Social Media Marketing: 10 Ideas for Promoting Your Best Dishes

Written by Justine Nightingale
Wednesday, January 13, 2021 at 05:00am CST

Is social media marketing on the menu for your restaurant’s marketing plan? If not, it’s time now to harness its power for your restaurant.

You know that owning a restaurant takes a lot of time and a lot of work. Not only are you responsible for staff, your menu, your customers, and keeping everything moving, you are responsible for marketing your restaurant in the best way possible.

Social media gives you the opportunity to market your menu items for free and reach a great number of current and potential customers. (tweet this)

In this article, we look at social media marketing and seven ideas for promoting your best dishes.

Let’s look at some integral ideas for making social media work for you. 

#1: Highlight Meal Prep

One way to highlight your new dishes is to give people an inside look at your restaurant behind the scenes.

Social media provides an opportunity to let your customers into the inner sanctum of your restaurant – your kitchen.

Use high quality photos and videos to showcase your deliciously prepared menu items and the skilled staff cooking it. Show what it takes to bring the food in, and highlight your team making some of your best dishes.

Your customers want to see how you prepare your food. Use Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok to highlight these interesting videos.

If you have a smartphone and social media accounts, you have all the tools you need to make this idea work for you.

#2: Run Giveaways and Drawings

Another great marketing idea to promote your best dishes is to have drawings or giveaways. Many people are competitive by nature, and many others simply love winning something for free.

By having drawings or giveaways on your social media platforms, you increase your engagement as well as your comments and shares. What’s more, you can also increase your reach by asking your customers to share or tag a friend for another entry.

Contests are a great way to increase brand awareness for your restaurant, too. You can have photo contests for your customers, and they winner wins a free meal.

For example, have people share their favorite photo of a dish at your restaurant with a specified hashtag. The best entry wins.

#3: Drive Email Sign-Ups

Your restaurant’s email list is also a powerful tool for promoting your best dishes. It allows your restaurant the coveted place in your customers’ inboxes.

But how do you get more people on your list?

Consider using social media to encourage more email sign ups. Do this with a creative post on social media offering customers a free menu item (choose one of your favorites) when they sign up for your email list.

With this idea, you get double the engagement using both social media marketing and email marketing together.

Once you have customers on your email list you can reach them on an ongoing basis with coupons, tips, events, and more.

#4: Highlight Unique Holidays

Did you know there’s a national pizza day, national cheesecake month, national fried chicken day, and more?

Check out holidayinsights.com for ideas on unique and unusual food “holidays.”  You can also use regular holidays to promote your menu items.

Use these holidays to promote your menu items and specials on social media.

#5: Offer Facebook Check-In Deals

One feature you can take advantage of on your restaurant’s Facebook page is the check-in deal.

When customers “check in” to your restaurant on Facebook, you can set it up to offer a discount or coupon on a particular menu item.

This is a great way to promote new menu items as well. Do plan ahead though as Facebook will need to approve it.

#6: Add Your Menu to Social Media

You can offer customers the ability to view and order your best dishes on your restaurant’s Facebook page. Doing this offers an easy ordering option for customers right where they are, on social media.

Make sure to “pin it to the top” of Facebook to keep your menu at the top of your news feed.

In addition, use your link in your Instagram bio to share your menu to Instagram followers.

#7: Post Beautiful Photos

Your restaurant’s social media, especially Instagram, should be filled with gorgeous, professional photos of your best dishes.

You know that food appeals to most of your senses: taste, touch, sight, and smell. The best way to showcase your best dishes is to harness the sense of sight.

Your social media pages are visual, and it’s up to you to sell your best dishes with your enhanced photography. Let your customers “smell” your food with your photos.

Here are a few tips:

• Concentrate on the flat lay shot. This means taking photos of your best dishes from above. Give them a bird’s eye view of the gorgeous presentation.
• Add ambiance with flowers, napkins, dishes, tablecloths, and more. You want to make your customers want to visit your restaurant based on the quality of your photo.
• Use good lighting. This is vital to excellent photography. The best photos are the ones that are shared on Instagram. Natural lighting is always good, but if your restaurant is dark, you’ll want to add some extra lighting to highlight your best dishes.
• Think about the composition. Consider the way your shot is laid out. Whether it’s a flat lay shot or one shot from another angle, you’ll want to make sure your composition that is balanced, colorful, and complementary.

Final Thoughts

When creating a social media marketing strategy, you can use these seven ideas for promoting your best dishes.

The biggest goals for your social media are increasing reach and engagement, building relationships, and posting shareable content that gets more people into your restaurant. (tweet this)

Keep your posts about your best dishes visual using high quality photos and well-done videos.

You want to make sure your social media marketing provides valuable content for your audience. Keep your posts professional, well-thought out, and visually attractive, and you’ll find these ideas propel your restaurant and your best dishes into the new year.

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 your restaurant 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!

Images: Eaters Collective and Daria Volkova on Unsplash