Social media has not only revolutionised the way people communicate but also how they make their decisions. In fact, for restaurants, social media represents an exciting new channel through which to influence their audience and increase their weekly covers. Unless you’re lucky enough to have a restaurant packed to the rafters each night, getting people through the door should be the overriding goals of your social media activity.
Sure, likes and follows are great, but if you’re investing time and resources into social media management, make sure you’re achieving some return! This is true of all restaurants but let’s look more closely at how Italian restaurants can use social media to achieve their marketing goals.
Social media for Italian restaurants
So how does social media management differ for an Italian restaurant as opposed to any other type of venue? There are essentially two key differences:
1. Content specific to Italian food, culture, news and heritage
2. Search and interaction using specific conversation drivers
We look at these now in their two most native platforms; Facebook for content and Twitter mainly for interaction.
Facebook for Italian restaurants
Facebook should become a hub of information for existing and potential customers. It’s a great place to share news, menu updates and pictures as well as get your audience involved through the occasional competition. Facebook remains the mother of social media platforms simply due to the user base and the fact that as an Italian restaurant, it’s probably the platform that most closely matches your target demographic.
Facebook content should always be image led and the better quality, more eye-catching images, the better! Your content must be interesting to your audience, whether it’s directly promoting your food and venue to whether you’re sharing an interesting article about pizza, pasta shapes or Ferraris! It’s making your content interesting and shareable that will really get you noticed and start making people think about visiting the restaurant.
But here’s the exciting stuff:
Twitter for Italian restaurants
Now, Twitter is another good content platform, you just have to use less text per update. All the same rules apply regarding adding value to your audience but there are more valuable elements of Twitter that mean you can find people looking for a restaurant or even an Italian restaurant specifically. But how do we do it?
The vast majority of Twitter users post their tweets in the public domain. This means they’re all out there to find and guess what? People talk about “eating out”, “getting pizza” and “fancy an Italian” all the time! Finding these people within a certain distance of your restaurant means it can create a stream of potential customers for you. Then it’s all about interacting with them and seeing if they want to try your venue.
As always, TripAdvisor management is going to be really important in generating positive return on your social media and community management. Read more about that on our main restaurant page and remember than underpinning effective social media is a great restaurant and service is we show here.
Our experience
We’ve proudly represented a host of different restaurants across the UK so have our content and interaction management down to a tee. We’re happy to say that the highest rated Italian restaurant in Birmingham is one of our long-term clients who now see over 100 more covers each week(!) due to their prominent TripAdvisor ranking.
This is exactly how we look to deliver social media management – in a way that generates serious, tangible return on investment for our clients. If you’d like to find out how we can help you take more booking throughout the whole week, get in touch!
