4 Clever ways to use Social Media for your restaurant

Social media is THE place to be if you’re a restaurant in the 21^st Century.

If you want to get your image out there, promote your restaurant and attract more customers, what better way is there than doing it online to billions of potential customers?

In this blog, I am going to outline the best ways to go about using Social Media for your restaurant.

If you’re already on Social Media, it’s time to up your game and make the most of the various platforms. If you’re not yet taking advantage, these tips will tell you how to go about it.

1. Create a Facebook Page

Why you need a Facebook page is self-explanatory.

It’s the largest platform, with millions of active users every day. 

Be sure to use location tags, images, competitions, and fully interact with your customers every week to ensure that you’re current and potential customers know who you are and get the full vibe of your restaurant.

Images, of course, will show people the types of food they can expect – so make the most of using them as much as you can.

Explore Facebook Advertising. Restaurants using Facebook ads can be hugely successful growing their pages and attracting new business. After all, if you see an ad of some amazing looking food or drinks, then why wouldn’t you want to check out where it is?

2.     Promote your qualities on Instagram

Now, if you’re aware of Instagram and what it you can do on it, this may seem like common sense to you.

If you’re not, and you’re completely new to the platform, then you NEED to be on Instagram.

As a restaurant, having a platform at your fingertips solely designed for its users to post images is perfect.

Get pictures of your food, your venue, your staff, your unique identity etc. paired up with hashtags to make the people aware of who you are and what you can offer them.

Instagram is perfect to get people to experience who you are and what you represent as a business.

Give people an insight into who you are with vibrant pictures and clever hashtags. You’ll thank me for it later.

3.     Publicise who you are on Pinterest

This may be unchartered territory for your restaurant.

A lot of people aren’t interested in Pinterest or don’t know how to use it!

However, I urge you to take the plunge and get involved on the platform.

Here is a brief introduction into how you can do it:

• Create recipe boards
• Menu boards
• Photo boards
• Drinks boards
• Special event boards

Create unique pins, specifically for your restaurant, and pin other restaurants or chef’s boards to these pins. Ensure you’re using high quality photos and include context, engage with your audience and they will engage with you.

If you’re looking to really boost your Pinterest page, you can also try advertising through their sponsored pins.

4.     Google Alerts

Stay up to date and on top of your restaurants image.

Reputation is so important for restaurants, as I’m sure you’re aware. If you’re not on Google Plus, you should be. It’s basically Facebook but with some cool added functions to it (keep an eye out for our upcoming blog on Google Plus for more details).

If you are on it, set up Google Alerts. This will let you track all mentions of your restaurant from the Internet. Anytime your restaurant gets mentioned, you’ll know.

This is perfect if you want to manage your reputation and track customer reviews (especially handy to deal with any negative ones).

Ready to get started on Social Media for your restaurant? These tips are the places to start.

If you want to know more, get in contact and we can help you really take advantage of the online social world. 

Aaron Savage - Social 365