In the last few years, Instagram has emerged as the winning social media platform for many business niches.
It has become trendy for those businesses that can impact their audience visually with attractive images and videos.
If marketed correctly on Instagram, you can grow your Instagram followers from the low thousands to at least a six-figure number.
There are many ways you can utilize Instagram marketing tips to get ahead of your competitors.
Top Ideas to Increase Engagement on Instagram for Your Restaurant
1. Humanize Your Business
If you want to make your restaurant a success, you should try to show your business’s human aspect. Show the people behind the doors – your chefs, stewards, managers, and even the busboys. The effort of every single employee goes into building a brand for our eatery. Arrange for your employees to take over your Instagram account and have them interact with the customers directly. You can build your audience’s trust in you with this personable approach.
2. Be consistent in Your Aesthetic
On Instagram, your aesthetic plays a huge role in getting the attention of your audience. Your Instagram aesthetic is a branding opportunity for you to showcase your restaurant to your potential customers by being creative. You can build your brand around a single concept and evolve it with imagination with your aesthetic.
3. Re-design Your Restaurant
Other than your Instagram aesthetic, you need to revamp your existing restaurant into something that is Instagram-worthy. You want your customers to enjoy your restaurant’s ambiance and post beautiful pictures on their Instagram pages. From plating your food, putting up fairy lights, and even the color and pattern on your curtains – everything impacts how the audience enjoys their dining experience.
4. Use Stories to Get Audience Preference
People love to give their opinion on things – whether you ask for it or not. A great idea to get more followers on Instagram is by asking your existing followers leading questions and by conducting polls. By collating the information you get, you can find what the majority finds appealing and use it to entice a broader, potential audience.
5. Collaborate with Food Bloggers
One of the more popular niches on Instagram is the one with all the food bloggers. Food bloggers are the people who enjoy food, love every aspect of it from the presentation, the cooking, and the taste. Search for a food blogger with a decent following and one whose brand you fell meshes well with your own – collaborating with a food blogger can help engage your audience with new content.
6. Engage Food Stylists
You own a restaurant business, and your main aim is to get people to enjoy your food. No matter how good your food tastes, people will not order it off the menu unless they like how it looks when set on the plate. Food stylists and food photographers use colors and props to make your food pop. A good presentation has a lot to do with how many times it will be ordered off the menu.
7. Launch Special Giveaways
Everyone loves to win. Appeal to your audience’s inner competitor by announcing an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of your kitchen with a cooking lesson from your chef. The contest criteria could be laid out in simple terms, which will allow more people to participate.
8. Use Hashtags appropriately
Even with a public account that is open to all, if you want more people to follow you on Instagram, you need to use hashtags properly. Look into people are searching for on the explore page, see which tags resonate with your brand and add them in your posts. Consistently tag all your posts with the same hashtags, and soon your target audience will start following you.
9. Provide a location in all your posts
Instagram allows you to tag any location when posting anything on the platform. It’s not enough to just have good hashtags and hope that people will start following you. Where will they find you? Using a geotag will allow your audience to see the actual location of your restaurant. They can plan their outing to your restaurant with ease.
10. Provide Special Offers
Everyone loves free stuff, or rather everyone loves discounts. If you want to attract more people to like your page and stick around, you need to give them an incentive. Introduce weekly offers like Fun Fridays or Wacky Weekends – something that will get more people to visit you and who can start following on the platform. Use food ads on Instagram as a way to give information about the offers and reach more people.
11. Ask Your Customers for a Boost
There is nothing wrong with asking for help. Tastefully put up flyers or reminders inside your restaurant space and inside the menu card, mentioning your Instagram handle. Gently urge your customers to follow you on Instagram if they aren’t already. If it matches your restaurant aesthetic, set up a small corner with cut out and photo-worthy props for your customers to click pictures. You can put up a poster asking them to tag in all their photos.
12. Hire a Top-notch Marketing Team
It can be challenging to keep your restaurant running effectively and manage your social media accounts to optimize your growth. In this case, you should look into hiring an excellent marketing team. The team can manage your social media account and keep it running smoothly.
13. Use Instagram Lives
The live feature in Instagram can be used to build the rapport between you and your audience. You can have your chef operating a live counter, and create items as suggested by the viewers. If you have a bar counter, you can have the bartender show the viewers how to make various cocktails and mocktails. Honestly, there are endless possibilities of getting more followers with this hack.
14. Use of Language and Tone
In all your interactions on Instagram with your followers, you need to keep an eye on the tone and language you are using. A humorous tone and casual language have more of a chance of resonating with your audience and get them to follow you on the platform.
Conclusion
Instagram is a visual social platform. The potential for success for your restaurant business with Instagram is unending. Try to incorporate as many ideas mentioned here into your Instagram strategy and see how fast your followers grow.