As a restaurant or bar owner, you know staying up to date on social media is a great way to stay top of mind and engage with your regular and prospective customers. However, content generation for your restaurant’s social media platforms may seem like a daunting task. We have provided this post to serve as a baseline content calendar to help you stay up to date.
This is by no means the be all end all of social media strategies for your restaurant, but by adding these into your daily routines this should help keep you current, anything you add to this to bring your own personality into would just be gravy.
Instagram – goal: one post per day
Food Shots:
Professional food shots from your menu and daily specials are optimal. However, we know having a professional photographer take shots every day is not feasible. We would recommend staging a professional shoot every so often, this will give you a library of shots that you can use and re-use over time.
You will also need to have somebody in house learn how to stage some food photos to shoot with their smart phone or professional camera. Just acknowledge taking shots of food can be tricky. Staging and lighting are key and practice, practice, practice. Learn how to use the apps on your phone to edit photos by lightening them in most cases.
This is usually a good task to assign to your chef, or perhaps one of the kitchen staff who also takes an interest in photography. Remember, if you have a good staff, they should be proud of their food and want to share it in the best possible light, so convincing them to add this to their routine should not be difficult.
Tip: If you offer daily specials, these are good shots to take. Have the chef prepare the daily special for the staff at your pre-shift meetings, stage the photo right before you have the servers sample it, or consider taking some shots of the staff sampling for some candid moments.
Staff photos:
General photos of staff, including pictures and captions of staff is a good way to personalize the business. Consider getting some candid shots of the staff and adding captions like “Melissa will be serving up your favorite cocktails from 5 to close, stop by and say hi.” If you can, tag the staff member in the post to increase your reach you should do so. Be sure to check with staff first for their permission, get it in writing if need be.
If you have live entertainment like music or trivia night, be sure to capture some candid shots to share.
Drink photos:
Carefully staged drink photos can be a great addition to your feed as well. Featuring specialty cocktails, seasonal drinks or new beers on tap is a great way to keep your feed fresh and your potential customers thirsty.
Hashtags:
Take some time to research what hashtags are popular in your area or in your industry, use these hashtags to help appear in those categorized feeds to attract more eyeballs to your posts.
Facebook – goal: one post per day
Entertainment:
Create a Facebook event for each activity you may host, like trivia or live music, include the date time, link to bands website etc. Consider adding the band or host of such events as a cohost of the event so they can promote to their audience as well.
Staff photos:
Take some general shots of the staff and tag them in the photo (if they are okay with it). For instance, “come and join our staff tonight at the bar, they’ll be here until ten.” Take a nice shot of the bartender or the chef crafting some new specials and tag them. By tagging employees, this allows more people to see your posts.
Encourage checking in by employees:
Encourage your staff to check in on Facebook when they start their shift. For example, “Ill be here til close, come on by and keep me company”
By having staff check in when they arrive their posts are reaching their friends and family direct, beyond what your page can reach. This also encourages their friends and family to come in and support them, getting them more customers and more tips.
Food Shots:
See above advice for Instagram.
Go Live!
Consider going live during band performances, add a quick message and go live for a few minutes, if there is a good crowd, pan from the band to the crowd and the establishment to show people how wonderful it is.
How about going live with your chef preparing todays special. There are lots of ways you can utilize this feature.
That should be a good starting point to help give ideas each day for content. Contact us if you should have any further questions.