Marketing your restaurant can be daunting – especially with all the other tasks and responsibilities in running a successful restaurant. With social media paving the way for you to reach and connect with customers, it has become an important asset that you can leverage.
But with all the annoyingly persistent myths lying around when it comes to social media, believing and practicing these myths can be harmful to your restaurant.
We’ve listed down 8 of the most widely-believed myths that can be harmful in marketing your restaurant.
- Being Present on Every Social Media Site
The idea that you need to have a presence on every social media site is one of the most harmful myths out there. Maintaining an active presence on a single channel alone takes time, effort, and money – and being on every single one of them can be exhausting.
Here’s what you need to do. Determine the best site/s that offers the best opportunity for you to connect with your target audience and engage your customers. And then build an active and meaningful presence on it.
Most local businesses, like your restaurant, are active on Facebook. This platform allows you to connect with the people around your area, giving your restaurant exposure and your word-of-mouth recommendations. Turn the mentions you get from your diners to more visits and more sales.
While Facebook may be beneficial for you, it’s also important to note that other sites can also offer your restaurant a dynamic approach to reaching customers. Try tapping Instagram if you want to be visually appealing to your customers or if you want to highlight your story as a restaurant. It’s also a great platform to showcase your food and environment.
- Your Followers Are Worthless If They Don’t Become Paying Customers
It’s a given that you should use social media marketing to attract new customers.
But many restaurants tend to assume that people who are following your pages and aren’t paying, or in your case, who haven’t dined in yet, are followers not worth having. And it’s not true.
Fans and followers don’t need to buy from you to be relevant. The main reason for growing your social media audience is to build your profile and reputation, allowing new customers to find you.
Followers or fans of your restaurant with lots of connections are beneficial to you as you’ll also get this clout by association. A follower, who may not be a paying customer, can still refer your restaurant to their friends and followers.
It’s nice to get people to dine in your restaurant, but don’t ignore the benefits of having a massive following on social media.
- Have Your Friends and Family “Like” Your Posts
This is a common misconception and practice among restaurants – asking your friends or family to “like” your posts helps boost your engagement.
While it’s not entirely wrong to ask for people to like your posts, social media algorithms are more sophisticated than just a bunch of likes from the same people. Your engagement should come from a wide range of people, not from the same group all the time.
Create and share relevant and dynamic content apt for your restaurant. Asks questions, encourage shares, or create entertaining posts that are significant to your audience so people will want to engage with you.
If you want engagement, you can try creating a social media campaign where previous diners can share their experience with your restaurant. You get to pick which review you’ll want to highlight for the week, and the customer whose review gets chosen will get to receive a coupon or free drinks on their next visit.
- Don’t Schedule Posts on Weekend
It has become a notion that sharing social media content on weekends is irrelevant. It may be true that some people might not be active on Saturdays and Sundays as much as they do on weekdays, but assuming that posting on weekends does not get traction is wrong.
You can try scheduling a few weekend posts and see how they do. Let the analytics tell you which days and times are best for posting.
- Respond to Social Media Comments Immediately
Responding to a social media follower is imperative. If a follower asks a question or leaves a comment, responding promptly doesn’t mean you need to drop everything at once.
Remember, running your restaurant requires proper time management as many things are happening simultaneously. You can’t be held up by a generic, single comment or message.
If you have customer support on social media, you’re assured that all queries are quickly responded to. If you don’t, lots of local restaurants have added the feature of chatbots on Facebook Messenger on their pages to minimize the response time to their customers. These chatbots are customizable and can personalize the interaction with your customers.
Comments and messages that don’t require customer support can wait a little while. As a general rule, respond within 24 hours.
- All Posts Should be Businesslike
In social media, social comes first, followed by media. Many business owners tend to forget to humanize their brand – posting content as dry as dust and expecting engagement to jump up.
Injecting personality in your social media posts is a great way to have your customers relate to your brand. The more people relate to you, the more they’ll connect and engage with you.
Showcase the brand personality of your restaurant through your social media accounts.
- You Need to Have New Content All the Time
It’s important to have new content but there is no harm in repurposing and resharing old content, especially if you don’t have the time to write and create something new.
There is content creation and there is content “curation”. You can look for relevant posts, topics, or news related to the restaurant industry that you can share with your followers. Keeping in mind that these curated posts are relevant and helpful to your restaurant and engaging enough for your followers.
- Social Media Marketing is Free
We hear this myth all the time. While it’s free to set up your social media account, you cannot get the results you want without spending money.
Social media marketing has grown exponentially sophisticated over the years and paired with the influx of businesses on social media, it has become a pretty competitive place. Boosting posts can help to get your content in front of potential customers.
The good news? You don’t have to spend a ton to get the results you want.
Marketing your restaurant on social media is not as complicated as you’d like to think. Time to let go of these myths and practices and watch how your social media marketing results improve and your restaurant business grow.
