Restaurant Social Media Ideas for 2020
Updated: Oct 29, 2022
Why don't you make more videos for your restaurant?
Is it because you're not really sure what to post?
If that's the case, this blog is for you!
I’m going to show you what type of videos you can make for your restaurant so you can get:
more customers,
more engagement on social media,
more likes, comments, and shares
If you stick around to the end I'm going to show you a couple of tweaks that you can make to your videos to make sure that you can actually get those customers to come into your restaurant PLUS I'll show you how to get my content calendar to make it super easy.
I'm going to show you four main categories of different types of videos you can make for your restaurants to get more engagement.
#1 FOOD
This one is obvious, it's food right? Let's make videos about food. You already know you probably need it. Are you already doing this? I see you guys posting photos of your delicious beautiful food, professional-looking photos. It's awesome, but what about video?
Here's an idea, take a video behind the scenes in your kitchen. Clean the kitchen, make sure that everybody's got gloves on and hair back, and have your chefs prepare an entree, have them talk through what they're actually putting into the food, talk about the different ideas. Now you could just have a secret ingredient that you don't mention, you could say “and now we're going to add the secret ingredient…”, because that just might give your audience some enticement to be able to say, “Oh I gotta go try this, what is the secret ingredient?”
Another idea for making food videos is talking about one specific ingredient. Why do you use that ingredient? Why do you use that certain quality of ingredients? I think back to my days where I was a beer rep for a certain company. They had this winter beer that has cinnamon in it and I remember them talking about how they get the best cinnamon in the world that comes from Vietnam. I remember them searching high and low for the cinnamon and they talked about that in their advertising. That makes people go "wow they really care about the quality that they put in their beer!” That really stuck with me so keep that in mind when you're talking about your food. Why do you choose the ingredients you choose? Why do you choose what high-level, high-quality ingredients you choose?
Another idea for a video about your food is actually showing a video of a customer eating the food, a customer breaking down why they love the food, what is so delicious about that particular entree, and then post that video. It only needs to be one minute. It doesn't need to be really long and complex and detailed, just a 1-minute video would be great.
#2 YOU
Now this next category might actually freak you out a minute because if you're a restaurant owner, I know you very well. I've been working with you for 16 years, I understand you don't want your face on camera! (some of you do, but most of you generally don't want your face on camera). BUT you need to. Here's why:
People buy from people
- they don't buy from businesses. They want to actually see who it is that they're supporting, not necessarily how amazing the food is. Amazing food is great, but what about you? Why should they support you and your business endeavor?
So if you can, make a video of you telling your story. Maybe it's you and your partner, or your spouse, whoever you own the business with, and you're telling your story of why you got into the restaurant business.
Why did you open up your restaurant?
Why'd you pick that kind of restaurant, why not why'd you pick a chicken place and not a barbecue place?
Why did you pick healthy food like salads or poke bowls, why did you pick that instead of greasy burgers?
It's important for customers to understand your story because then people are going to want to support you and help you grow your business.
Ask for their support on those videos, say "Hey I would love it if you support our locally-owned business, our locally-owned restaurant.”
#3 TEAM
The third type of video is about your team. This is actually one of the easiest ones to make because all you have to do is set up an interview-style video. You don't need to have them produce it or script it, you just literally sit there: in a booth at your restaurant, side by side with them, next to them, and ask them some questions. Say "Why do you work here?" (obviously, pick your people who are positive and enjoy their job and can talk about that). They don't need to be the most outgoing person, but they do need to be positive. So sit there and say "Why did you choose to work here? You're a positive, happy person, you could go work at any restaurant. Why did you pick my restaurant?" and then have them explain that to you. If it's a video that's interview style then it doesn't feel as awkward for you or for them, you just literally set up the camera and then just have a conversation with them and then pull out bits and pieces from that, that you can just post on your social media.
