How to grow your restaurant social media following
Restaurant social media
What should I post? When should I post? On what platforms should I post?
I’ve struggled with these questions myself. They’re important, but not the most important question to tackle.
Why am I posting to my restaurant social media? That’s it. That’s the question that will answer all of the others.
I took a hard look in the mirror to answer this question for myself. In truth, I was creating digital media to build my restaurant’s brand. I wanted it to be seen as cool, trendy and busy. I wanted to leverage social media marketing to farm new customers and encourage existing customers to come back. I wanted to brag about our accomplishments and barter for more business. The results were lackluster. In truth, I was creating the same polished, soulless content as everyone else. No one cared, and I couldn’t blame them.
Restaurant social media marketing strategy, even when done poorly, is a time-consuming endeavor, so I decided to change my “why” and see what would happen. Rather than using digital media to show what we do, I decided to document how we do it.
Cooking classes
Digital media gave us the opportunity to share what we do best. Our in-person cooking classes went virtual during the pandemic and offered an opportunity to show guests how much work goes into creating their favorite dishes. It makes them fall in love with the food and beverages we’ve spent years perfecting.
It’s hospitable to share and we were able to do so without reservation, understanding that we were not creating competition by sharing our secrets. Our guests patronize the restaurant for the overall experience which transcends the food and beverages they’re purchasing.
Recipe cards
Our house-made andouille sausage takes almost one week to prepare, but it’s literally the best sausage you’ve ever eaten. How could we not share one of our most popular menu items with our audience? Sending out monthly recipe cards for one of the signature dishes or sides on our menu transformed our newsletter. It took a platform we used to market events and transformed it into viral content that our readers looked forward to every month.
Behind-the-scenes
One of the most shocking things to come out of this new initiative was the realization that our guests were actually interested in the people behind the scenes. We leveraged social media platforms to give folks a glimpse into our day-to-day lives. We shared what goes into preparing for a busy dinner service, setting up high-profile events and documented our journey to go “green.” We also highlighted individual members of our team, bringing to light the incredible people that turn a meal into an experience.
Consulting the experts
Digital media and social networks are the perfect platform to share why we do what we do. We posted our core values, explained each one, and illustrated what they look like in action. We talked about past successes and mistakes. We talked about plans and hopes for the future. We reached out seeking feedback and guidance from the folks we were trying to serve. We wanted to know what they loved, what could improve, and how devastated they would be if we were no longer around. Seeing ourselves through their eyes was a vital step in determining what our future would look like. Our guests did all of the heavy lifting, telling us what we needed to do to earn their money. It was a guaranteed path to increased sales. My only regret is that we didn’t do this sooner.
This all makes sense, I’m sure. The struggle is that we don’t know what we don’t know. It’s impossible to be an expert or an influencer in everything and, due to limited resources, most of us can’t afford to hire experts in every field we don’t specialize in. I had the good fortune of having a digital marketer as a close friend. His name is Eric Siu and the digital marketing companies he’s built are worth in excess of $25 million. Why do I bring him up? Because he taught me and now we’re going to teach you.
Beginning February, we’re launching a new podcast in partnership with Yelp for Restaurants called Restaurant Marketing School. You can expect to hear us touch on subjects like:
- Restaurant social media marketing strategy
- Social media content
- Growing social media presence
- Influencer marketing
- User-generated content
- Building brand awareness
- Identifying potential customers
- Managing online presence and business pages
Our goal for this daily podcast is to provide restaurant owners with the tools to build out their marketing plan, manage their social media accounts, and create great digital messaging.
Each five-minute episode is bite-size, giving you the marketing tips and templates you need in a digestible format.
Be sure to check it out on the Yelp for Restaurants page or wherever you get your podcasts.