Not every social media platform is created equally. This is especially true if you are a restaurant or night club and you are trying to use social media to promote your business.
When you are building your digital marketing strategy, focus on promoting your restaurant on the social media channels where your ideal clients spend the most time. Also consider what channel gives you the most freedom to promote your brand and share your story the way it deserves to be shared. While you may gain a far reach on Twitter, that may not be the best channel to promote your brand or sell the lifestyle you are trying to sell with your eatery. To maximize your return on investment, you should drop these three social media platforms immediately:
- Foursquare – I will go ahead and anticipate my legal notice from Foursquare for saying this, but the world needs to know it. I didn’t think Foursquare was a thing anymore until I recently started diving into a marketing strategy for a client up north. But apparently, some businesses still focus on promoting their brand on Foursquare. If this is you, please do not waste your time. With the check-in abilities of Facebook and Instagram, this platform is obsolete. Stop using it.
- LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a fantastic platform, and I am a huge proponent of using it daily to connect with thought-leaders and fellow professionals. But I have never seen anyone make their weekend plans based on an ad they saw on LinkedIn. This is not the place for restaurants or nightclubs. Your ideal audience may fit a certain LinkedIn demographic, but unless you are advertising specifically for a business-related conference room availability, your message does not fit the tone of the platform. You’re close, but it’s not where your time or money is best spent.
- Twitter – I’m going to get backlash for this, but I stand by my beliefs. Restaurants that are nationally known can use Twitter to update the country about new menu items and community benefits, but small, local, one-location restaurants won’t see much ROI from this social platform. If you are a small restaurant that is fully committed to staying on Twitter, you better develop an out-of-the-box profile that gains you a million retweets; maybe tweeting only in food puns is the way to go. Otherwise, this is not the most profitable platform for you, and your efforts are better spent elsewhere.
Top social media platforms to promote your restaurant or nightclub
So what social media platforms should you use to grow your restaurant or nightclub? Every restaurant is different, so here is the rule of thumb to follow when developing your social media strategy:
- Identify your target audience
- Determine what social media platforms your target audience most uses
- Decide if your ideal brand message fits into the tone of those platforms (remember the LinkedIn blurb)
Just to be safe though, Facebook and Instagram are consistently the top two social platforms used to promote businesses in the food and entertainment industries. You can convey a lifestyle with images instead of just text and you can target audience demographics all the way down to age, location and interests. Hands down, these platforms are the best options to promote food and entertainment industries.
Are you ready to use social media marketing to grow your restaurant or night club? Contact our team of certified social media marketing experts at Burg & Co. Marketing in Tampa, FL and schedule a brainstorming session. Let’s start a digital movement.
