and engaging will all be useless if you do not monitor your activities and returns. There is a pool of tools that will allow you to collect data on how your social media strategy is doing in real time. You have to know if the followers you are getting are actually turning to real customers and sales. Otherwise, all your effort will just be useless.
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You also have to monitor your posts, comments and even mentions! You have to see if you need to respond to an urgent complaint or appreciate a compliment from a happy customer. You don’t want to miss a great review from an influential food blogger or news about your newly opened restaurant. All of these needed to be shared and used in your advantage.

6. Gather Customer Feedback and Share Customer-generated Contents

Customer feedback is life most especially if you are still trying to establish your restaurant. However, gathering feedback is no longer your old-school fill-this-up papers. With the opportunity to mention you, you can just simply read those posts that mentioned you and work from there. Make sure that you respond to these mentions. Again, appreciate positive feedback and take action to negative ones.
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You can also use great reviews as a genuine proof of how great your restaurant is. People would believe more the customer-generated contents compared to the ones you generated yourself.  You can even make them endorsers that are absolutely free!

7. Use Facebook and Instagram Ads 

With the option to use Facebook ads to target a specific demographic, it’s very effective and cost-worthy. Facebook ads are something that you need to invest on if you want to increase your social media followers. This makes your brand and your message more available to your target audience!
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On the other hand, Instagram offers a higher engagement rate compared to any other social media sites. It is also non-intrusive and is less likely to annoy the target audience. If you are planning to advertise in Instagram, you will surely notice that it is less time consuming and more effective.

8. Use Hashtags and Emojis

An easy and effective way to include your post on the trending topics is to know how to use relevant hashtags. If you post and include a trending hashtags, your post will be featured among the most popular posts at a given time. Thus, the chances of getting noticed increase. You can also launch your brand’s hashtag and that will even make mention monitoring easier! This is especially effective in Instagram where Hashtags are highly used to search for things.

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On the other hand, emojis have a 57% higher like rate, a 33% higher comment rate and a 33% higher share rate according to research so it’s no doubt something that is also being used on social media strategies nowadays. Given the ample food emojis, no doubt you can find the appropriate one for your line of business. Make sure you use them in reasonable amounts.

You are now aware of the most essential things in managing a social media page in Facebook and Instagram. Although you are now equipped with the basics, if you think that things are not working as you want them, don’t hesitate to get a help from experienced social media management experts. Enjoy earning new followers and customers!