Social Media for Hospitality Businesses – Facebook & Instagram Tips & Strategy
Do you feel lost when it comes to social media for your restaurant or café? You’re not alone. These days, every hotel, restaurant and hospitality business is posting on social media, and it can be challenging to cut through the noise. Facebook and Instagram can be powerful marketing tools for cafes, restaurants, bars and other hospitality businesses, from both an organic and paid organic perspective. You just need the know-how, keep best practices in mind and avoid common mistakes.
Contents
- 1 Why Should Hospitality Businesses Use Social Media?
- 2 Social Media and Covid-19 for Hospitality Businesses
- 3 Implementing an Effective Social Media Strategy for Your Hospitality Business
- 4 How to Create a Content Strategy for the Hospitality Industry
- 5 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid for Hospitality Businesses
- 6 How to Use Instagram Marketing Successfully for Hospitality
- 7 How to Use Facebook Marketing Successfully
- 8 Social Media Best Practices for Hospitality Businesses
Why Should Hospitality Businesses
Use Social Media?
Organic social media is free, and paid social media is affordable, allowing you to connect to larger audiences and potential customers in a quick timeframe. Compared to traditional marketing and advertising, it is a great way to attract new customers and build loyalty -it all comes down to an effective social media strategy.
As a business, you might also be unaware that many customers are doing the work for you on social media without you realising it. Incredible looking dishes, venues and locations entice customers to take photos – take a quick look on Instagram, and you might find a range of photos about your business already.
Social Media and Covid-19 for Hospitality Businesses
Social media is an easy and effective way to communicate to your customers and patrons the current state of your business, whether you are take-away only, currently closed or still open with covid-safety measures in place. During the current coronavirus climate in Australia, using your social media to encourage people to support small and local businesses is also a great and effective way to ensure your business continues to operate; don’t be afraid to tell your customers and ask for help. Make sure your social posts have CTA’s (call to action), it is easy to navigate to online menus and offerings and is easy for the customer to become a customer.
Implementing an Effective Social Media Strategy for Your Hospitality Business
You’re on board, you understand the importance of social media, so the next step is to put together an effective social media strategy. As with any marketing or advertising strategy, you should start with clear goals in mind that will allow you to track how well your strategy is working. Goals do not have to be outrageous and can include things like:
- Increased comments, likes and saves on social media posts
- Increased website visitors
- Increased online orders
With your goals in mind, it’s time to research your target audience. Questions that will help include:
- Who are the customers I want to reach?
- Where are they located?
- What are they interested in?
- What are the barriers to stop them from becoming a customer?
- What would entice them to try?
- What information are they looking for?
How to Create a Content Strategy for the Hospitality Industry
Following your top-level research and strategy, it all comes down to your content strategy and planning. Every person has heard the term ‘content is king’, and in the social media realm, this is more than evident. A few quick tips to help with your content strategy include:
- Set goals for every channel, for whichever platforms you use (at the beginning, it is best to stick to one or two platforms)
- Invest time into creating and curating appealing photography, imagery, and if possible, video – video is the most engaging, click-worthy and converting content on all social media platforms. You don’t have to go to the extent of hiring videographers, but spend time taking photos and videos (not haphazardly), and you instantly have something to work with, just add filters, effects, overlays and you’re done!
- Plan out a calendar of content – you want to be posting a minimum of 3 times a week, and if time allows, using features such as stories and reels etc.
- Use social media scheduling tools to save time posting – there are many free and paid options out there; just have a browse.
- Research relevant hashtags related to your business, industry, location and trends people are using on social media – and have a mixture of hashtags in your content that changes with posts; don’t keep using the same hashtags!
Social Media Mistakes to Avoid for Hospitality Businesses
Whilst there are significant benefits to using social media for hospitality businesses, there are also some common mistakes to avoid when implementing your social media strategies. These include:
- Posting content that is not relevant to your audience – can be seen as spammy and turn your customers away
- Posting content infrequently
- No face or voice as a business – remember it is about being social. The more a customer can see the person, team behind the company the better.
- Too many shop now, purchase now posts, too many “comment and like” encouragements in posts. Remember, it’s about engaging with real people, not telling people what to do.
- Not engaging with customers; if you want them to engage with you, you must engage back. Reply to comments and messages, and interact in the social community in your industry.
- Not showcasing your offering and environment
- Avoid negative-geared content and topical content; it can backfire, and you don’t want to be seen as fearmongering or trying to capitalise on topical content.
Whether you are a café, restaurant, bar, hotel or other hospitality business, social media needs to be a part of your marketing plan, including advertising.
How to Use Instagram Marketing Successfully for Hospitality
Instagram connects people through visual elements, including photos, videos and ephemeral content like stories. Whether your business is small, medium, or large, you can be using Instagram to increase awareness, build customers and loyalty. It is a platform to be creative, to drive sales, and connect with consumers on a deeper level.
