Utilising social media tips for restaurants is a topic suitable for thesis-length.

Integrating your restaurant with social media platforms comes with a vast array of methods and considerations. This can be overwhelming as social media platforms are becoming near-essential for cafes, bars and restaurants today.

However, chances are if you’re a busy restaurateur, the time spent reading such a hypothetical document would be better spent on actually:

• Selling
• Delivering
• Marketing
• Hiring
• Renting
• Purchasing
• Sourcing
• Recruiting
• Organising
• yada yada yada…

The list goes on.

That’s why the team at Tayble decided to share our Top 5 Social Media Tips for Restaurants.

In our previous blog, we dived in on the benefits of hyperlocal marketing within the context of social media for restaurants, so to complement, these are some overall critical considerations for marketing your restaurant online.

#1: #thesethings

 

Oh hashtags…

What your parents and grandparents probably called a hash, pound sign or number sign is now one of the most vital ways of connecting your content to relevant topics and hence, relevant users.

If your restaurant has a company Twitter, definitely use hashtags, and Facebook hashtags are starting to become a thing. However, where they’re the most important for restaurants is the ever-growing Instagram, where 50% of users follow at least one business and 48.8% of brands are already marketing.

3 key considerations for hashtags:

• Use trending hashtags or popular-food related hashtags: Everybody’s looking at these right now, you’d be a fool not to use some. Firstly, the former get additional attention for special events like Easter, Australia Day and the like. Additionally, the popular ones are a good way to form basic association with key categories.
• Try out more specific hashtags: Say you’re in Surry Hills, or say you make vegan gelato. Though #surryhills and #vegangelato aren’t the most common hashtags, they can help potential customers who visit the area or have a particular interest in one of your offerings to find out about you.
• Start your own hashtags: Running a competition? Introducing a crazy new dessert? You can make a new hashtag to stand out and ensure those who see it find you easily.

#2: Let’s get competitive

Another great way to engage restaurant customers is to run a competition through social media.

Get $100 worth of free food? Score a romantic dinner for two by the beach? Win a chance to have a sausage sizzle with Kevin Rudd? YES YES YES.

You can get super creative here – make sure to have a customised hashtag!

Customers can submit photos, captions, videos or even just refer friends. This depends upon whether you want content for marketing or just more people checking out your page.

 

#3: Partner up!

You’re just one restaurant, but there’s many customers and bloggers out there who share your vibe and style.

Don’t sit back; invite them in to make social media content with you!

For customers – Your customers are always snapping away at your food, why not share their photos? You could even use them for your own marketing and menu if you ask nicely 🙂

For bloggers – Know a big name in the IG foodie world? Keen to up your rep? Reach out to food bloggers and ask them to review your food (the offer of a free meal always helps, but for the big guns, it’s sometimes worth coughing up a bit of cash). This is a great way to get your dishes shared around and improve your rep among foodies.

 

#4: Automation is the future

At Tayble, we know it can be hard work managing restaurant tasks, which is why our product has automated the ordering process.

But this principle also applies to the restaurant’s social media. Individually writing up posts, uploading photos, posting at the right time and sharing with the right circles can be quite the balancing act.

That’s why a number of tools now exist to help you plan and publish social media posts.

Our pick would be Mass Planner, which allows automated campaigns across every major social media platform. As well as this,  it includes the options to automatically share to certain destinations, follow other accounts, like others’ posts and make comments.

Truly mind-blowing stuff.

#5: DEALS DEALS DEALS

Finally, what better reason for restaurant customers to follow your social media than to get exclusive deals and offers?

Using your restaurant social media accounts, you can award discounts or even freebies to customers for liking, sharing, tagging, retweeting, following or just about any social media action.

Good formats to consider are promo codes and discount vouchers if you’re just giving immediate access to deals. However, for social media actions, you can just get customers to show their phone screen at the restaurant checkout.

Not only does it make customers happier, it also spreads your restaurant’s reputation further.

Now that’s a good deal.

BAM! Those are our top 5 social media tips for restaurants! If you want to learn more about how your restaurant can utilise social media, just reach out to us here.