Updated: Jun 20, 2020
As restaurant owners, our focus is to grow our sales, day in and day out.
Social media plays a major role in the restaurant industry today. And by using it wisely, we can be sure to have a profitable business.
These seven things that I am about to share are still proven effective to be working on social media in 2019.
These can be a great help, not only to restaurant owners but also to other entrepreneurs who make use of this powerful tool:
1. It’s better to post LESS than more.
It is better to create two posts that draw attention, and instantly engage your audience, than creating multiple posts that are boring, and have no impact.
People on social media love to scroll and scroll.
Our goal is to make them stop and read our post.
So we don't want to post anything that does not compel them to take action.
If you want your posts to be memorable, appealing and effective, try to limit them.
Do not hound your followers with a bunch of similarly unwanted posts.
Limit them to posts that will certainly catch their attention.
Posts that convey humor, stir emotions, and even those that express sarcasm are proven to be effective in engaging people on social media.
2. Have longer captions and tell stories.
CAPTION. A short word yet means a lot on social media. Your caption is the text associated with your post. Captions are effective when they are longer and tell a story.
Tell a story so that people will read and remember it.
Write captions that compel your audience to take action or leave a comment. Make captions funny, entertaining or educational.
We are in business, and the restaurant business is cutthroat, we need to be strategic. We need to be effective.
Make sure that your captions are like a conversation that you're having with your customers. Casual and friendly.
3. Go wide and deep with the messages that you want to convey in your posts.
Many of our social media efforts are to go wide, we want thousands of people to see our posts.
If that is your focus, you're simply going wide, and a lot of times that doesn't necessarily translate into sales and you may have already discovered that.
It is critical to also go deep. We want thousands of people to know our restaurant exists because we need thousands of customers to pay for our overhead and hopefully leave us a profit.
In 2019, if you don't have a strategy to also go deep, you are missing out.
Deeper relationships on a one on one basis.
You need to be responding to every activity on your page. That means every comment, every share, every check-in, every recommendation, anybody who tags you, just DM them!
Introduce yourself, tell them who you are, and thank them for whatever they did.
Our goal is to go wide and deep. Get a lot of followers, and turn those followers into allies and even friends.
4. "Stop the Scroll" by using creative images.
What can be the best way to stop people from scrolling and focus on your post?
Make use of images wisely and creatively. Here are a few quick tips to Stop the Scroll:
✓Add text to images - this will make your image stand-out. You may use Canva.com for this, signing-up is free!
✓Lighter text on a darker background works - it creates a stunning visual effect in your image, making your audience read whatever is in there.
✓With the text on your images - provoke curiosity, ask a question! Be brief. It must compel them to stop scrolling and read your caption.
✓Ask a question where the answer is YES to stop the scroll, provoke curiosity that will lead them to READ the caption!
5. Batch scheduling your post.
Do you know that putting multiple posts on social media in one sitting is now possible? Yes, you heard it right. This is called batch scheduling.
Batch scheduling is a very smart way of posting on social media.
You can sit down and dedicate at least 2 hours of your time in creating captions (perhaps 30 different posts will do) for your social media posts.
Batch schedule your posts. You can use a 3rd party scheduling website (like Buffer or Later.com) or you can simply use the scheduler on Facebook.
In less than an hour, you’re done putting all your posts on social media for the whole week!