Why Restaurants Need Social Media to Succeed in the Long-term

If your restaurant isn’t already on social media then you are missing out in a big way. 50% of diners declared social media influences their restaurant choices. What’s more, 22% of clients were persuaded to revisit a restaurant due to its social media presence.

Therefore, being on social media is no longer just an option, it’s a must. The easiest way to reach your customers’ hearts and money is to go where they spend a big amount of their time, which is obviously, on social media.

If you’re wondering why restaurants need social media, then keep on reading.

Benefits of social media for restaurants

Here are the many benefits of social media for restaurants you will enjoy if you create a profile now and maintain a constant presence, with conversion-encouraging posts and friendly interactions:

It enhances the customer experience

A good restaurant is about more than just good food. It’s about selling an experience. Many customers see being able to use social media as part of their overall dining out experience. It makes things more fun for them because it gives them the chance to share things with their friends and followers online. Encourage your customers to share messages and images about their meal and improve the overall customer experience.

Many customers see being able to use social media as part of their overall dining out experience. It makes things more fun for them because it gives them the chance to share things with their friends and followers online. Encourage your customers to share messages and images about their meals and improve the overall customer experience.

Social media can also help to keep your restaurant accountable for the consistency and quality of food. When you encourage customers to share their experience with their followers, every dish counts. People scrutinize your restaurant more. That means that you are more incentivized to prepare great meals and understand how food preparation can impact how good – or bad – guests perceive your food to be. Make sure your food tastes as good as it looks.

It allows customers to leave reviews, share photos & bring in other clients

If you are wondering why restaurants need social media, one of the most important reasons is because it makes it easier for people to talk about your business.People are turning to social media for the hottest tips on where they should eat. Make sure that your business shows up when they get hungry and need a good meal.

All of this social sharing is also fantastic free advertising. You don’t need to work so hard to showcase your delicious looking food or immaculately clean restaurant when you’ve got your customers doing it for you.

60% of clients read restaurant reviews before going out or ordering it, so, it is safe to say that social media is the new word of mouth. Other people will be convinced to try your food if they read about previous clients' great experiences.

If you get negative reviews, don’t worry. They can be a great lesson for you and you have the opportunity to reply and change their minds.

It helps you promote your restaurant

If you are searching for a simple reason why restaurants need social media, this is it. You need a social profile to make your business known to a larger audience.

Post pictures of the best dishes, promote your event and catering services (if you have them) and advertise your latest and greatest deals. Or just post small, simple, and effective things like how customers can contact you and where they can find your restaurant.

It empowers you to sell more

Curious to know why social media marketing is important for restaurants? Because, if you know how, you can use it to sell more food and increase your revenue. And we are here to teach you how!

All you need is our free online ordering system and some time. Get started by signing up on GloriaFood to be able to expand your business by accepting online orders. Follow these simple steps:

• Create an account and fill in your restaurant’s profile;
• Create an online restaurant menu with all your delicious dishes;
• Publish the menu on your website (if you don’t have one, you can request a sales optimized website from the online ordering system’s admin);
• Download the order taking app on iOS or Android.

Now you are one step away from selling your amazing food directly on social media. Restaurants and social media can be a powerful combo with this tool. Go to admin -> Setup -> Publishing -> Facebook and copy the link in the website section on your social media.

While the link was created originally for Facebook marketing for restaurants, it can be used successfully for both Instagram and TikTok.

No more unnecessary clicks that deter customers! With one single click, they can access the menu, add the desired items to the cart, offer delivery info, pay, and order. More happy customers, more profit!

Social media engagement builds brand loyalty and trust

In a similar vein to encouraging reviews, social media can help to build brand loyalty. Customers like to reward the brands that post a good selection of user-generated content, even if you have to post negative reviews.

Remember that those negative reviews don’t automatically dissuade people from trying out your restaurant. You can further limit the damage of a negative review by highlighting it and utilizing NPS tools. Respond to the review and address the concerns of the diner.

In fact, negative reviews can even be more helpful than positive ones. They show you where you can make positive changes and improve the customer experience.

By encouraging guests to post their own images and comments about their experience with your restaurant, you build trust in your brand and show transparency. You show that you aren’t going to hide away from negative criticism. Instead, you’ll address it and turn negatives into positives.

By acting on the negative trends uncovered by these reviews, you show your customers that you are listening and responding to them. They will recognize that and see it for the positive that it is.

Social media engagement drives brand advocacy

Any customer that would be willing to take photos of their meal and share it on their personal social media is a potential brand advocate for you. It’s up to you to empower any brand advocate you can get and come up with creative ways for them to amplify their message and reach a wider audience.

Having customer surveys and garnering social engagement are a great way to discover positive customer messages and find brand advocates you can recruit. To fully maximize brand advocacy though, you should consider establishing a solution that embeds a real-time social media feed on to your home page.

