How To Promote My Restaurant In Social Media – 11 Step Guide Revealed
The new world and modern times have been bringing new difficulties and opportunities in the restaurant world and continue to do so in the future. The key to your restaurant’s success and popularity relies upon keeping up with the newest opportunities and avoiding the biggest failures.
One of the biggest ways to promote your restaurant, getting the word out there, and receiving more traffic is social media. There are multiple different platforms to promote your business and within those platforms, there are both free and paid ways to get more traffic and recognition which we will walk you through shortly.
There are also helpful tools to support, help, and automatize social media accounts that will give you more spare time, and less hassle. Promoting your business through social media isn’t as difficult as it may seem in the beginning.
We have listed 11 different ways to help you promote your restaurant on social media, and giving helpful tips on how to get the best results from them. Remember that resourcefulness, learning, and action will get you always results! Without further due, let’s get to the list!
Contents
11 Ways To Promote Your Restaurant On Social Media
1. Instagram
Without question, Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms out there, and the reach is just insane. With Instagram always use #hashtags (you can use 30 per post) and mark your location to the post as well so it will get the most reach.
The best part about Instagram marketing is that you can get a lot of free recognition when using a simple trick. Instagram contests! Try to print a flyer on every table that says for example ”post a picture of your meal and use #yourrestaurantname and between all the contestants you are giving away a cake, gift card, or something else that will get people to sign in. Trust me the cost of a cake or a $50 gift card isn’t a lot when comparing to the advertising you would get from this.
Instagram also offers paid advertising which is really affordable so that is something you should try as well. Oh and Instagram integrates with Facebook which is probably the most powerful tool out there.
2. Facebook
As said previously, Facebook integrates with Instagram and when you post into Instagram, your posts will also show up on Facebook, you just need to simply set it up which will take a couple of hours maximum, depending on the computer skills you possess.
When you set up a Facebook site, people will find that as well and the fanbases are the most powerful on Facebook. You want to make your ads with Facebook because it has the best algorithm and you can launch the ad straight to Instagram from the Facebook business page which you will familiarize yourself with when you decide that it is time.
Always remember to be consistent. Share a post at least a couple of times a week with engaging content such as tips, future events, discounts, and points of interest that you think your followers would enjoy.
3. Twitter
Another highly powerful and well-known tool for promoting your restaurant. Twitter is a microblogging system and the idea with that is to send powerful and short messages that grab the attention quickly.
The great thing about Twitter is that when using #hashtags, a person can search that hashtag, find your post, and re-tweet it so all of his followers and people searching for those hashtags will find it as well, that will result in a huge view boost! The trick here is to use relevant hashtags so when promoting a weekend event, don’t use a hashtag about #cars.
Twitter also provides a paid ads called Promoted Tweets, which will show your content to the number you choose in the beginning.
4. Pinterest
Pinterest is an extremely powerful tool as well and unlike Twitter and Instagram, when you post on Pinterest your content will get traffic even months forward, and with Twitter and Instagram your traffic will be pretty much done after the hashtags have worn out, and your post has been pushed down by other posts.
With Pinterest, you can categorize different posts into boards to help people that are interested to select the topic that interests them. For example, you can make one board for recipes, another for special events, and the third one for contests or different changes considering your restaurant.
Like other social media platforms remember to use relevant descriptions, attention-grabbing headings, and relevant hashtags to get more views and engagement.
5. YouTube
The famous YouTube is probably the most intimidating and highest entry bar for newcomers and new Social Media users. However, videos tend to make more engagement than pictures and YouTube has been proving itself many times over so if that is something you would consider doing, do it!
With Youtube, you can make different playlists that are like categories for your different videos. You can make a Cooking Tips playlist, Recipe playlist, you can even interview customers or do whatever comes to your mind, remember the channel is yours and no one is better at creating content for your business than you.
6. Blog / Website
Blogging is a big word for most people for the reason that it isn’t as popular with the masses as social media, and because it haves a bigger learning curve. However usually in life, the bigger the learning curve, the bigger the rewards!
