6 Time-Honored Tips to Make Your Restaurant Business Pop Using Instagram

The restaurant business has geared better using the photo-sharing site Instagram. Research indicates that visitors in the age group of 18-35 spend at least five entire days each year looking at Instagram food imageries. Again, 30 percent of people will not eat at a restaurant that has a weak Instagram presence.

According to an article published on https://sproutsocial.com, Mr. Holmes Bakehouse located in San Francisco is a small outlet, but queues for their cruffin go out of their door each morning, and this bakery has turned into a favorite place for Instagram users. It means that even if you have a restaurant or food joint, you can take it to the next level with smart Instagram marketing. There are also available apps to get more Instagram likes for your shared content.

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Host contests

Organize Instagram contests but limit to a few ones. If you run a contest with some influencer, it would cost the amount you use for a reward or prize. You can generate considerably more interest using a $50 gift card compared to a $25 one. You can use the recommended minimum so that your contest targets followers.

You can isolate followership with specific imagery like any food image, tagging people you can share the winnings with so that people can follow your restaurant’s Instagram profile. Consult with your influencer if he will share 4-5 images over a week and watch the count of followers increasing or not. If you are smart with contests, you can gain as much as 75 followers during the contest period. It’s not an insignificant figure when you are managing thousands of Instagram followers.

Post appetizing food images to make your followers crave

The photo-sharing Instagram is the most sought-after social media site that helps your business to post stunning imageries with advanced filters. These days, more restaurants are making their mark on this platform and build engagement to generate leads and sales. Visual content appeals more than text-based content, and therefore, use jaw-dropping, appetizing visuals of pork chops, cheese-dripping pizzas, meatball pasta, colorful cocktails to build engagement.

Many restaurants in the US regularly share delicious-looking food pictures emphasizing the mouth-watering elements of burgers, risottos, pork ribs, desserts, and wines. These posts often garner more than 3,000 likes. Then, your photos and videos must be exceptional to gain such numbers of likes or followership.

Make the most out of user-generated content

You need to think of different ways to tempt your Instagram visitors, followers,as well as customers so that they publish their stunning content when they dine at your restaurant.It is one of the best ways to advertise your bistro and food without spending a dime. It’s called user-generated content or UGC, which is customer-created as well as shared on Instagram. This way, you can spread more images of your food joint without breaking your bank and build user engagement. People will like seeing these posts on your Instagram page.

Many restaurants opt for UGC these days, which is a smart Instagram marketing strategy to promote their restaurants. This way, you too can garner free Instagram likes with UGC content without spending heavily.

Post current event-related content for relevancy

Every calendar year gives you enough opportunities to share relevant and timely content with your Instagram visitors and followers. For example, you can wish all your audiences on New Year, celebrate Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Easter, and Christmas.

Make a list of all the possible dates you can post and think of innovative ideas for content to make your followers and customers smile and build engagement. You can also share your achievements, like your special chef winning a prize, restaurant anniversary, or when you launching a new food or drink for your food lovers out there. You can also share something newsworthy related to your restaurant on Instagram.

Make the most out of all interactive channels available to interact with your audience about the events, thus maintaining a close relationship with your customers.

Use relevant hashtags for increased reach and visibility

You need to use the relevant hashtags because it’s how IG algorithms index and emphasize your content to new IG users or visitors. Use the most pertinent and popular hashtags to improve reach or visibility. For instance, the hashtag #burger is used thrice as frequently as #burgers. It is smarter to use the first hashtag.

Some of the popular hashtags on IG are #food, #instafood, #yummy and related ones. Learn how you can reap the maximum benefits out of hashtags and become visible in front of a huge audience. You can add the relevant hashtags with your pizzas, burgers, cold desserts, and ice creams. These little things matter much when it comes to Instagram visibility.

Avoid using too many hashtags because it will look like spam and the IG algorithms may not show your posts to users if you resort to spamming.

Use food videos or live cooking visuals

Videos of cheese-dripping pizzas topped with BBQ chicken, pepperoni, ham, bacon, and crisp veggies drive huge engagement and help you reach out to a wide audience base in less time. The same applies to other food if the visuals are stunning and make people hungry.

You can make the best use of Instagram Stories to boost visibility on this social media site. The stories feature lets you market your restaurant and foods by interacting directly with your followers through live videos.

You can post short videos of live cooking to generate more likes, shares, and comments. Again, when your food joint is tagged in one of your followers’ stories, you can repost the video on your Instagram page giving appropriate credits.

Videos are the best way to connect with your IG followers, be it a delighted customer or an influencer who loves your restaurant ambiance, the food, and the courteous waiters. When you post videos of a happy customer, it builds trust for new, prospective customers. Therefore, video content is beneficial and never forget to leverage the same.