You have set up a restaurant and now are looking for ways to promote your business. Blogging is one of the best unique restaurant promotion ideas. In other words, a restaurant blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your food business.
Why you need a restaurant blog? You might think do I really need a blog for my business, then the answer is “yes”. Creating a blog can help you to build your brand, gain a reputation, and attract new customers. Writing a good blog for your audience takes time, but investing in a restaurant blog is worth.
What are the Benefits of Starting a Restaurant Blog?
1. Build connection:
With restaurant blogging, you can promote your restaurant in an effective way. You can tell your customers about a new food item you just added to the menu, promotions or events. It is a place where you can let people know about you, your food, and establish a personal connection with them.
2. Brings attention:
You can turn your customers towards your restaurant by providing the right content. A visible and engaging blog attracts the eyes of the customers. If they found something interesting, they would love to know more about it. This way, you gain visibility and possibly more orders. Blogging regularly is the mantra, as this will keep people coming to your site. Ignoring your blog can turn your business down and make your presence hidden.
As per the inbound marketing software Hubspot, companies that publish 16 or more blogs a month get 3.5 more traffic than the companies who publish less.
3. Improves your Restaurant Website SEO:
When you write interesting, in-depth and valuable content, Google notices your restaurant website and rank it higher. Publishing quality content regularly improves your SEO.
4. Social Media:
Get more shares on social media. Adding social media buttons to your blog is one of the best things. People can easily share your content over their social media. This way, you can get more exposure and attract more clients.
5. Email list:
Include a sign -up form on your blog where people can add their email to subscribe to your blog. This way, you can get the email of the people. You can create an email list and send interesting recipes, promotions, and discounts. Offer a freebie to encourage people to subscribe to your blog.
6. An Advantage over Competitors:
You can get an upper edge over your competitors who are not into content creation. Moreover, blogging results can be measured through Google Analytics. You can track your demographics and optimize your marketing strategies.
How to start a Restaurant Blog?
1. You need to update your restaurant website’s blog section. If you don’t have a restaurant website you can create one with the help of Free Restaurant Website & App DIY Makers.
2. You can also hire a designer to create a simple and clean design for your blog. The blog should match the look of your restaurant ordering website, basically the aesthetics of your site.
3. You need to figure out who will write the blog. Managers, guest bloggers or freelance writers can write for you. You can also assign writing tasks to your chef if he can produce great content.
4. Post at least 16 blogs a month to gain visibility among customers. Also, prefer quality over quantity as your content reflects your brand.
5. Create a blogging schedule for your blog. Add several recipes a week and schedule other recipes for the next week.
6. Get some ideas from your staff and involve them in your content. Start building a community by responding to people’s comments on your blog, and get in contact with influencers.
What Should Your Restaurant Blog Be About?
Have you ever thought about what to post on your food blog? It is good to start talking about your restaurant, menu and your services. Also, incorporate delicious food pictures in your blog. Make sure to add high-quality pics that can entice people. You can hire a professional photographer or click your pictures through DSLR.
1. Recipes:
Share a recipe for your favorite dish and present your dish. Add interesting information like, tell about the changes that you made to the traditional recipe. Click high-quality pictures of your dish, so that it gets maximum shares.
2. Share Opinion About Restaurant Industry Trends:
New restaurant industry trends are coming now and then in the restaurant industry. These affect consumers as well as businesses. You can write about new tech ways and tell people how you are using it in your restaurant. Apart from this, you can write about budding restaurant issues. These types of blogs can increase your credibility and help to establish your business.
3. Behind the Scenes Stories:
You can share people behind your coffee, deserts or cuisines. Local farmers and independent suppliers can be your subject for your blog. If you have recently attended any charity event, do mention it and your role. These types of posts get good shares and people love promoting such blogs.
4. Accolades:
If you have received an award, do talk about it. Don’t shy away, instead brag about any feature on local Tv or any recognition in the restaurant industry.
5. Spread News About Local Happening:
If you keep on posting about your blog, your customers might think you are marketing yourself. So, be genuine and post about local events happening, festivals or gallery nights and more. Also, include a call to action to invite people to make you part of their day.
6. Staff Bios:
You can put your staff pictures along with tips and techniques. Apart from this, you can also post their experiences of working with your restaurant.
7. Guest Posts by Influencers:
Reach out to popular food bloggers in your area and ask them to write a blog for your site. This way, you can get more diverse and interesting content for your site. Also, you get more publicity as a brand, when an influencer shares the post with their followers.
Food bloggers love checking each other’s posts. Developing an influencing marketing strategy for your blog gets you more influencers, who might want to work with you. You can provide your guests bloggers some ideas which can help them to create a great post.
Bonus Tips for Restaurant Blog Promotions:
Bonus Tip 1 – Optimize your Restaurant Blog:
People will not find you by luck, but you need to tell them that you exist. Optimize your blog for the search engines by adding relevant keywords. You need to adopt various unique restaurant promotion ideas to promote your blog such as:
- Setting your accounts on various social media platforms and then sharing your recipes.
- Making videos and publishing them on Youtube.
- Writing a guest post to promote your restaurant on other sites.
Bonus Tip 2 – Monetize Your Blog:
You can make money from your blog by monetizing it. But, you need to have sufficient traffic to your blog. Once you get enough traffic, you can try these options.
- Contextual advertising programs such as Google AdSense
- Affiliate programs.
- Seek out sponsorships
- Write your cookbooks
- Offer online courses
Your restaurant blog can be your most powerful marketing tool, but you need to know how to use it effectively. Once you post a blog, don’t forget to measure your performance via analytics. Interesting blog content paves a way to bring new customers into your restaurant. It strengthens the bond with the existing ones and helps you to grow further in the restaurant industry.
Although, if you still have questions in your mind like why your restaurant needs a restaurant website, how to get one created? Contact RestroApp and get a free consultation today!
