Why Instagram is Key to Your Success
How many times have you heard someone say, “this is instagrammable!” or seen restaurants go viral due to an Instagram post? If you’re finally realizing the strength of Instagram and are ready to harness the power of the platform, that’s what this guide is for.
Instagram should absolutely be a part of your marketing strategy simply because it yields great results. Why? It’s a visual platform that allows you to easily communicate your offerings and connect with current, future, and potential customers.
Instagram Helps Build Brand Awareness
One of the main reasons why Instagram has become so popular for restaurants is because it’s a key platform to build your brand awareness. Brand awareness is how recognizable your brand is and how conscious people are of your existence. Instagram allows you to easily build up your brand voice, brand presence, and ultimately, your brand awareness through visual and written storytelling.
Instagram Allows You to Build a Relationship with Your Customers
Instagram is instrumental for building relationships with customers. Users will leave comments with questions or DM you, and your responses can make or break that connection. Instagram can then serve as another avenue for customer service. In your response, be sure to also think about your brand voice as this helps develop your brand identity.
You can also use Instagram itself as a research tool, since it gives you the ability to listen in on your customers’ conversations, also called social sentiment. You can then use these findings to help you make decisions that will make your customers happy.
Instagram Makes You Become Discoverable
Having an Instagram presence is what helps you get discovered. It might seem challenging to accomplish initially, but there are several simple ways for you to show up where your customers are.
First is adding relevant hashtags to your content. This helps you become discoverable outside of your followers.
Second is to start working with influencers. Why? Because the influencer market is growing, and capitalizing on it can have a significant positive effect on your business. It’s currently predicted to hit $13.8 billion next year, and research shows that 49% of consumers trust influencer recommendations – which means there is a lot of potential for reach. Working with influencers allows you to reach an audience that is more likely to be interested in your offerings but may not be aware of you. It’s key to be strategic with who you work with as you want to make sure their audience would be interested in your offerings.
The 5 Steps To Getting Started with Instagram For Your Restaurant
1. Identify your target audience
Before you dive into all things Instagram, let’s take a step back to figure out who you’re going to be targeting. Identifying the demographics of your audience is key to targeting them correctly.
This is WHO they are (e.g., location, age, gender, income level).
Once you’ve established that, it’s time to develop their psychographics. This is WHY they buy (e.g., personality, pain points, interests, values, lifestyle traits). The more you are able to learn about your audience, the easier it will be to develop a brand voice that resonates with them.
2. Develop your visual identity
Instagram is an incredibly visual platform, which is why having a distinctive visual identity is crucial to your success on the social media network. Your visual identity includes your logo, brand colors, typography and photography.
Think about how your visual identity is reflected in your photo and video content and how to make it look most appetizing. A beautiful and consistent visual identity will help drive audience engagement and keep them coming back to your profile.
3. Come up with a social media plan
Social media planning starts once there’s a target audience in mind so you know who you’re talking to and a clear visual identity so you know how to communicate with your audience. When we work with clients, we typically recommend that they first identify the key “messaging pillars” to their business. This will help ensure you’re always talking about topics that tie back to your business and are relevant to the audience.
Once the pillars are established, it’s easier to come up with a posting schedule and plan out content.
4. Post your content
Now to actually post! This tends to be the most daunting part for many, especially key aspect of keeping to a schedule. But don’t worry, we’re here to help. Here are some of our tried-and-tested tips that help our clients see results.
Keep an eye on Instagram updates.
Incorporate them into your strategy whenever you can. Instagram rewards early adopters, which can help your content reach more users.
As an example of this, Instagram recently announced that they were moving away from just being a photo-sharing platform. What does that actually mean for posting content? Their algorithm has consequently been tweaked to give reels and videos more exposure versus static image posts.
Plan your content ahead of time.
Instead of posting ad hoc or when you remember, come up with a content calendar. This will help you plan out your posting schedule and may also help keep you accountable to your goals.
Use stories.
You’ll see better engagement when you post your stories. These are also only live for 24 hours before they disappear, so they’re a great place for you to put content here that you may not otherwise want in your feed, and it doesn’t have to be as polished. Stories can give your brand and business more humanity and life, so use it as a place to invite your followers into your journey!
5. Engage with your audience
Here comes the fun part: Engaging with your audience! This is when your brand voice really gets time to shine. Read through the comments and DMs and respond in a thoughtful and timely manner. Your customers aren’t always expecting a response, so when you take the time to interact with them, you’ll surprise them in a positive manner and build rapport and brand loyalty.
Running a successful Instagram account for your restaurant is vital if you wish to keep top of mind. In sum, it’s a place where you’re able to control your messaging and engage with current and future customers. With the right strategy in place, you’re likely to see results with time and effort. You can always find more information and additional resources on our website for successful Instagram marketing, including downloadable guides.
If you’d like more information on how to run a successful Instagram account for your restaurant, get in touch to see how we can help!
