Which Social Platforms Should Your Restaurant Use?
Social media platforms can be a powerful tool for restaurants hoping to connect with customers through organic interactions and advertisements. However, the digital landscape changes very quickly, and it can be difficult to know which social media sites and apps would most benefit your foodservice business. Below, we'll analyze the best social media platforms for restaurants to use so you can decide which best fit your company's social media marketing efforts.
Social Media Marketing for Restaurants
Although there are several social media platforms available, these are four major players for the foodservice industry to consider: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Each caters to a wide audience through visual messaging, including text posts, images, and videos all designed to engage and be shared by your audience. The best social media for restaurants depends on your target audience, end goals, and how much time you can invest in cultivating your online presence.
When potential customers want more information about your restaurant, they'll likely turn to one of two sources to find answers: a search engine to find your website, or the Facebook app on their phone to find your business page. If you're primarily looking to establish an official social media presence for your business, Facebook offers the most distinct and comprehensive business pages. Facebook enables companies to convey branding with a profile picture and cover photo, but more importantly, it can be a reliable way to communicate directly with current and future customers.
Facebook has long been the biggest social media site in terms of daily active users, with reportedly 2 billion1 as of October 2021. On a Facebook business page, you can create statuses, post photos, and customize a call-to-action button at the top to send customers who click on it to your website. Creating a Facebook page for your business helps you take advantage of targeted marketing, due to how closely the social media platform tracks user demographics, and lets you slide seamlessly into the news feed of the social media site that most of your customers use.
The more comments, likes, and shares your posts gain, the more widely your posts will be seen. Because Facebook is structured around audience engagement, you should post content relevant to your customers and be responsive to feedback and questions. It's also incredibly important to keep the business information on your Facebook page up to date. Customers may use it as a reference for your current operating hours, address, and promotions, but it can also be a tool to communicate with your community about inclement weather operations, unforeseen closures, and company news, including hiring needs.
One of Facebook's biggest benefits is the ability to target specific demographics by age, gender, location, and interests, so you can use the site's broad demographics to your advantage. Facebook business pages have built-in analytics, so you can monitor customer engagement and adjust your strategy as needed. If you don't have much time to invest in managing your Facebook page, it can still serve as a valuable tool for communicating operating information and real-time updates that could impact business hours or item availability.
With at least 1 billion monthly users,2 Instagram has fewer accounts than Facebook but boasts higher engagement rates than other social media sites. Although Instagram does allow accounts to be run as a business page, which provides social media managers with some analytics for your audience's engagement metrics, your page on this platform won't provide as much room for listing business information. There's also no clear distinction between personal and business accounts when users are browsing their news feed, so it's important to have a strong branding presence in your username and profile picture to make your account recognizable as followers scroll through new posts.
As an image-based platform, Instagram presents a unique opportunity for foodservice operations to show off their menus and atmosphere. If you run an active Instagram account, well-timed posts promoting lunch, dinner, happy hour, or weekly specials can tempt hungry customers to choose your restaurant for a meal. Customers can browse your account to get a better idea of what the food they order might look like. You can grow your audience and increase engagement by running promotions that reward free appetizers to customers who follow your account, like your posts, or tag you in their own pictures of their meal.
Instagram can be a great place to show off behind-the-scenes operations through photos and videos, which can humanize your business and employees by introducing customers to the servers, bartenders, and managers their patronage supports. While it can be used to communicate information to your customers, especially about upcoming events, Instagram is designed for sharing and engaging with your audience and generally requires more daily upkeep than a Facebook page might. However, if your goal is to interact with your customers and promote your restaurant or bar through a visual medium, cultivating an Instagram page may be a worthwhile investment.
As a primarily text-based platform that enables real-time exchanges between users, Twitter allows you to advertise while offering prompt and responsive customer service – if you have someone monitoring your account. Twitter's success hinges on "tweets" (messages containing a maximum of 280 characters) that can be retweeted, liked, and replied to by other accounts. This facilitates conversation between businesses and customers, either organically as tweets show up in followers' timelines or when someone seeks out an account specifically to engage, but that accessibility can backfire if a customer complaint goes viral.
Corporations, especially those in the food and beverage industry, have had past success with running humor-based Twitter accounts. However, the "weird" approach perfected by certain companies has begun to wear thin on consumers as more brands try (and fail) to replicate the zany tone that helped big names in the QSR sector go viral. If you're creating a Twitter account for an independent restaurant or small business, you'll most likely have more luck responding to customers with earnest messages that signal empathy and genuine appreciation for their support.
To begin building your network on Twitter, consider following fellow restaurants, community leaders, and news outlets specific to your city and state. You can list your Twitter handle in visible places in your establishment and promote it across other social media accounts to inform your existing fanbase about your use of this platform. If you choose to utilize Twitter, remember that business accounts are often subject to negative feedback, so it's important to plan how to respond to complaints. This is true for all social media platforms, but Twitter's design doesn't offer as many options for effectively addressing complaints as Facebook does and these interactions can be especially confusing if they involve an anonymous account.
Because of its origins as a text-heavy social media platform, Twitter may not be especially valuable for many small foodservice businesses who hope to show off food or provide business information to customers. However, food truck owners who build a successful following can use the emphasis on real-time engagement to keep customers updated on where to find them for lunch and dinner service.
TikTok
TikTok is a newer, video-based social media platform that's become increasingly popular with influencers, comedians, and celebrities. Of course, TikTok can be utilized by creative brands who leverage vertical videos as part of their social media strategy. Chipotle, for example, has used the platform to promote guacamole, partner with influencers, and connect with its Gen Z fans.1 Even if your business already has someone on staff familiar with video content creation or can afford to hire someone specifically to fulfill a social media management position, mastering the art of TikTok may require more investment than you're willing (or able) to make – with no guarantee the financial or social return will be worth the time and effort.
If your restaurant's target demographic is using TikTok, though, it may be a social media platform worth exploring. The TikTok possibilities for a billion-dollar foodservice corporation are far different from what's realistic for independent restaurants, but focusing your efforts on short and entertaining videos of your employees or providing behind-the-scenes looks at making popular dishes may help you connect with your audience.
Choosing the Best Social Media Platform
While it can be beneficial to have your business represented on more than one social media platform, not every business can spend hours each day making posts and providing updates. Fortunately, it isn't necessary to maintain accounts on every social media platform, especially if you're more interested in providing straightforward information than in cultivating your online brand presence. Before choosing which social media platforms are right for you, consider what your business goals are and how Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok can help you achieve them.
References
- Facebook Hits 2.91 Billion Monthly Active Users In Q3. Deadline. Accessed November 2021.
- 44 Instagram Stats That Matter to Marketers in 2021. Hootsuite. Accessed November 2021.
- How Chipotle Took Over TikTok. QSR Magazine. Accessed November 2021.
