Why your restaurant should be using Social Media

Stephen McCance March 19, 2015

Social Media is now one of the most important tools to include in your marketing strategy. Even better, consumers thrive off sharing their every move, including when they’re out for a meal or a drink with friends. Can you restaurant afford to not be apart of this?

As growing tool, social media is important for most industries, especially the food and drink sector. In this day and age, consumers like nothing more than taking to social media to ‘boast’ about what restaurant they’ve been in, influencing others to head over themselves.

A lot of restaurant owners have seen a rise in customer’s acting in a way they can only describe as ‘Tweeting before they Eat’. You may have seen it yourself; when you’re sat in a restaurant, a lot of the time customers will make sure they take a ‘artsy’ photo of their meal before they dig in! Following that, they’ll compose a Tweet including their meal, probably with the #FoodPorn somewhere in there. If the restaurant is active on Twitter, the customer will usually tag you in their Tweet, meaning your brand name is instantly shared amongst their Twitter network. Why does this benefit you? Your customer’s have just done your selling for you, promoting your brand to however many followers they have.

It’s not just Twitter where customer’s will share your food, Instagram has seen a rise in food related hashtags, including: #Foodstagram, #Instafood and #FoodPorn. The #Food alone has over 161,000,000 posts! Instagram is the main social media platform at the moment where every user expresses their online personality in order to seem exclusive and superior to their followers. Because of this, Instagram users are almost famous amongst the platform. If they share a photo of your food on their profile, their 5k+* followers who watch their ‘insta idol’s’ every move will see an example of your services and be aware of your brand.

Another tool taking full advantage of user-generated promotion is Facebook. Brands who have set up their Facebook fan page will be entered into the platform’s ‘places’ feature, enabling users to ‘check-in’, publishing their whereabouts. Some restaurants offer incentives for customers if they check-in, ranging from a free drink to so much money off your meal.  Again, once your customer has shared their status, showing they’re at your restaurant, there’s an element of word-of-mouth promotion.

As well as user-generated content and promotion, it’s also important that you ensure you have a full self-generated content plan and social media strategy. What posts will best reflect your brand and services? Will your platforms be used as a customer service base? How will you work around key events, such as Valentines Day or Christmas?

Having a full social media strategy in place for your restaurant will ensure effective and prolific promotion across your social media platforms. If you’re unsure on how to run your social media, or need a few pointers get in touch!