Promoting your venue on social media is not an easy task, you need a proper strategy on what you are going to say, which channel to choose, how to propagate your story, etc. Social media is evolving rapidly with the increasing adoption of social channels around the world. Since hotels and restaurants are mostly related to hospitality, they must have a coherent social media strategy and presence. Building your restaurant’s social media profile should be a priority since the majority of customers seek venues through social media.
Let’s get started with some cool and creative ideas for your restaurant and hotel.
- Guest experiences
- Themed photography
- High-resolution food pics
- Share behind the scenes
- Work with bloggers and influencers
- Incentivize your current visitors
Guest experiences
A photo of the guests who visited with a quick “how was your stay” quote from them? you could gather a bunch of them and then post them as buffers for slow days. just think “Why do people choose to eat/stay” and find a way to visualize that. If you don’t know why people are staying start asking people. Just literally go around and ask people what their favorite part of the stay has been so far then toss them a free dessert or something.
Themed photography
Your staff working. Could be photos of waiters, cooks, cleaning personnel, receptionist, gardener etc. where you present them “Here’s John, he’s our main chef and had been here for the past 5 years. Besides making great food for you he loves mountain biking” and then post them from time to time. Show everything with a photo attached, demonstrate the different kinds of events your location can accommodate. For example, an intimate dinner for two, a lively group dinner for 10, a bachelor/bachelorette party in a hotel suite (if you want that kind of group), a bride getting ready for the wedding, a family getaway, and an actual wedding if you have that kind of space.
High-resolution food pics
As a potential visitor, they would definitely want to see a picture of as many dishes from the menu as possible from your restaurant. A high res photo or series of photos of the menu is also good as long as the menu doesn’t change. If it does change, update it. Any nightly specials are good to post too if you know them early enough. The social media channels like Instagram and Pinterest mostly do well with great photos and that too food photos should be taken with extra care and high resolution is a must for quality and authority representation
Share behind the scenes
Make it personal, don’t actually act like a brand. People like personal essence in everything. Just go to the restaurant/hotel kitchen and recond a small glimpse of how the dish is prepared and post it on your social channels. You can be creative in many ways, make a gif, infographic, etc. Behind the scenes enhance the trust level in the people and they feel connected as well.
Work with bloggers and influencers
Bloggers and influencers are a real deal when it comes to marketing and promotion. Ask the famous bloggers in your area to write about your venue in exchange for some goodies or free food/stay and the same goes for influencers. Finding the real influencers is a big deal these days, you need to be careful about finding the good ones because these days anybody can seem like a self-claimed influencer. Influencer marketing is going to explode in 2020 and should be given special importance to reach a wider audience.
Incentivize your current visitors
Make your current visitors as your advocates, treat them so well they would like to talk about it to others. This is just like gasoline, it spreads and impacts the footfall. The idea is to use your current and frequent visitors for the word of mouth activity. You can’t beat organic guest experiences. find those families or couples or whomever that boasting your brand over social media and double down on them! I am sure they will talk more over the friends and it passed on and on and on, word of mouth advertising is more solid than print and adds.