From Facebook to Instagram to Twitter, social media offers businesses an inexpensive way to connect with potential customers. But which platform(s) are right for your organization ultimately depends on your target audience, marketing goals, and business type.
If you own or operate a restaurant, below are three main points to consider as you plan out your social media marketing strategy.
1. Who is your target audience?
The more you know about your audience, the better you can allocate your time and resources to engaging with potential customers. Many customers will likely live in your geographic area, but don’t overlook the importance of age, gender, shopping preferences, and behavioral characteristics. All of these demographics can impact the success of your social media campaigns. Consider these options:
- If your audience skews to a younger crowd, for example, TikTok’s 100 million monthly users in the U.S.1 is a good starting point.
- If you’re not sure where to start, Facebook is worth exploring. It’s one of the largest social media platforms in the world, and an estimated 72% of users rely on it when researching restaurant options.2
2. What does your target audience want?
While most social media platforms offer the ability to add text, photos, video, and images, the type of content you want to emphasize will help determine which platforms you should choose: some lend themselves to certain media types better than others.
For example:
- YouTube is the go-to platform for video-based content – whether you want to share cooking tutorials or post highlight reels of recent events.
- Pinterest and Instagram are both ideally suited for publishing photos of your latest meal creations. However, the former is more geared towards the DIY crowd, and the latter is better for actively promoting your brand.
3. What do you want?
For most restaurant owners, the answer is simple. They want to generate more sales. However, the road to higher revenues involves creating awareness, increasing engagement, and providing education – with each platform offering its own relative strengths in these areas:
- Twitter and Facebook are both great for raising awareness.
- YouTube lends itself to educational videos and tutorials.
- Facebook shines again as the preferred platform for engagement.
You may need to mix and match platforms until you find the highest-converting combination for your own restaurant.
Conclusion
As you plan your social media strategy, periodically study what your competitors are doing. If they’re continuously spending time and money on the same platforms, those social media tools may be working for them, and may work well for you, too.
If you still need help deciding which social media platforms are right for your business, be sure to download the free infographic below.
1 “TikTok Revenue and Usage Statistics (2021),” Business of Apps, 4 March 2021
2 “23 Restaurant Social Media Statistics You Need to Know,” Reviewtrackers, 17 May 2019
Infographic created by Clover Network, a quick service pos provider