Another thing that you can do is just show videos of your staff in action with customers,
Have them actually just do a little video while they're making a transaction and smiling and saying "Thank you for coming to so-and-so restaurant" or
Show a video of the staff in the back cleaning, especially during something like a pandemic. Show them cleaning surfaces to make sure that you're taking extra precautions.
Show a video of your staff greeting people as they walk in the door, so all you have to do is just grab your cell phone, hold it up say something like, "Hey, this is Tracey with Restaurant Victory. I am here, Noel's right here, she's greeting all of our customers. I just love working with her because she's always happy, she's always greeting people. I hope you come in today, we have such and such on special and I would love for you to come in and try it out. We'll see you soon!”
It only needs to be 15s to 1min videos like that where you're featuring your staff talking about your food and inviting people in to support you.
#4 CUSTOMERS
Now this fourth category is a really fun one as well; it's just your customers. Show videos of your customers.
You can even bribe them (I mean, I'm not above that). Bribe them with a free appetizer. Be like, "Hey if I give you a free appetizer, will you make a couple of videos for me?" and then you get out your cell phone and you just record them. You just say, “Okay, what was your favorite thing on the menu? Why do you come here so often? Why do you order that?”
And half the time you don't even need to give them anything for free to do that. If they love your restaurant and they want to support you they will do it. Just say, "Hey will you help me out with something? I'm going to post on social media and I need a few customer videos, can I ask you a couple of questions?” You're just holding up your phone, you're asking them a couple of questions and then having them answer it. You're just recording it right here like on your cell phone, you can have your voice as the voiceover and they're on camera. Keep it to 15 seconds. Post those on Instagram or Facebook stories. Keep it to one minute posted. You could be really advanced and make a montage of a bunch of customers, but I'd actually just post one every day. At least one-minute videos every single day or even 15-second videos on your stories.
How to actually grow your sales with videos
Now, remember I told you if you stuck around to the end you'd get some tips on how to grow restaurant sales and get them to actually come in. Now here's the big thing that a lot of people miss when they're making these videos, they are skipping the call-to-action. They have a video they say great stuff and then they're like, "Thanks! Bye!" then their followers like the video and people are like “cool video” and then they just keep scrolling 😲😲😲
You've got to have a call to action and it's pretty clear what that means, you're just inviting them to act. So we're saying, “Come on in today for our fish Friday special,” or “Will you let us know in the comments what your favorite thing is on our menu?” It doesn't always have to be special, it doesn't always have to be inviting them to the restaurant. You could just be inviting them to engage with you and I would not use words like "comment below" because it's considered engagement bait from Facebook and Instagram, but you could just say
“Tell us below what's your favorite whatever?”
“Tell us…” or
“What friend would you want to bring with you to the restaurant next time you come in?” or
“What type of things do you think we should have on our menu?”
People love to give their opinion, so just ask them questions to get them to engage with you at the end of every video or throughout every video. It doesn't have to be at the end. You have to have a call to action, it's really important that you do that.
Not sure what to post?
Now if you're not sure what to post I've put together an awesome content calendar just for restaurants, it has tons of different post ideas for Facebook and Instagram so that you can know what to post on a weekly basis! I've color-coded it to make it super easy and then I've even broken it down by day with post photo and video examples.
Get your calendar here for only $27.
Want more social media training?
Here’s a link to my FREE 30-minute training. It's jam-packed with information on how to grow your restaurant sales using the Restaurant Victory ROI engine system.
www.restaurantvictory.com/free-training-pandemic
Check out my Youtube Channel
If you want more videos with content like this, head on over to Youtube and subscribe to my channel Tracey Matney, so that you can get notified whenever I post another video.
You might even like the video that I just recently did where I talked about our curbside chat bot,
or I have another video where I talk about what restaurant owners can be doing right now to make sure to get customers and sales.
Send me a message if you have any questions! m.me/traceymatneyVPS
To your Victory!
💜 Tracey
