A robust social media following is fantastic — if it’s driving results. But if you have 100,000 social followers who will never visit your restaurant, then you’re wasting a lot of time and not making any money.
That’s why you should always be thinking about what you can do to bring more of your social media followers into your restaurant and turn them into paying customers. We are going to discuss five simple steps you can take on your social media profiles to bring more customers in the door of your restaurant.
1. Provide an Incentive to Connect Further from Social Media (Join Mailing List)
A social media user that checks out your feed once and then disappears is no good to you. Even if they follow one of your social accounts, it’s very possible that the dreaded algorithms will hide your content from a large portion of your followers.
2. Use the right keywords
Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn bios and posts are all searchable. So make sure to pepper in relevant keywords to showcase your restaurant. To figure out the right keywords, you’ll have to do a little keyword research. Just like with any SEO, you want a keyword with a high search volume and not too much competition.
But what about Instagram? On IG, your username and actual name are the only “searchable” fields. To get around this, consider using the name field as an opportunity to use a relevant keyword, instead of your name or company name. You can always put your name below in the description box.
3. Use Calls to Action
Copywriting 101 — you need a call to action. Your call to action is the step that you want a person to take next.
We have found that the best calls to action include things like: Book your reservation now, Join our VIP Club Now, Join our Birthday Club Now, something that moves them from social media to your database.
On Facebook, you can add a call to action right to your page. Just click “Add Page Button” under your header image, and select the button you’d like to add. Options include Contact Us, Sign Up (great for a mailing list!), and Shop Now – this could link to your online menu for ordering. There are plenty more. This is a great way to offer an incentive to click and join your mailing list!!
Here are some great options to offer in exchange for signing up for your mailing list:
- A Free Appetizer
- Buy One Get One Meal
- $5 OFF your Visit
- Free Dessert
- 20% Off your Visit
LinkedIn also offers pre-set CTA buttons, like Contact Us, Register, and Visit Website.
On Twitter, here are no set Call to Action buttons, but you can add CTAs with links in your bio or in your posts.
And on Instagram, Business or Creator accounts have action buttons that you can add right to your profile, like Email, Book Now, and Buy Tickets. With a link to a site like Eventbrite, you could even presell for a special event or dining option right from your IG profile.
Ways to Optimize Your Social Profiles to Drive More Customers Into Your Restaurant
Make sure not to “set and forget” your CTA. Experiment with different options to see what gets you the best result.
4. Geolocate your profiles
It is important to make sure you geolocate your profiles so you are attracting the customers that are near your restaurant and will more than likely visit.
To get discovered by potential customers in your local area you need to focus locally.. To start, tag your location in everything you post. Not only do you want your posts to be associated with your location, but posts with a tagged location also tend to perform better on social media. We’re talking 79% higher engagement on Instagram over posts that don’t have a tagged location!
You should also use location hashtags. These could include your city, neighborhood, or even your street name if it’s well-known. Influencers are big on local hashtags, so you could catch the eye of someone that you’d like to work with in the future.
5. Link to your content (the right way)
Linking to your personal or company blog on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is easy. But linking to third-party sites on Instagram is a bit tricker.
You only get one link on Instagram (unless you have over 10,000 followers), so you want to use it well. Just linking to your website means if someone is looking for a blog post, they’ll have to do a lot of hunting to find it. You could update your one link to go directly to that blog post every time you publish one, but who has time for that?
Instead, you can use your one link to send leads to a landing page. From that landing page, you can post links to the key things about your restaurant as well as provide them an option to sign up for your mailing list. If you put it on your own site, you can easily track the traffic from Instagram in your site’s analytics, making it easy to figure out what your Instagram leads are the most interested in.
Get Optimized!
There is a lot more traffic going to your social profile than you may realize, making it a great tool to build your database and drive customers in the door to your restaurant. Start out with these five, and make sure to experiment. You should always be testing and tweaking, figuring out what works best for you and your business.
Remember, social media is a tool, and if it’s not driving customers in the door, then all those followers are just a vanity number.
