Are you using social media to connect with your existing customers and bring in new diners? We are in the midst of a social marketing revolution, and there are huge new opportunities for growth. Facebook in particular is a powerful platform for driving direct website orders for your restaurant.
Your customers have changed, and are now more digitally aware and involved in the research and ordering process. They are engaged in every step of the process, and this puts them in the driving seat more than ever before.
We need to understand new ways to connect with potential diners, with the kind of depth and colour they’re now used to.
This article will give you a crash course in selling your restaurant on Facebook, and will help you understand the key principles of social media that will enable you to turn social media into sales. Not every channel or tool is right for every restaurant! It’s important to test and choose the ones that suit and work best for your establishment. Figure out where your target audience is spending their time online and ensure you have an engaged presence there.
Social networking sites have revolutionised the way we use the internet today: if you don’t have an active social media presence, you simply don’t exist. You are missing out on huge opportunities to engage and sell to your existing and potential diners. According to Adweek.com, the average user logs about 1.78 hours per day on social platforms, accounting for 28% of all their online activity.
So why not take just a little slice of that online activity and use it to your benefit? You can take advantage of social media to drive direct orders for your restaurant.
Optimising your Facebook Presence
Facebook often updates their algorithms to ensure that its users are getting the best possible experience each time that they log in. It’s getting increasingly harder for your restaurant’s business page to stand out in all the noise.
In order to be on top of your game, let’s look at a few optimisation tips.
1. Profile and Cover Photos
Ensure that your profile pictures and cover photos represent your brand and are reflective of your restaurant’s website. You don’t want to have a cartoonish profile picture or an outdated logo on your page; make sure your pictures on Facebook are as polished as your site and match it in tone.
2. Fill out the About Us
Your About Us section should be as full as possible. Make sure that you have a link directly back to your restaurant’s website. Information like how diners can get in touch with you and where you are located are vital.
3. Create a Vanity URL
A custom Facebook url gives you the opportunity to enhance your brand recognition. It also holds high value in search rankings, making it easier for diners to find when they do a search.
4. Optimise your Restaurant’s Facebook page for SEO
- Facebook social signals can have a lot of potential for SEO value – use it as a channel to build traffic and links back to your restaurant’s website.
- Harness the power of the graph search: use keywords in your content and page updates. Graph search is a semantic search engine that was introduced to the Facebook platform in 2013. It searches content across the platform, and serves up keyword results based on the user’s network.
- Take advantage of the customised meta titles and images when you share links in your posts. Facebook will automatically pull in images and titles from your website to display in a carousel like post.
- Share high-quality content that will generate engagement such as likes, comments and shares.
If you find that you’re stuck for time to generate good content, you might want to consider scheduling your posts. Scheduling your posts will save you time as you can batch your work. Posts can be scheduled anywhere from 10 minutes before to 6 months ahead, so you’ve got a lot of flexibility. You can schedule your posts directly from your Facebook timeline by clicking on the dropdown arrow under your post. Alternatively, you can create your schedule posts in bulk from the publishing tools section.
5. Use Interest Targeting
Use your fans’ interests to target specific parts of your audience. to reach specific fans and narrow your audience – base your content on your key personas to include demographic, location and interests targeting for your organic posts.
6. Use of the Call To Action Button
Be sure to use call to action buttons for direct orders.
7. Enable Ratings and Reviews
To activate reviews on your Facebook page, you must have a local business listing and have your full business address featured in the about us section.
8. Use Rich Media in the Newsfeed
Create an experience that potential diners want to engage with. Move away from sharing simple text links with thumbnails. It’s time to get creative! Jazz up your posts with bright imagery and video clips uploaded directly to the Facebook platform.
9. Use Apps to Customise
Facebook apps allow you to customise your page in many ways. Take a step back from your Facebook page, and ask yourself: What are you doing that’s engaging and keeping your hotel’s fans on your Facebook page?
- Competition apps: using competition apps allows for tons of flexibility in the information that you can collect from fans, and it keeps them engaged and prevents them from leaving the platform.
- Email captures: Add a sign-up form tab. Offer an incentive for diners to sign up to your newsletter. Once you’ve collected your list, use it to retarget potential diners with special offers and packages to order directly on your restaurant site.
10. Make shareable, fresh content
Make sure you have a steady stream of shareable content on your website – keep your content up to date. Not only is fresh content helpful from a social media perspective, but it will also benefit you from a search engine optimization point of view and engage diners that find their way to your site. Fresh content is a win-win-win.
11. Add social sharing icons
Ensure that your content is easily shareable to Facebook and other platforms– add social sharing icons to your website with easy tools like ShareThis, AddThis or SumoMe.
Conclusion
There are always new ways for you to reach out to potential diners, and Facebook is just one of the platforms that you can use to develop long-lasting relationships. You need to make an effort to engage with your fans, listen to what they have to say and get ahead of your competition.
Remember not to oversell every Facebook post. Keep the 80/20 rule in mind: only 20% of your content should be about your brand, and the other 80% should be dedicated to sharing content that really matters to your audience and engages with them in conversations. Will you be implementing any new changes to your Facebook strategy? Get in touch and let us know how you get on.
