Welcome to a new Expertise post: today we’re going to tell you what type of content you should publish on each social network if you’re in the restaurant sector and want to get your business strategy right.
The social networks continue to grow constantly and are now firmly established in our daily lives due to the digital age we’re living in. Following the 2020 pandemic, use has shot up and there are now 4200 million users, equivalent to over half the world’s population.
It follows that being active on them will be indispensable for your company and, as you know, each digital platform stands out with its own personality. In turn, it follows that you need to take several factors into account before starting on your Social Media strategy.
Optimising content on digital platforms
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube…: they’re all different, and therefore so are the audiences you’ll find in each. A given user might be present on different networks, but it has been shown that their behaviour is different in each; users adapt to the type of content they see on each platform, as they already know what to expect, which is why they entered to navigate there.
We can see a clear example by comparing Instagram and YouTube: in the former, users seek content that can be viewed quickly, like images, carousels, or short videos. By contrast, at YouTube, longer videos are king, and these can easily reach 20 minutes, far more than we would ever see on Instagram.
Creating Social Media content for a restaurant business focussing on B2C is not a simple task, and even less so if we bear in mind generating it specifically for each platform; however content reuse is a possibility.
By reuse, we mean creating a design and giving it a unique tweak for each platform, modifying the format and arousing interest in the target audience.
What content should you publish on your restaurant’s social media?
The B2C social network par excellence on the market, whose main character trait is talking about leisure topics, so that most of its active accounts show the person’s more private side, with comments on events or interests of all kinds.
It has a special overall impact in Europe among the audience aged 40 to 55, which is currently the group with the greatest buying power, and therefore spends the most. It should be said that this platform is used by people of all ages: for instance, in the United States, both young people from 18 to 29 and people from 30 to 49 use Facebook.
Companies working in the restaurant sector should make the most of this excellent tool for communication, and we give some recommended tips below on how to manage the page of your restaurant.
- Create a fan page profile: you’ll have greater interaction with your audience, with statistical reports and promotional tools to hand.
- Focus on the video format, which is what works best on this network. Remember that the shorter it is, the more people will view it. The ideal duration will be different for each company, but typically about 1-2 minutes.
- Use Facebook Live: With this new Facebook tool, you can stream video of, for example, your kitchen team preparing a dish.
- Encourage opinions: just like other forums, you can also include reviews of your business, so make the most of this and get your customers to leave their comments.
- Activate a button to make bookings directly at your restaurant, or redirect them to your Whatsapp Business.
- Plan specific campaigns to attract new customers in your area.
- Keep an eye out for private messages so as not to miss any opportunities.
With over 1200 million users active each month, this is one of the most consolidated social networks, and with so many accounts, to stand out you need to offer the very best quality content possible. This platform offers a great number of possibilities: Creating an attractive feed, stories, reels, IGTV videos, digital catalogue… all in the formats of images or brief videos.
This is one of the main social networks for young people, as 71% of the users are under 35. To publish quality content, it is important for you to know your target audience well, and you’ll have to find out how to talk to them, and their characteristics and interests. Encourage interaction with your users: questions, questionnaires or voting can help you with this. Raffles are a very good way of reaching new followers and raising the notoriety of your profile.
Instagram has become a platform necessary to restaurant companies as it will help you to reach more people, awaken interest in your business, offer a new channel for bookings, show what your company is really like inside, and convey the values of your business. We recommend the following to manage it properly:
- In your profile description, add your contact information briefly and directly: webpage, direct link to bookings, type of restaurant…
- Publish quality images which make people long to be there to try that food.
- Publish frequently, such as 2-3 days per week, and try playing around with images, carousels or videos.
- Work hard on your photo captions to attract users, and don’t forget emojis!
- Add from 10 to 15 hashtags to extend your reach. Think of keywords related to your zone, type of cooking, style…
- User stories to share how your dishes are made, step by step, and play with the tools it offers you (countdown, surveys…). Share photos in which your customers tag you.
- Just as with Facebook, you can stream videos on how to cook a paella (for instance).
- Don’t exhaust your followers with photos of your dishes: create other types of material: photos of the team, the place, customer opinions, recipe videos… let your creativity run free.
The king on this platform is text, with rapid, direct and simple messages, as they cannot exceed 280 characters. In Spain, the typical tweeter is aged between 24 and 65, holds a degree, has high buying power and a highly critical point of view.
On this platform, you can post queries or news, or even use it as a customer service channel, while ideally all the content should be accompanied by a striking image, a link, or a GIF to make it visually more appealing.
The key on this social network is to provide interesting information within 280 characters so as to arouse the interest of your target audience. It can be used as a tool for promoting events, inform our followers of news and centre on opinions and mentions by our customers.
- Share information about your services, dishes, opening hours or events.
- Tell people about all the changes in your business.
- Use it each day to make it the best customer service channel.
- Create special offers and discounts so as to drive the conversation with your followers.
- Choose between 3 and 5 key hashtags to reach more users.
YouTube
About 2000 million videos are reproduced on this social network each day, and 100,000 million hours are viewed. What works well here is longer videos (5 to 20 minutes) with an interactive and dynamic spirit, where users can interact.
Making yourself visible on YouTube is work that requires a lot of time and patience. If you’re capable of creating quality videos, using this platform is recommendable, as otherwise the time invested will not be worthwhile.
- You can share your menu, adding an explanation of why you chose those products, or what’s special about that dish.
- Produce simple recipe videos: it’s not a question of revealing your secrets, but of creating content so users can eat almost as well as on your premises.
- Interview your workers, present the team, show how they work.
- Get out of your comfort zone: you can generate content with documentaries about your suppliers, the vegetable garden you buy food from, the social causes you support, etc.
We hope our guidelines have helped you to understand which type of content to publish on each social network, if you are in the restaurant sector. If you are interested in promoting your company on these platforms and need advice, at Lifting Group we have more than 15 years’ experience in the sector and we will help you increase your business through the Digital Channel.
