How Your Restaurant Can Improve Its Online Presence
Social media is a powerful tool used as a mainstream form of communication for businesses today. With apps like Instagram accounting for over 600 million monthly active users worldwide, social media has become revolutionary through creating strong relationships between brands and consumers by facilitating real-time engagement. This, in turn, has had a huge impact on the restaurant industry, which is yet to truly take advantage of this opportunity.
How can tapping into this seismic social media shift benefit your restaurant? Restaurants rely on their reputation, but creating one that is impenetrable has proven difficult due to the fierce competition that exists within the industry. According to a Business Insider's report, 60% of restaurants do not make it past the first year, and 80% go under in five years. Let’s explore the solution.
Solution-Driven
Combining the vast potential of social media enables real-life scenarios and rich imagery to be captured at just a tap of a button. This will amplify your restaurant's brand presence, and with the right team on board to facilitate a seamlessly integrated social media strategy, your restaurant will reach a new level of success. Similarly, when a signature dish is perfected, its tastiness is determined by the successful integration of flavours, working together well in balance.
Social Media Platforms
The content consumers are exposed to by brands on social media platforms (Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and now TikTok) will influence their all-important decisions. Such as, where to eat and even as far as what to eat when/if they get there. Its potential to gain widespread attention and reach is unlimited. However, understanding the preferred platforms for different demographics is key. For example, Facebook appeals largely to all generations, whilst TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram have been found to prompt the most sharing amongst Millennials and Gen-Z. This suggests the need for a cohesive yet demographically relatable strategy to best target various segments of interest.
Developing a following on social media enables a growing community to form around your restaurant, which facilitates engagement online and transcends to the expansion of customers that visit your restaurant. According to a Financial Times article, a fellow restaurateur expresses “We absolutely love social media — as far as restaurants go, it’s the great equaliser. It’s amplified word of mouth. You can’t distort it easily but it allows you to bypass a lot of the conventional media.” Clearly worth the investment.
Food Pxrn
Further driving the need for a social media strategy is the food pxrn craze. Restaurants can capitalise on this through strong visual appeals of its food, which can arouse all senses of its audience and have them salivating, craving the dish. The love for food creates consumer engagement with your brand, shares and even customer reviews. The popular trend of tagging restaurants you have visited in social media posts, via Snapchat with geofilters and now on Instagram Stories with the opportunity to feature your location and get noticed by anyone local to that area, can create awareness for your restaurant and furthermore help consumers gain brand knowledge merely through viewing a shared post. With 208 million posts tagged on the photo-sharing app with #food since it was founded in 2010, hashtags are a powerful way to cement yourself on someone's Instagram feed.
Capturing images of food dishes when they arrive and uploading them to social media all before indulging, has become a great form of user-generated content and shows the enthusiasm of consumers. Restaurants can achieve greater cultural relevance through becoming more ‘instagrammable’ and social media friendly, aligning with consumers of today.
With the world of branding and marketing evolving, social media can help raise the awareness of restaurants in a rapid and cost-effective way. However, a sporadic social approach is no longer effective, businesses must take a strategic approach to social media, with a constant renewal of content to really show why they stand out from the rest. Marketing statistics highlight that 12-20% of projected or generated revenue by a business should be invested in marketing in order to reap excellent rewards. Ponder and plan!
(Cover image: source)