My Extensive Social Media Strategy for Restaurants

If you’re opening up a restaurant, pre-order only bake shop, or any other variation of a business that serves food, you might be struggling with where to start when building a social media strategy.

Have no fear! Aidan is here! And I’ll share with you everything I know about crafting a solid social media strategy for your establishment.

Why care at all about social media as a restaurant?

Never in history has it been easier for a restaurant to gain widespread recognition, to attract more customers than you could dream of.

I mean, you’re running a business, not a charity, right? Earning customers is the goal? If it’s not, this blog will be a waste of your time—fair warning.

By crafting a solid social media strategy, you set yourself up as one of the top spots in town that will keep customers coming back for years.

Anyways, let’s get down to why you’re here:

1. Writing Your Hook (Unique Selling Feature)

First, we all need to be on the same page about who your business is and what your angle is. My hope is this is obvious, but if it’s not, let’s break it down.

You need to be able to simply articulate what kind of food you make in a catchy, unique way.

Here are a handful of examples:

• Gourmet, wood-fired pizza

• Authentic dishes from Spain

• Specialty vegan burger joint

Tip: Stay away from generic adjectives, or phrases that could easily describe other nearby competitors.

As you’re considering how to describe yourself, consider the items of your menu that satisfy both of these things:

• Items that are the best / most unique on your menu

• Items you actually hope to sell more of (i.e. higher profit margins, higher volume, etc.)

It might seem silly, but these two things are not always the same thing. It’s important you’re all on the same page about what you want to sell most, as it will become an underlying theme in your social media marketing.

Once we’ve positioned our restaurant with our unique selling feature (thus, developed our hook), we’re ready for the next step.

2. Craft an Instagram profile that attracts

I don’t have the time to get too in-depth about it here, so I’ll make this as quick as possible:

Instagram is the #1 social media app restaurants should be focusing on.

Period. Facebook, surprisingly, is still important, but it is a definite second. At a glance, Instagram has these benefits:

• Greater spread beyond your immediate personal social circle

• A culture of shares, likes, and engagement

• An at-a-glance of what people gain by following you

Our content can be shared across platforms, sure, but our focus is Instagram for many reasons.

We need to create an entire Instagram profile that compels people to follow you.

How do we do that? It’s debatable, but I’m going to summarize it like this:

1. Answer What, Where, Why, and When quickly

   • This means your Hook from step 1, add in your physical location or service area, highlight something about the passion that drives you, and have your hours of operation or ordering process immediately ready

2. Demonstrate the personality of your brand

   • This means careful consideration of word choice, abbreviations, and what you don’t say. You only have a limited number of characters, so each one counts

   • If you’re struggling, determine what adjectives you’d use to describe your restaurant, and work backwards from there (fun, family-friendly, fine dining, exotic, gourmet, casual, fast food, decadent)

3. Add some emojis

   • Assuming your brand isn’t super high-class as determined in the last step

4. Chose a profile photo of your logo with some pop

   • You want something that’ll be recognizable when people scroll through their busy social media feed or see your Insta stories at the top of the app

3. Add Story Highlights that serve customers

This is a relatively simple idea but few restaurants actually do it.

Add story highlights (separate ones) with your menu, hours, location, about, behind the scenes, whatever at the very top of your profile.

When people come to your page, you essentially want it to be a mini-website. You want all the vital information readily available.

If customers have to scroll too deep into your feed to learn about you, you’ve already failed.

You need to constantly be thinking, “If this was the first place someone learned about our restaurant, what would they want to know ASAP?” and then find creative ways to answer it.

4. Capture breathtaking photos of your food

This is quite literally my profession, so I could write a book about it, but I realize this isn’t always in the cards for everyone; especially in the beginning.

If you’re not able to hire a photographer, you’re going to have to become one. No exceptions.

It is hard to overstate the importance of incredible food photography to attract more customers for a restaurant.

Call me biased because I’m a photographer. You could argue this is a conflict of interest, but I insist that, about this, I am not wrong, and I am not exaggerating.

Everything hinges on the photography of your food being exceptional.

If you’re not willing to make the effort to capture the best possible photos of your food, nor are you willing to hire someone, or you think you can simply pass this off to your hostess and get the job done, you’re sadly mistaken. Please stop reading immediately because nothing else I say will be of any value without this.

You cannot convince people to spend their money on you until you’ve demonstrated you’re at least worth consideration.

I could go on and on. But you may only proceed with fantastic photos.

If you’re doing it yourself, here are my super quick and dirty tips for shooting food:

• Place a really well done dish near a window (not in direct sunlight)

• Use your iPhone (not in portrait mode, barf) to shoot

• Get close to the dish but not uncomfortably so

• Experiment with angles: 45º, 70º, top-down, from the side, front, etc.

• Jazz up your photos with some casual, natural props: glasses, cutlery, napkins

• Consider the texture of the table you’re shooting on. Experiment with others

• Edit your photo lightly in an app like Snapseed

  • Boosting saturation a little (30%)

  • Making sure your photo is adequately bright

  • Make sure it’s not crooked or tilted

Armed with some good photos of multiple dishes (and at least a few good photos of each individual dish), progress to the next step.

6. Develop a posting strategy

Every restaurant is different, but it’s a general principle to post at least once per day that your establishment is open for orders.

On days you do not open or wish to be contacted, do not post anything. If you do, you run a serious risk of annoying your customers by misleading them about your hours of operation.

While I have you here, let me make a really important distinction that many businesses don’t seem to get:

Posting once in a while on social media is not a strategy.

Period. End of discussion. That’s a habit. And a very poor one at that.

You fail to gain all that you can from the use of social media if you only post once a week, or when you’re hurting for business.

You need to develop the self-discipline to post a quality photo at least once a day for your audience.

