Little Known Ways to Use Instagram for Your Restaurant

Fact: Most restaurant owners don’t understand the value of using hashtags on Instagram. Using hashtags are essential to reaching more people in your posts! In this article, we’re going to discuss how to use Instagram for Restaurants by sharing 6 of the little known (but VERY IMPORTANT) ways to use Instagram for your Restaurant.

1 – Use All of Your Hashtags to Extender Reach

What is the maximum amount of hashtags you can use on Instagram? 30. How many hashtags should you use on Instagram for your Restaurant? 30. Leveraging hashtags to maximize the organic reach on Instagram is an opportunity you do not want to miss. All great things come to an end. As I am typing this, this tip works great. Restaurants should leverage all 30 hashtags. With each hashtag you use, you’ll reach even more people. The number of extra people that see your post is solely based on how popular the hashtag is. People will search the hashtags and browse hashtags if they’re relevant. You want to make sure you’re showing up for the people who do! Make sure if you own a restaurant with a single location that you cater your tags towards location-specific phrases. Here is an example of 20 hashtag suggestions for you if you ran a restaurant located in Charlotte, NC:

• #CharlotteRestaurants #CharlotteNC #CLT #CharlotteEats #CharlotteFoodies #EatingOutInCharlotte #FoodPorn #BBQ #BBQchicken #BBQRibs #BBQsmoker #bbqlovers #bbqnation #cltbbq #CLTeats #CLTfood #exploreCLT #CLTfoodie #charlottenightlife #charlottefoodscene

PRO TIP: Keep a file on your phone’s Notes app with all the hashtags you plan to use for most of your posts. This way, you can easily copy them and paste them into your new posts.

2 – Tag Your Location Every Time

Much like hashtags, people search locations on Instagram to look at posts from people that are local to them. Make sure you continuously switch between tagging your city and tagging your state when you post on Instagram. Also ocassionally tag your actually restaurant as the location. And make sure you do so every single time! Users will browse all the posts near them and once they see that delicious photo of pizza you posted show up in the feed, they’re going to wonder where they can get that. They’ll tap on your profile and realize you’re in the same city and make plans to come to your restaurant.

3 – Find People Near You & Interact With Them

Search your city on Instagram by tapping on the magnifying glass at the bottom, tap the search bar at the top, and then tap the Places tab. Once you have your city pulled up, you’ll see two sections: Top Posts and Recent Posts. Follow the accounts that have top posts in your city. Then comment positively on 3 of their posts. To get them to notice you, send them a Direct Message on Instagram and tell them you saw they were in your city. Explain that you love your city too and invite them to come in for a free meal. They’ll likely post on their Instagram account about it and share it with all their followers. Then, go to the most Recent posts in your area and see if anyone references food, being hungry, or boredom. If you find one of these gems, comment on them and invite them to stop by your restaurant.

4 – The Perfect Instagram Posting Formula: Frequency + Consistency = Success

Here’s how to use Instagram for Restaurants & become an influential business on Instagram: A client we had in Charlotte proved this Instagram Success formula: Frequent Posts + Consistent Posts = Instagram Success. What this means… The more often you post and the more consistently you post, the more engagement you’ll get on your posts. The more engagement you get on your posts, the more likely they will be to move up in the Top Posts section for your city. Once your image or video is showing there, you’ll receive an influx in engagement. The secret is this: Post 1-3 times per day EVERY SINGLE DAY! If you can’t do it on the weekends because you don’t have time, get a family member or an employee and pay them extra to make sure they take care of the days you don’t have time. It will SERIOUSLY pay off. But these posts can’t be you throwing up sales and promotional content. This content has to be strictly NON promotional. Each post must be valuable. Do this: Plan out the different posts your business can make. Make a HUGE list. Figure out creative ways to show off some of these important things:

• Up-close photos of your food that make it so you can almost taste them when you see them
• Reasons people love your restaurant
• Reasons people love specific items on your menu (plan a post for every single item)
• Education about where you purchase ingredients (if they’re fresh, of course)
• Videos on how you cook each menu item
• Highlighting customers, sports teams, members of the community, and other businesses you’ve worked with
• Secret recipes (people love when they feel like someone’s telling them a secret not many others know about!)
• Tips on when the best time to come in is
• Stories about the owner, customers that came in, or random stories you like that you’ve heard

5 – Pay to Reach More People

Paying for ads is an easy way to reach more people that actually care on Instagram. Tapping the blue “Promote” button on a post will allow you to quickly choose where you want to send people (to your profile, to your website, or to your storefront), choose your target audience (make sure you choose locals near you!), and choose your budget and duration. Consider this the equivalent to boosting a post on Facebook. We recommend promoting every single post you make with at least $5.

6 – Short Videos Increase Followers & Engagement

The last item on this list of little known ways to use Instagram for your Restaurant is to use Short Videos to increase followers & engagement. While people’s attention spans are dwindling down to basically 0 seconds, users are still stopping and viewing videos for 3-5 seconds on average. Slap a steak down into the skillet, drop butter on it, and smile at the camera! Because that’s about all the time you have to catch someone’s attention. Try to use short 5-15 second videos to spark interest, create curiosity, educate, and entertain your followers. Videos get more engagement than photos. This influences the Instagram algorithm allowing all of your posts to actually reach even MORE people! Move videos = the best option always. While photos are acceptable, consider designing your strategy around videos.

Instagram is a long-term play. It’s not designed for selling tacos. While you can sell tacos using Instagram along the way, it’s primarily best for building and nurturing relationships with your followers and new people that have not yet dined at your restaurant. We hope this article helped you learn how to use instagram for restaurants and hope that it was very helpful to you. If you have any more questions or want to chat more about this topic, schedule a call with me and let’s talk! I’m an open book.