Commentary

7 Best content marketing ideas for restaurant owners

7 tips on how use social media to connect with consumers to maximize marketing efforts.

July 23, 2018

By Freddie Tubb, digital marketing consultant, Australian help

If you are a restaurant, you likely have your own website, social media page or some other sort of online presence. This is great because that's where your audience is. You engage with them and listen to what they have to say. But at times you wonder if there is anything else that you can do to provide more when it comes to your pages online. The truth is you can.

What you need to do is create content. If you are wondering which content marketing strategies you can employ, here are some interesting tips:

1. Tell a story

As a restaurant owner, you probably have a lot of interesting stories to tell — anecdotes, your road from having an idea to having a restaurant, your roadblocks etc. This is what you can share. People love honest, real-life stories about success of others. Most of them are going through their own roadblocks and they would like to hear how you did it.

2. Work with influencers

Influencers can give you a unique wide reach that you would otherwise hardly have. Find people who love food and know a lot about restaurants like the one you own. Then you can offer them something in return for working with you – this means creating content together, featuring each other, sharing your posts on social media and on their blogs.

3. Film educational videos

Your restaurant likely has a fan base of people who love your food, decorations, and overall atmosphere. They probably also want to know how you manage to do it, how you prepare food or make decorations or organize your busy schedule – all of this can be told or shown in a video.

Shoot yourself cooking a simple meal or talking about certain aspects of your job that people may find interesting and useful.

4. Write a blog

Having a blog where you'll share your stories, recipes, guides and possibly cookbooks is a great idea. However, if you are not a good writer, you can try working with a writer or using these tools:

- StateOfWriting and Academ Advisor are content writing guides that will lead you steadily through each writing process.

- UK Writings is an online editing tool that you can use after you have finished with your blog post – it's a good idea to remove redundancies and have a concise text.

- Via Writing is an online grammar checker that you can also use once you are done writing. It will go through your text and let you know if there are any grammar mistakes and how to fix them.

- Essay Roo and Boom Essays are formatting tools. People love reading a text that has a lot of paragraphs, subheadings and bullet lists — as opposed to reading a dense block of text — and these tools can help you.

5. Publish a menu

One of the reasons people often stay away from restaurants is because they are not sure what kind of food they are serving. It's great to try new food, but people are afraid that they won't like it and end up spending unnecessary money. This is why it's a good idea to share a menu of your restaurant online so that your customers can see it. State all of the main ingredients, possible allergens and what you are willing to change for those who need recipes changed.

6. Post on social media

Creating social media posts is a good way to engage with your audience. Most of your clients have a social media page or profile. Keep in mind that you will be posting on social media and while your content can be informative or educational, it has to be fun and entertaining. Use images, videos, infographics and text combined to get the best results.

For amazing and interesting posts, use tools like My Writing Way or Paper Fellows to generate catchy and attention grabbing headlines.

7. Tell them about upcoming events

Use social media and your website to post articles and posts about your upcoming events or updates to your restaurant. "Events can increase the number of visitors that you have on those nights and the more people know about them the better. Updates about what your restaurant is up to and how it is changing are also great because they can get people interested in how you are handling this change and how your restaurant will be different", — explains Debra Box, a Digital marketer at Academized.

Takeaway

Creating high-quality content can make your restaurant one of the favorite places in town. People build trust by reading about you and seeing your content on social media, your website and other places. By creating content that they love, you stay in front of them and they will always value your restaurant. If your food is good, chances are that people would love to hear from you.

Freddie Tubb is a digital marketing consultant at Australian help. He regularly takes part in retail marketing conferences and contributes to Big Assignments and Ox Essays blogs.

Cover photo by iStock Photos.