To take it a step further (though this isn’t always necessary), I’d also say you should be trying to post an Instagram Story once a day as well. Behind the scenes stuff, polls, quizzes are all fantastic. Sharing the post you made on your feed is ok, but it’s not as good as original content.

If you only took one thing out of this section, it’s this: post every day you’re open.

7. Respond to every comment and DM

Without getting too technical, this is how the social media algorithm works:

• You post a piece of content

• Instagram (or every platform) analyzes how quickly it gains likes, comments, shares

• The algorithm adjusts to either reward your content (push it out to more followers) or punish your content (opt not to show it to as many people)

• The next time you post, it keeps in mind your profile’s history and generally responds accordingly, predicting how well a new post ought to do

Like it or not, that’s how organic posting works.

Only 10% of your following will see your posts on average.

If you’re hitting 20% or above, that’s pretty fantastic. Any higher, absolutely amazing. Largely unheard of.

To drive likes, comments, and shares, this is why it’s imperative that both:

• Your photo (or video) be of the highest calibre

• Your caption be engaging, funny, memorable, or otherwise encouraging genuine discussion

If you routinely fail to hit both of those things with every post, social media platforms take note, and you won’t get as much reach heading into the future.

It can be really hard to earn back your reputation if you’ve spent too long posting sporadic, poor content. But it is certainly not impossible.

Understand that social media is a marathon and not a sprint.

Good things take time. This is no different.

8. Re-share user content

A fantastic way to keep users engaged with what you’re posting and to keep them coming back is to share the content they tag you in. Even if it’s kind of a subpar photo (use caution and discretion), the results of sharing a user’s content can be massive.

Here’s what happens in the mind of your follower:

1. They buy a meal or treat from your establishment

2. They take the time to compose a nice photo (or, at least to them, it’s nice)

3. They post it + tag you in it

4. When they see you’ve shared it, they get a rush of excitement and feel a much more personal connection with your restaurant.

5. Now, they’re primed to do it again (though, of course, not guaranteed) the next time they come around.

I’d also argue they’re more likely to come around again just because they have that positive association with your brand; no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.

The biggest benefit to you as the restaurant owner is that you’re training them to be excited about posting about your establishment. Why is this good for you?

You reach their audience when they tag you in a post.

And I’m willing to bet $100 that you don’t follow every single one of their friends.

This, at best, is how organic growth happens. Come to think of it, this might be one of the most under-utilized tactics I’m advocating for.

9. Add hashtags, hours, menu, location to every post

You need to remove every possible barrier between your followers and them spending money on you.

That means, with every post, sharing your hours, menu, and location at the very bottom of the caption.

If you use Apple devices, you can set up “Text replacement” on your iPhone to replace an acronym with a pre-typed set of information as needed.

For example: I use the acronym “igah” when I’m typing out my captions, and my computer knows to automatically replace it with the list of hashtags I’ve programmed to go along with every post. “ig” just stands for “Instagram” and “ah” are my initials. You can make it anything you want (and I have different acronyms for different clients): just make sure it’s something you won’t type in other circumstances.

Hashtags are probably a little less valuable to a business in relativity to attracting immediate new business, but there’s no saying what it can’t do.

In order to cut down on low-effort DMs and comments about your restaurant’s hours, menu, location: just add it with every post.

Research what hashtags competitors in your area are using, and adopt a lot of them. If they look like they put thought into an extensive list, they probably did.

10. Bonus: pre-schedule your posts

Don’t miss me on this:

You are wasting so much time by manually posting for your business.

Built right into Facebook’s business tools now are automated posting tools. There are entire services that offer this (I’ve used later.com with mixed experiences), but you don’t even have to spend a dime anymore.

Spend an hour or two gathering all the content you want to share for the month, and plug it all in on your computer.

Then, when you use social media throughout the day, all you’re doing is responding to comments and messages (the more fun part of social media). You’ve done the legwork of thinking about what to post ahead of time.

If your thought is, “I don’t have the time to schedule my social media ahead of time,” then I’d tell you three things:

1. You don’t value what a good social media strategy will do for your restaurant (so why are you reading this?)

2. You manage your time poorly

3. You can’t afford not to do this.

This isn’t a negotiable, as far as I’m concerned. This is what every professional business would do. So are you an amateur, or a pro?

— — —

This is a fairly extensive guide on what I would do if I were starting a new restaurant in order to guarantee myself the most chance of success and growth.

Remember: there is no such thing as an overnight success. All of these things take time. Be willing to put the work in.

— — —

While I’ve tried to cover much of what I do at length, there’s still a ton of stuff that I personally do for my clients when they outsource their social media to me.

Here’s what I do for my clients that I can’t just teach you in an online guide:

• I strategize new marketing ideas to implement other restaurants haven’t tried

• I actually do the food photography that will make mouths water

• I help you identify the products that provide the most value to your business, and push it to the forefront

• I help you manage contests, giveaways, etc.

• I respond to all of your comments, DMs, etc.

• I copywrite, meaning I’m the one doing the work of writing all your captions

  • By doing that, I help you define your tone, expression, and mentality around what you do

  • I communicate that effectively + often to your audience

• I help you address public negative feedback in a way that will actually help you, not hurt you

• I help you identify what is working and what isn’t within your business, and how to adjust accordingly (going far beyond just ‘social media management’)

• I help you identify potential areas of growth, and then develop a strategy with you to go after them

• I help you figure out what you do better than anyone else, and attract clients whose values align with what your business stands for

There’s so much more to it than I can even really say. It’s something that only really comes with having done this for years now.

I’m not the right fit for every small business, but if you think that I might be for you, I’d love to hear from you. Shoot me an email at aidan@hennebry.ca so I can learn more about what pain points your restaurant is experiencing, and how I might be able to partner with you to bring you out of them.