Do you own a restaurant? Have you ever considered blogging?
Now almost every restaurant has its own website and a dedicated Facebook page, if not anything else. But when it comes to branding, restaurants do need something extra. Wondering what would that be? A blog!
Blogging can do a lot to help your business grow. Let’s see!
- Things that you cannot share on your website or Facebook Page, can be shared easily on your blog.
- It adds a human voice to your restaurant.
- It helps you maintain and strengthen your relationship with your customers.
- It enhances your online marketing efforts.
- It increases your other marketing campaigns’ reach
- And last but not the least, it boosts the search engine friendliness of your business.
Many restaurants start blogging with a great zeal but discontinue publishing at some point, as they run out of ideas. But the fact remains, if you invest a little of your time and mind-space, you can create magic with your blog.
Here are some creative blogging ideas for you:
Share recipes: Did you know recipes are one of the most popular content forms that are being shared online? Every re-share adds to your branding and word-of-mouth marketing. It also energizes the brand recall.
However, being a restaurant owner, you may not want to share the recipes of your signature dishes. You shouldn’t do either! But sharing seasonal, lesser-known recipes would not cause any harm to your business. You may also go for the recipes that are related to your cuisine but less-complicated.
Don’t forget to mention the minute details like the preparation time, one or two original images of the dish, best side dish to go with and alternate ingredients in case you have used any rare one.
Announce new menu: Many restaurants change their menu occasionally. Some do it during festive seasons while some do it to use seasonal ingredients. Whatever the case is, you need to market the new menu to let people know about it. A blog can prove really handy to ensure a wider and better reach.
Blog compliments your Facebook campaigns: Your blog and Facebook page can work together.
Taking the cue from the last tip, let’s assume you are introducing a pocket-friendly menu to attract students. Create a blog post “Introducing Set Meal: Students, are you following?” Share it on Facebook and run page post ads to pull the attention of your target audience towards the menu.
Similarly, when you will be running a Facebook contest, offer or any other campaign, you can blog about it. It would increase the reach and at the same time educate your audience about the latest happenings at your restaurant. You never know, you might just get 100 new entries from one blog post.
Promote events and food festivals: Restaurants often organize events and food festivals. You might arrange them too! Why not promoting it through your blog? In fact, a blog perfectly fits in, when you need a bigger space to send your message across.
Write about the event in details like duration, venue and cuisine specification. Your audience should get a clear idea about what to expect. Take some room out to mention why they must visit the event.
Now post the blog on Facebook and run page post ads, targeting the potential local customers. And after it’s over, you can write another blog to share the experience with your audience.
Educate your audience: Sometimes, educating your target audience gives you more reward than what you expect. There are many ways that you can educate your audience and at the same time create trust, authority and reliability for your business.
Let’s say, you own a sea food restaurant in such a city, where very few people are familiar with the cuisine. A blog would help you introduce sea food to the people in an interesting way. For example, very few foodies know that there are many types of prawn. So blogging on something like “Know about the prawn, you are ordering” is a good idea.
Advice on food and wine pairing is also a rewarding concept for blogging. You might have experienced that many of your customers ask for suggestions while ordering their drinks. A perfect pair of food and drink is like a match made in heaven that can add a different dimension to a dining experience. Help you customers decide their drinks by using images, tutorials, experts’ interviews.
Give information on the neighborhood: You can write about the to-do things in the neighborhood to attract families and large groups. For example, if there is a spa or a newly opened bowling club near your eating-joint, write about them and suggest your audience how they can plan for a perfect day out in the neighborhood.
This would be beneficial in two ways.
First, if someone plans a visit with his friends near your locality, he can consider your restaurant. It will also help you make your potential customers discover your business.
Secondly, local businesses will start recognizing you as their ally. You never know, some of them might also end up having or recommending you as their restaurant or catering partner. But stay away from promoting your competitors.
Humanize of the brand: Try to give your restaurant a human face, so that your audience can talk and share their opinion with you.
Introduce your staff. Share interesting stories about your restaurant. Create vlogs (video blogs) to share recipes, to conduct tours to the kitchen, to show how you work during the busy hours or how you have fun while working. Feature your loyal customers. Featuring your suppliers is also a good idea, as your customers may want to know where your ingredients come from. And the bonus is, your relationship with your suppliers will grow stronger. You can either write text blogs with images or shoot short videos to make a collage.
The scope is endless. All you need is, a bit of creativity and patience to experiment. Don’t worry! The more you would think, the more ideas would come up! Start today!