Drive More Traffic to Your Restaurant with Social Media

SIMPLE STRATEGIES MAKE IT EASY FOR BRANDS TO BUILD A FOLLOWING ONLINE.

By now you’ve heard how important social media is to your restaurant. You’ve probably created social media accounts and have attempted to create a strategy around them. Is it successful? What does it mean to be successful on social media? Focus on what matters to your restaurant. Understand the ROI of your social presence. You need to get more orders and traffic into your business. That’s the bottom line. Let’s take a look at how to use social media to boost sales for your restaurant.

Build Your Foundation

Before you do anything, you must have a solid platform to build from. There are so many social networks to choose from and so few resources to manage them all. The most important thing here is to start accounts you know you can manage. It never looks good when someone creates an account and fails to keep up with it. It’s better to have a great brand presence on one network than poor visibility on a variety of them.

Facebook is a necessity these days. With more than 1.58 billion daily active users, this is a guaranteed way to put your restaurant in front of customers’ minds. No other network boasts the same user base as Facebook. According to Facebook, every user is connected to one another by an average of 3.57 degrees of separation. This is where word-of-mouth comes into play, and as you’ve heard, that’s the strongest form of advertising.

Instagram is one of the fastest growing networks. It’s a visual network, perfect for restaurants. There are three things people will always take pictures of: themselves, a beautiful view, and food. Since Facebook’s takeover of Instagram, the network has vaulted to more than 1 billion monthly users. Social media is more visual than ever. If you want to make in impact, use Instagram.

Engage with Customers and Influencers

Once you’ve built the foundation, go find your customers and influencers. An influencer is anyone your customer base listens to and trusts. Influencers are great for expanding your restaurant’s visibility and ultimately bringing customers through the door.

There are a few ways to find these influencers. They may already be following you. If they’re there, you’ll know. Another way is to do your research. Look up specific hashtags on Instagram and see who surfaces. Reach out to them directly. If they’re local, invite them in and create an opportunity for them to take pictures and do what they do best.

Customer engagement is where you’ll create loyalty and community. Foster your existing relationships, engage with the people who already love your food, and spread their good word. This goes back to word-of-mouth. It’s a perfect chance to let your best advocates sell your restaurant for you. This may be the best organic way to drive foot traffic.

Contests are always good, too. If you’ve ever heard of crowdsourced content, this is how you’ll get it. Crowdsourced content is content developed and published by someone outside of you and your business. Chances are your customers are posting pictures and tagging themselves at one of your locations. Harness this trend and even expand it with a contest that generates more great posts about your restaurant.

Drive Demand with Location-Based Advertising

Businesses used to get by without advertising on Facebook and Instagram. Now, unfortunately, the game has changed. Business pages on Facebook must pay to play. No, that doesn’t mean you have to pay for your account, but if you want to achieve ROI on social media you need to start advertising.