Whether you are active on social media or not, trust us that your Lakeland restaurants are being mentioned across different platforms—on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and many more. Your guests are tagging your location, taking photos of the food you serve, and writing reviews on Yelp about your food and service.
For some businessmen, creating a social media presence is just another item on their long list of to-dos. For others, social media is the backbone of their whole business development plan.
While we cannot force the first group to see social media as a critical and important tool in marketing their businesses, the second group that prioritizes Facebook and other forms of social media have a better chance of building their companies and engaging with their customers.
Create a consistent message and voice
Your brand needs to create a consistent voice across all platforms. For example, if you have a shabby chic interior, you can continue this theme on your social media accounts by using only pastel colors for your backgrounds and using writeups that appeal to this particular demographic. You can also create a clean and modern aesthetic for your brand by using only earthy tones and a lot of white space.
Respond to online reviews
Your customers will leave good and bad reviews about your restaurant. You will not have any control over this. What you can do is to respond to reviews, whether they are good or bad.
Have someone respond to every single review and make sure the response is personal in nature. By doing so, you can show to your customers that you are committed to addressing their concerns and that you are appreciative of their positive reviews.
Turn customers into brand ambassadors
Social media followers love having the chance to get featured on your social media pages. They love showing off their dining photos. As long as you ask for their permission to repost the photos, you won’t encounter any problems turning these clients into your brand ambassadors.
Offer exclusive promotions and discounts
If there’s one reason that people follow your page on social media, it is their hope that you will post coupon codes and offer their exclusive discounts.
You can reward them with discounts when they share your posts on their social media feeds. With this, you are expanding your network and increasing the number of people who will be aware of your business.