Your Guide to Social Media SuccessSocial media is increasingly a consumer’s first point of call for finding out more about a brand, service or product. It is the public face and voice of your brand, and represents a great opportunity to communicate with your audience!

Setting up on any social media platform can be a daunting task, especially when it comes to monitoring it all. To assist you in launching your online presence, here are some top tips to help you increase brand awareness online.

Before you begin, ask yourself 3 key questions:

1. Who are we trying to reach?2. What do we hope to achieve? 3. How can we measure this?

The answers to these questions should dictate your social media strategy, but ultimately the audience will decide which direction you take – analyse what is successful and give them what they want!

Step 2Step 2 is to decide what to post. The answer to question 2 should help here. Have a clear plan before you begin! Take a look at brands and marketing campaigns you’ve enjoyed on social media for inspiration. Social media users often don’t respond to sales pitches, so you may find that increasing brand awareness is a more realistic goal than driving extra covers.

Step 1The first step is to choose which channels to use. The answer to question 1 will help you decide: Instagram is popular amongst foodies but Facebook is more likely to be used by a comparatively older demographic, whilst Pinterest is a hit with women and Twitter is big with food bloggers. Each channel needs to be treated differently and it’s better to use one channel well than 4 channels badly.

Step 3The third step is to get started – this means not only posting, but monitoring what happens and adapting your strategy if needed.

A key thing to remember is that building a social media presence takes time, so don’t expect success overnight!

Instagram• Food photography is one of the most

popular uses of Instagram, so it’s a great platform to share your beautiful dishes.

• Remember that you cannot include links in Instagram posts, so if your primary aim is to drive traffic to your website, Instagram might not be for you!

• Appropriate hashtags will help relevant users find you. Consider popular tags like #Instafood, or find more niche tags relating to your style of restaurant.

• Increase visibility and following by following

similar users, and liking and commenting on other posts.

Twitter• Twitter’s 140 character limit doesn’t

allow for waffle, so be concise but not too formal.

• As with Facebook, interesting images will make people stop scrolling and take notice of your posts. Remember that tweets can contain multiple images or even animated gifs, so think of creative ways to make your tweets more appealing.

• Twitter is a 2-way conversation. Interact with those that reply to your tweets, and enter conversations if you have useful information to share.

• Find relevant users to follow and engage with. Free tools like Hootsuite allow you to track key terms like your restaurant name or phrases like ‘Italian restaurant London’ for example.

• Use analytics.twitter.com to analyse the success of your tweeting.

• Don’t use hashtags unless it is absolutely necessary! They can be useful for specific events and competitions, but too many can look cluttered and unprofessional.

• Try running Twitter polls - this is not only fun and engaging, it’s a great way to hear the opinions of your audience.

• Remember that tweets which start with an @ will only be seen by followers of both accounts, so be careful not to reduce your audience!

Facebook• Facebook’s algorithms are such that

posts which get more clicks, likes, comments and shares will be seen by more people. Share posts that are likely to inspire users to do this.

• Images are vital! Share images that are likely to make users stop on your post when they are scrolling.

• Be personal, informal and humorous. Facebook users don’t want to read dry, wordy posts. Consider uploading videos – not only are they eye-catching, posts with videos often reach a wider audience.

• Use Facebook Insights to look at which style of posts are most popular – what posts are people clicking on, commenting on, sharing and liking?

Top tips by social media channel

Every social media channel is different. Here are some top tips, whichever channel you choose.

Innocent Smoothies Rather than overtly selling smoothies, Innocent have built a reputation for being a fun, friendly brand. Through humorous posts about topical events they have built a large following, meaning their brand is seen by far more people than if they just talked about smoothies.

Innocent are also very good at replying to tweets, quickly and always with a friendly, humorous tone:

Hawksmoor Hawksmoor have created a very personal tone of voice on social media, even using their first names as their Twitter name. Through images of their produce, behind-the-scenes shots of their charity work, and light-hearted posts, Hawksmoor invite their audience to really get to know the restaurants.

Brands and restaurants getting it right!

Here are a few examples of successful social media marketing which may inspire your own strategy.

Dip & Flip Dip & Flip use Instagram very effectively to showcase their dishes. Not only do they share excellent images of their food, they also encourage people to share their own photos, creating a sense of community and a relationship between the restaurant and its diners.

020 7199 4300 support.uk@bookatable.com for-restaurants.bookatable.co.uk

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