Blogging can take time for you to notice the benefits and the search engines to pick up your content. You can always advertise it and it has been proven in some cases that advertising a blog post that includes the content in a broader form than for example an Instagram picture, has a better engagement rate. And after a while when the search engines have picked your content you will see masses of people coming to your site every day and that’s when you get the real social media fanbase.
Take notice that when blogging, try to tell your story in such a way that the people it is meant to will take more interest. For example, if you have a sports bar, blog about upcoming sports events, sports-related contests, and so on.
You can blog really about anything about your restaurant, the world is yours. However, there are research tools that will take to the blog to the next level that is sooner or later required for a blog to be highly successful.
SemRush is one of the leading research tools today and they offer a free 7-day trial that you should definitely make use of! With this tool, you can see topic ideas that are trending, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips, and dozens of other extremely valuable information for bloggers that can’t really be found elsewhere.
7. Influencer Marketing
If you know that there are some influencers in your area or an influencer that reaches a lot of people from your city this is a great way to get huge amounts of views with a reasonable amount of money.
The thing with influencers these days is that their followers are usually really loyal and takes an example from them. You can be sure that when getting your restaurant to an influencers page where he/she is complimenting it, you will get a burst of visitors and with that burst, some of them will be converted to loyal customers!
8. Yelp
When a person is reading a positive review on Yelp, that will have a huge impact on how the reader will see the business. Everyone reads reviews and they send a lot of real emotion and experiences, therefore when your restaurant is on Yelp with good reviews, a person is more likely to walk into your establishment than your competitors, if the customer has been reading about your restaurant on Yelp!
9. Linkedin
Linkedin is a useful platform, especially for businesses. You can get really good inspiration about what is working with other restaurants from Linkedin, and you can modify and personalize the ideas that are working and include it in your own business. By no means copy someone else’s inspiration and work, on the contrary, find inspiration and add your ideas to it and you will be making something unique and memorable.
LinkedIn is also a great place to find more employees and business partners, so keep an eye open for opportunities.
10. Create a Google+ Page
Google has made it really easy for customers to leave a review, comment, or other information for you and others about your restaurant. The more reviews and positive comments you have about your restaurant, the more trust you will generate in other people and they are more likely to walk into your diner!
You can also post pictures, latest updates, videos, and other content on Google+ so remember to be consistent here as well in order to get the best results.
11. Email Marketing
The last way to promote on our list, but not the least! Email marketing won’t sound any better than other ways on this list if you don’t know that it truly is.
Email marketing is extremely powerful because you can send promotion, sales, events, and other interesting content straight to your customer’s email after he has willingly given it to you. So everyone that you are sending them is interested and probably visited in your restaurant.
How to get an email list you ask? Simple because it is easy, not simple because it will take time. However as previously stated, the harder the learning curve and the longer it takes to build, the bigger the rewards.
The best way to get people on your email list is to create a piece of free, interesting, and useful content for the customer that you would share on all your social media platforms.
For example, you could make a ”21 Unbelievable Delicious And Easy Breakfast Recipes” that you would give for free, and for that, you would receive their email where you could send all your delicious offers! Sound interesting? Do it and reap the rewards later!
Conclusion
If you are a beginner in social media promoting and advertising, I know it can be intimidating and sound like a lot of work. But trust me you will get the hang of it quickly and you can use a selection of scheduling tools that will automatize your post for the entire month or as far as you are willing to create them!
One of our favorite scheduling tools is Later.Com that you should definitely check out if you are interested in automatizing your social media posts. They offer a FREE plan of up to 30 posts a month on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, or a paid one that will get you better perks if that is what you need.
Also if you are about to create multiple social media platforms which we highly recommend, remember to make them look the same and that you can instantly recognize all of them as the same restaurant. In addition to that think about social media as real estate on the internet, the more houses (posts/platforms) you have, the bigger the rewards.
That being said we are certain that if you remain resourceful, consistent, and publish interesting content you will see your platforms skyrocket to the moon, and with that, your business as well.
Let us know in the comments if you have gotten positive progress in your journey!