Instagram for restaurants and dealing with hashtags and other trends can be intimidating for some. They force you to give up some of the control you have over messaging and what people are saying about you. As long as you take care of the customer experience and embrace social media engagement though, you’ll see a huge uptick in positive social media buzz about your establishment.

Social media tips for restaurants

Now you know more about why restaurants need social media, you’re likely wondering how food industry social media marketing works. It’s not as complicated as you might think. Here are some of the best social media tips for restaurants to show you how restaurants should use social media.

1. Engage your audience in different ways

Restaurant social media marketing is all about interaction. It’s about building a rapport and establishing a back and forth. It’s not enough for your customers to interact with you, make sure that you respond to them. Here are a few social media post ideas:

• customer reviews,
• photos of your food with captions,
• jokes,
• facts about the food you serve,
• and the story behind your restaurant.

Share videos and stories of what happens behind the scenes and give your staff their chance in the spotlight. What matters is having a nice conversation with your customers using social media.

Do you want to know how to market a restaurant on social media to get immediate results? Organize a contest! It can be as simple as a like and share one, or as complicated as a treasure hunt. Offer prizes in food to get more people to try your delicious menu items!

2. Encourage your customers to take pictures & use your branded hashtag

Put up a sign encouraging visitors to take pictures of their plates and include the name of your business – and a branded hashtag – in their online post. Search for the hashtag and see all of the free images people have been posting for your restaurant.

3. Post at the right times

One of the most important tips for restaurant Facebook pages is to understand the best times to post on social media for restaurants. A general rule of thumb for posting is to post when people aren’t working. You should post early in the day, at lunchtime, and early evening.

As a restaurant, you should consider meal times to be the most important time to post. If you’ve got a great lunch special then you should post about it leading up to lunch, around 11:30AM. If you’ve got a killer happy hour deal on, then post about it at 5:00PM. Think about the times that would get you the most customers and focus your efforts on them.

4. Take advantage of the best social media trends for restaurants

While knowing when to post is important, you also need to consider the hashtags and social trends. The right hashtag could get your posts in front of the right people. Some of these hashtags are essentially evergreen. If you have a particularly delicious looking meal or some kind of epic meal, then be sure to post about it with the hashtag #FoodPorn (which has over 155 million posts). Just make sure that the photos you post under that hashtag look as good, juicy, and delicious as possible.

Also keep up with the latest social media trends for restaurants. The industry is constantly changing and there are many conversations you can get involved with. Look at chains like Wendy’s, who regularly engage their customers on the latest trending topics. Not everyone can get that kind of success, but if you don’t try you’ll never get any kind of success at all.

5. Use the targeted following feature to grow your customer base

Targeted following is about following the right kinds of customers. Who you follow can be as important as who follows you on social media. There are several ways to go about targeted following, but the most common one is to follow hashtags that are relevant to the industry.

For example, you might want to search for hashtags like #Hamburgers, #BestBurgers, #hamburgersalad, and the like.

A waffle place could benefit from searching the following: #waffles, #wafflehouse, #wafflesandwich, etc.

If you have a pizza shop, then you might find useful the following hashtags: #pizza, #pizzatime🍕, #pizzamania, #pizzaitaliana, #pizzanyc, pizaany, etc.

This is one area where Instagram for restaurants is especially useful. Instagram has a handy feature in their search bar that displays hashtags related to the ones you are searching.

The highest performing posts (the ones with the most likes, shares, etc.) show up first. Load up the best posts, check out who liked it, and follow them. It’s as simple as that. This is a great way to grow your client base and another good reason why restaurants need social media.

6. Post the right content

Every good social media strategy revolves around posting the right restaurant social media content. You need to encourage people to follow you and give them a reason for doing so. Make sure that the content you post is worth seeing. Use high quality photos and post a variety of different things.

Also, avoid overdoing it on the promotion. Being too self-promotional is a bad look for the social media and restaurant industry. No one likes it when people over-promote, whether it’s an individual user or a brand. Do yourself a favor and let the content speak for itself. Of course you should promote specials and the like, but try to stick to an 80/20 rule. Only 20% of the content you post should be promotional.

But, when you add promotional content, do it right by including a link directly to your menu, so clients can order in as few clicks as possible. You can get one from our online ordering system, in Setup -> Publishing -> Facebook (Sharing).

To help you get organized and stick to a plan, you must use a restaurant social media content calendar. Open an excel file and decide what you are going to post in the next two weeks, complete with photo or video, interesting captions that invite people to take action and posting time.

Schedule the posts all at once, and you are now free to focus on other aspects of restaurant social media marketing, such as interacting with your followers, until you get to work again in two more weeks.

Final words

Make sure that you also publish the links to your social accounts on your website, so that your customers can follow your social media activity. Now that you understand why restaurants need social media, the only thing left to do is to make it happen for your business.