Instagram Rehab For Restaurants
Everyone is trying to find new ways to make their restaurant and food more “Instagrammable”.
Organically, customers want to take pictures of their amazing meals and share that experience with their audience. And foodies use amazing food pictures as a complement to great dining stories and restaurant reviews.
But what happens when big restaurants take this very organic customer behavior and try to build out a marketing plan around it?
Well, we get a bunch of great looking food pics that sit on social feeds with limited followings and low engagement.
A lot of effort goes into a restaurant creating content supporting their popular menu items. And there are a large number of new startups taking advantage of this offering to fill the social media feeds with great looking photography. Unfortunately, this often comes with little or no actual content strategy. And usually results in zero added benefit for the business.
This is especially true with smaller restaurant chains or single restaurant owners. They are typically busy running everything from the menu, to operations, to marketing with little time to invest in content strategy. If you don’t have time to sit down and work out a content strategy and execution plan, don’t waste your money on creating the content in the first place.
In my opinion, you are better off posting an initial batch of amazing menu shots that highlight your core offerings, some shots of the restaurant itself so customers can envision the environment, and a few posts about your brand, the restaurant philosophy, and some words from the owners and staff. Then I would encourage your staff to capture experiences in the restaurant and customer testimonials as they come organically.
I’m not saying to give your staff free range to post on your social profiles. Each post should be approved by the owner or someone who understands the brand image you are looking for. And I don’t think that the staff is qualified to take amazing food shots, but they can take perfectly acceptable customer shots with food as the secondary focus in the picture.
If you do have the time to invest in developing a content strategy, then you’ll start to see that the food is only one part of the equation in a content mix that is engaging to customers.
And you shouldn’t set an arbitrary follower count number as your goal. The goal should be to paint a great picture of what it’s actually like to visit your restaurant.
Customers may not follow you on social media, but it’s very likely that they will search for you online before visiting to get a feel for your restaurant.
They want to see the ambiance, the vibe, the staff, and yes the food. But maybe it’s the awesome outdoor patio that convinces them to visit, or the bright interior, or how fancy the tables are, or that it seems kid friendly, etc.
And you should have some hero messages that everyone can understand and get excited about. Try to come up with a couple of main products that everyone recommends, some brand experiences that you highlight, and some regular promotions that they can expect on a consistent basis (i.e. Taco Tuesday, College Night, Happy Hour, etc.)
And if you have to choose between creating loads of fresh content or paying for ads, choose to pay for ads.
Yes you should have content but if no one sees it what’s the point.
If dollars are limited, invest in sharing your primary messages with as many potential customers as possible leveraging the power of social media paid ads.
If you can afford to do both, that’s even better long term, but the ads are more valuable, especially for a smaller business.
For the larger franchised restaurants out there, where awareness is not really a factor, the game changes. They typically have the money and time to think about strategy, but tend to lack original insight into how to get customers to care about their message.
I’ve worked on big restaurant brands and the elephant in the room is that everyone is playing the short game.
The truth is everyone has heard of your restaurant, they just have an abundance of options and are not particularly loyal.
The food is basically the same quality brand to brand, and the experience on premise is pretty standard as well. Some might disagree with me on that but typically the experience is more driven by the neighborhood you are in than by the restaurant itself.
Taking this back to Instagram, most big restaurant brands are trying to manufacture an image of their restaurant. Most people see right through this and aren’t really paying attention. There is zero value being given to the users. Now, I’m not going to complain without providing some solutions, but I’ll preface this by saying that any ideas that would really have merit have zero chance of gaining traction with big brands. They are too risk averse to try drastically different new things.
But here we go anyway with some ideas on how to reinvigorate your big restaurant brand Instagram:
1) Blow it up!
If you can’t start from scratch, you will always be stuck making minor tweaks. Think about what you would do if you were talking about your brand for the very first time. What would you tell the customers and what type of relationship would you want to build with them one at a time. How would you keep them engaged and bring them value? In other words, be customer driven rather than brand driven. It should all be about them, their stories and experiences with your brand and the value you can bring them.
2) Create real interaction.
Come up with one goal to build content against that makes sense for the users of this platform. What do you want them to do after they visit your content? They may not follow you on social media, but maybe they’d share their own stories with you. Maybe they would go to your website for interesting content. Maybe they would interact with some type of promotion you have.
3) Stop selling burgers! Create experiences and think like a media company.
You have the capacity to create amazing content with great content producers. That should be housed on your own website and should follow the best practices of a publishing company. Your social media can simply be a doorway to your great content that taps into the culture of your consumers. And everyone producing content should be a fan of your products so they have real authentic stories that resonate with other consumers, rather than the corporate commercial content that everyone sees through now.
4) Promote your media channels.
Once you have amazing content, it would be a shame if no one saw it. Instead of putting all your ad dollars into selling products that people already know about, create awareness around your amazing content and media stories. Promote your social channels and the ‘new shows’ on your website. Leverage real talent and their fan base to become fans of your channel.
That’s it! I’m done! This isn’t ground breaking or new in terms of the idea, but I’ve yet to see a company willing to truly invest in their brand outside of an advertising investment approach that is losing steam in terms of effectiveness.
The customers are the key! I hope this inspires some conversation.
This was originally posted at BrandonBrands.com
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Brandon Birkmeyer is the host of the Brands on Brands on Brands Podcast. I believe that building brands that matter today is the only way for a business to thrive tomorrow. Brands that are true to a purpose. Brands that put people first. Brands that build real connections.
