Food and drink has a very strong connection with everyone’s heart, we all love good grub. Most of us love nothing more than going out for a really great meal with friends or family. But how we pick our destination has changed dramatically over the last few years thanks to God's gift, the internet.

Before stepping inside a restaurant we will have looked at their menu, possibly read numerous reviews, checked out photos and asked our friends if they have ever heard of it or eaten there to get their opinion. As a restaurant, if your social media presence isn’t up to scratch, then you’ll be losing customers for sure before you’ve even started.

Those who are willing to take social media seriously and embrace their potential will WIN. They will see the benefits with increased bookings, a superior customer service experience, strong community spirit and loyal repeat business which will grow through customer advocacy, plus your customers will start marketing through you by uploading their dishes to Instagram #FoodSelfie. - Free advertising can’t hurt, can it?

Whilst it's important to build a long term strategy around your social media, if Carbon Pixel owned a restaurant we’d be carrying out the ideas listed below:

Lifestyle Content

Creating high quality, shareable content will help to establish you as part of the local community. As a local, physical place you have the ability to be at the heart of your community. Lifestyle content is one of the best ways to add value to your customer’s lives as it creates a connection between your business and them

From tips and recipes, Your content can be loved and shared if it’s valuable. Remember to keep it varied, unique and regular in order to build brand awareness.

We love these examples of lifestyle content below, can you see how it captures your attention?

User-Generated Content

Word of mouth or ‘personal endorsement’ is the most powerful marketing tool available to any business in the modern world. Social media allows you to shout positive endorsements from the rooftops with little effort what-so-ever.

Encouraging your current customers to tweet, Instagram or tag you in images of their amazing food helps you to reach a new audience you never thought possible. Creating a unique hashtag also ensures that your food and drinks photos can be viewed in one place, a unique hashtag also quickly becomes the thing people search to find your business across social media.

Try to be creative with how you use the images that you gain and each customer endorsement, it does not hurt to credit your customers if you use their images in any of your official advertisements too. It gives your customer a sense of accomplishment and chances are they will rave about it next time they see their friends and family and come back again.

If your customers just aren’t talking about your business on their social media, offer an incentive such as “Tweet a photo of your food for 20% off your bill” or run a contest.

Micro-Content

Food offers one of the best photographic opportunities for social media content, everybody snaps a selfie of their food. In a world where time is one of our most valuable assets your customers will only view posts that really engage and they want them to be short and snappy, plus with today’s trends #foodporn is everywhere.

Create visually fun and interesting posts like the ones below.

Video Content

With the latest advances in Facebook video and Instagram 15 second videos, now is the time to embrace it. Smartphones make it more affordable to create high-quality video than ever before and turn anyone into a mini Steven Spielberg

The majority of restaurants out there are not making the most of video, it’s your chance to show your brands voice and be fun and enjoyable.

Create quick and easy recipe guides, or “behind-the-scenes” looks, take a look at some great examples of video content below that not only look good but make you hungry.

Paid Ads

Facebook is prime for location-targeted advertising. Facebook is quickly becoming more ‘pay-to-play’ for business pages, it's very important to use paid advertising to reach a wider audience, but make sure you target it, test it and learn from the results that each campaign achieves.

Try running promotions and 2 for 1 deals as well as putting small spend behind your lifestyle content and blog articles to gain wider brand awareness.

Synopsis

As a local business, you have the power through social to do many great things. Make sure you think big and look at how global brands create brand awareness and control the conversations of their social media pages, creating great customer advocacy.

You can do this too, it's not just for the big boys with millions of pounds to spend on social media analysts, researchers and content creators. Anyone with the internet, a business and motivation to succeed can and will succeed.

If social media still isn’t something you believe you can manage or think you “don’t have the time” speak to us and we’ll show you the best steps and help you along the way to make your goal a reality.