Are you getting everything you should out of your restaurant social media marketing strategy?
Naturally, you want visibility. You want engagement. But let’s be honest. You run a restaurant. You’re not here for the “likes” and comments. You’re here to turn virtual activity into real customer traffic. But you can’t have one without the other.
Sometimes, it can help to bring in some social media reinforcements — somebody who is here for the “likes” and comments. That’s the idea behind Taste Agent, a Chicago-based company that brings together restaurants and social media influencers.
Taste Agent venture lead Janna Mazur explains, “It's basically a trade model where operators give a meal to content creators in exchange for promoting their business on social media.”
We wanted to learn more about influencer partnerships for restaurants, and more generally, about how to get the most out of a restaurant social media marketing strategy, so we asked Janna for some tips.
As we’ve discussed in the past, influencer partnerships for restaurants can be a great way to build visibility and engagement. But there’s even more to it than that. As we learned in our chat with Janna, this type of collaboration can give your restaurant’s social media strategy more consistency, credibility, and authenticity.
But in order for this collaboration to work, you do need to lay your own groundwork for success. Janna offers some great tips for more effective restaurant social media marketing, whether you're working with influencers or going it alone.
The first step is making sure you’re actually using the platforms that your current and prospective customers are using.
“The number one mistake,” Janna says, “is not being on social media at all. Some restaurants don’t have Instagram, which is a great place to start. I’d also say you want to be on TikTok and potentially even Facebook.”
Janna cautions against overlooking Facebook. This platform is a perfect example of understanding who your core demographics are and where they spend their time online.
Janna advises, “Different platforms have different generational followings. So if you live in a certain area where there's a larger older population you want to bring through your doors, you’ll want to be active on Facebook. If you're around a lot of students, you’ll want to connect with them through Instagram and TikTok.
“The point,” says Janna, “is that you want to use the social media platforms that correspond with the type of audiences you're trying to attract.”
Before you bring anybody from the outside into your social media space, make sure you’ve fully defined that space. As a writer, one of the most valuable tips I got in my younger days was to find my own voice.
This advice is just as valuable when it comes to building an identity and a brand on social media. The goal with social media marketing for restaurants is to establish an online tone that matches the vibe and energy of your restaurant.
“When you're putting out your own content, that's a really great place to establish your own tone,” says Janna. “We've worked with folks who have a very tailored aesthetic where everything is moody and elevated. We’ve also worked with brands whose approach to social media is like ‘We’re just going to be silly.’”
The tone you use gives visitors a sense of what your restaurant is about. It’s also a way to make sure your messaging stands out from the crowd.
Your personality shouldn’t just come from your tone of voice. It also needs to come through in the imagery you choose. Janna warns against posting "homogeneous content,” which she notes can be easily dismissed by prospective customers.
“If it's just a picture of a slice of pizza and a message like ‘Come in for pizza Friday,’ visitors will treat it like an ad rather than a unique message representing your brand. So you should really be thinking about what your brand represents, and how you can turn it into both messaging and visual content.”
In other words, effective social media marketing for restaurants is ultimately about telling your restaurant’s unique story.
As Janna explains, “When you're trying to get more traction and reach new diners, you want content that's a little more engaging, that has more personality to it, that tells a story. This is an area where having your own social media manager in-house as well as working with influencers is a really great option.”
Naturally, it’s great to tell your own story. But there’s no substitute for the credibility you get when somebody else tells that story for you.
As Janna points out, “When you're working with content creators, there's less of that curation and control. But the beauty of working with content creators is that they're going to be talking about your business in a way that may not match your brand guidelines to a T.
“That’s a good thing,” says Janna, “because it feels more authentic to viewers, which is huge on social media.”
Of course, the visibility that you’ll get alongside that authenticity is pretty vital. And as Janna points out, this is one of the biggest benefits of influencer partnerships for restaurants.
She explains, “When a social media manager posts from your own page, those posts are mostly hitting people who already follow you. But when you’re working with content creators, you get access to whoever is following them — foodies in your city, people who are really into travel — there’s a whole other kind of reach you get when working content creators.”
Collaborating with influencers is an excellent way to pump some juice into your restaurant social media marketing strategy, but it can’t replace the absolutely necessary drumbeat of constant in-house posting. As Janna explained, the most robust package Taste Agent offers includes up to eight influencer connections per month.
But this package can really only fill in part of the social media picture for your restaurant. As Janna notes, “It certainly takes a lot of the effort off of operators if they do fully outsource to a service like Taste Agent.
“But most folks tell us that they also like to have an in-house social media manager. This is because they don't want their whole feed to be other people talking about their restaurant. They like to have their own brand out there too.
“In fact,” says Janna, “we find that those people who have the biggest service plans with Taste Agent also have an extremely strong social media presence on their own, and they're always posting. They're just deciding to crank the dial all the way up with the help of content creators. It creates a nice balance.”
Obviously, finding that balance means that you’ll have to do plenty of work in-house to create and post relevant, unique, and engaging content. Fortunately, tools are being built all the time that can take some of the weight off your social media manager.
For instance, our brand new social media post generator is a tool specifically designed to make it easy for your restaurant to produce and post compelling social media content.
Here’s how it works:
Easy peasy! Just submit your photo and the app will walk you through the rest. Check out our new social media post generator now and see what it can do for you. It’s totally free — and no account is required!