Should Restaurants Blog or Is Social Media Enough?


Should Restaurants Blog or Is Social Media Enough

Blogging and social media are complementing digital platforms.

In today’s article, we discuss an important part of your restaurant’s marketing strategy.

You’ll find that in today’s digital world an active, online presence makes good business sense.

So, let’s answer the question, “Should restaurants blog, or is social media enough?”

The answer to that is, “Yes, your restaurant should blog, and, yes, your restaurant should do social media as well.” These two platforms can work hand in hand to help you build relationships and spread the word.

While you may have thought blogging and social media were separate, and several years ago it might have been an either-or, it’s no longer that way.

Social media has not done away with blogging, and in fact it has accented it and provided a way for restaurants to share posts and get them in front of more people.

Blogging and social media naturally complement one another. You want to continue to blog while using social media to promote it.

How to Share Effectively

It’s not quite as simple as writing a blog, copying a link, and pasting it into your social media, and hitting send.

In order to share your posts effectively, you want to tailor each message and blog post to fit your platform and your audience.

For example, perhaps you’ve written a blog post about how to pick the best fruit and vegetables at the farmer’s market. You’ll want to address your Facebook friends differently than you would your followers on Twitter and Pinterest.

You also want to consider the way you interact with each social media community.

For some social media platforms, you want less words/characters, while for others you want striking images.

Some social media platforms work better with multiple hashtags, while others are good with just one. For example, use multiple hashtags on Instagram and Twitter, and use just one or two on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Now, let’s look more in-depth at how to share blog posts on various social media platforms.

Sharing on Facebook

First, you want to make sure you have a Facebook business page that is complete with profile and cover photo, website address and about us section.

Next, here are some important tidbits when it comes to Facebook posts:

  • According to Hootsuite, the best time to post on Facebook is between 12 – 3 pm on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and on the weekends from 12-1 pm. Please check your Facebook insights because this is in general, and your followers may be online at a different time.
  • You can use up to 10,000 characters on Facebook posts (but that is too many for most readers). Note that only the first 480 are visible without clicking more.
  • So, put your most important text first. The best practice is to keep your characters under 50 for more engagement.
  • Use imagery. Instead of sharing the post and letting Facebook ad the image from your blog post, upload the image on your own and include the link in your text copy. This way the photo gets added to your Facebook album, and all of your blog images with their respective links stay right on your Facebook page.
  • Using personal, engaging language to invite readers to click to read your blog.
  • Post on Facebook once a day, every day.

Finally, you can share your blog post on social media once a month. Consider posting once and then waiting a month or show and sharing it again. Use different text this time around to see if you can increase engagement.

Tweeting on Twitter

You might already know that Twitter upped its character count for tweets from 140 up to 280.

Interestingly, though, Twitter finds that only 5% of tweets sent from people in the 280-character test group were longer than 140 characters, and just 2% were over 190 characters.

So, our recommendation is to keep your blog sharing tweets to the 140-character limit to increase engagement.

As with Facebook, you also want to use images. In addition, you can include @handles to give others some credit or to make sure the tweet gets to specific people.

It’s also always a good idea to include hashtags with your tweets as well as a call to action, such as “read this” or “retweet.”

The best times to tweet on Twitter are between 8 – 10 am, 11 am – 1 pm and from 4 – 7 pm. Because the lifespan of tweets is so low, you can feel free to post many times on Twitter.

You can also continue to share the blog post at different intervals over time, especially if your content is evergreen.

Restaurants Blog

Use the right platform at the right time and to the right audience to share blog posts.

Dos and Don’ts of Blogging

When it comes to blogging, you don’t have to publish your content every day to be effective, but you do need to post at least once a week. (tweet this)

Your posts don’t have to always be long. Three hundred words – 1000 words is a great start.

Plus, the more often you blog, the more posts you have to share to social media, and the more positively Google looks at your website.

Final Thoughts

Blogging and using social media is a win-win for your restaurant. Let’s conclude by highlighting some specific reasons you want to combine these two digital strategies in your restaurant marketing.

Blogging and sharing posts establishes you as the industry leader well ahead of your competition. (tweet this)

Choose the right topics that your audience cares about, write good articles and share them on social media, and you’ll begin to build trust with your audience and build trust in your area.

You’ll find that this power duo makes people remember the name of your restaurant.

Next, you create good customer relationships by giving your customers what they want and need both on your website blog and in social media.

Blogging and sharing posts helps your audience get to know you before stepping foot in your door.

Use your blog and social media posts to show people who you are, feature menu items, teach, provide information and connect with customers.

Finally, when using your blog in conjunction with social media, you send a steady stream of traffic to your website.

Blogging helps you utilize keywords, so your posts show up in organic searches. And, every blog you post is a new indexed page. Plus, when people click through your social media posts, they’re increasing traffic.

Nearly all of your customers use social media, and many of them want to get to know you. Create a blogging and social media strategy today and watch your business grow.

At Restaurant Engine, not only do we create great, responsive websites, but you can count on us to create a website that drives business to all your restaurants and edges you above the competition by using mobile-friendly design with a terrific user experience. Ready to take the plunge and create a website with an online menu, blog and beautiful photos? Get your free website consultation today!

Image:  rawpixel and Artem Bali on Unsplash

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