No matter what industry your business falls under, using Instagram as a marketing strategy is an essential tool. The social platform comes with various features for companies to use and create content to their advantage, including singular posts, carousels, video posts, reels, stories, IGTV, live videos, and a shopping section.
Tips to Using Instagram Successfully
- Post consistently (daily or at a minimum three times a week)
- Use handles (@) to engage with other accounts
- Use hashtags (#) to promote your content further and connect with similar accounts in the same industry
- Post a variety of content, including educational, entertainment, inspirational and promotional posts
- Utilise Instagram stories and engage with consumers, including using features such as polls, questions, behind the scenes content
- Engage with other accounts by liking and commenting on their content
- Use your data insights to understand what your customers engage with the most and the best day/time to post
How to Use Facebook Marketing Successfully
Facebook is a highly effective tool to generate conversions and connect with targeted audiences. Facebook enables your business to build awareness, get people interested in your brand, assist consumers in learning more about your offerings, and finally lead to driving sales.
Ensure you are posting with intention and creating valuable, engaging content for your consumers. If they see the same creative week-in-week-out, they will get bored and not engage with the post. Thus, it’s vital to switch your content up and not only provide promotional posts but also think out-of-the-box; create content your audience hasn’t been provided before for more interaction. Furthermore, if your post is engaging and unique, people will like it, comment, share, and save it, driving lead generations and boosting your post. In saying this, organic content gets very little traction, with Facebook and Instagram becoming a pay-to-play environment. Whilst unfortunate, you can achieve great success with Facebook and Instagram advertising without breaking the bank.
Through Facebook, Facebook Ads Manager was created, bringing to life a vital tool for business growth. It allows you to run campaigns through Facebook, connecting to a large audience you intend to target. It is an excellent tool for businesses as you can create unique customer audiences based on various data sources; those who have visited your website in the last 180 days, individuals who have added a product to their cart but not clicked buy, or target people who have previously watched more than 50% of a recent campaign video. Through Facebook Ads Manager, you can create lookalike audiences targeting similar people who take an interest in your business. You can also narrow down audiences and continually test to see which will produce the most results for a given objective.
It is imperative as a business that you create and install a Facebook Pixel on your website, as it collects data about who is visiting your website and interacting with your business, allowing you to retarget specific consumers down the track and use data to target new potential customers
Analysing Facebook Page Insights is another tool any business can utilise to its advantage. It helps you determine what posts your audience engage with the most, what demographic is interacting with your content, what time and day to post and to boost your posts and other essential features that enable you to drive sales and increase brand awareness further.
Facebook advertising can take years to master, and if you are a small business, have a limited budget or have time on your hands, then you can search for online tutorials to get you started before working with a team like us at Pink Lemonade, who have nearly a decade of specialist experience in paid social advertising.
Social Media Best Practices for Hospitality Businesses
Finishing up, here’s a few specific tips and best practices to get the most out of social media for your hospitality business.
- As mentioned above, actively engage with your followers; set aside time regularly, and it will help ensure you are not doing it at 11 pm without enthusiasm.
- Implement storytelling – storytelling beats selling every time. Get creative with your content, and the storytelling with naturally be incorporated.
- Consider influencer marketing, but not first and foremost. You understand that social content is ephemeral; you post today, tomorrow it has disappeared into a million other posts. Whilst influencer marketing can be successful (you can read our guide on How to Work With Influencers here), it can be costly, short-lived and not help deliver continuing results.
- Plan for paid social advertising – whilst you don’t have to fork out an extensive advertising spend, running ongoing campaigns or campaigns on and off over the year can help bring in a new audience, drive attendance and bookings, and ultimately increase your revenue.
- Make your social an experience; create engaging content, share behind the scenes, highlight your unique points of difference as well as your customer service.
Let me know your thoughts, questions or your experience with creating a social media strategy in the comments section below, or if you need more advice or assistance with social media advertising, feel free to get in touch!
Thanks for reading!
X Marc
Pink Lemonade is located on the traditional lands of the palawa people, the Traditional Owners of lutruwita (Tasmania). We pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.
Pink Lemonade Social is a proudly inclusive organisation and an ally of LGBTIQ+ community and the movement toward equality.
Helpful but now i just wish i had a team of 4 people to help me!
haha thats always the way, just stick to good planning and it should make it more manageable to tackle!
We are still struggling with our Facebook ads, but this has given me some handy ideas.
And facebook changes all the time, it’s so annoying! Best of luck Dani.
Nice article thanks
Planning the content strategy is the hardest, but thanks for the motivation!
Grab a fresh coffee and get planning, that’s my method 😛
Super helpful for a small cafe like us! thanks!
Anytime Antony!