WHERE TO START: USING INSTAGRAM TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS
In 2018 Instagram hit the 1 billion daily users’ record internationally, and over 9 million of those daily posts were in Australia. The majority of Australian users were female (60%) and in clubs this is the demographic group that makes the decisions about where the family goes for entertainment. With an average of 7 posts a month by the 9 million daily users, that’s a lot of free advertising, positive reviews and an opportunity to highlight your club that shouldn’t be missed.
The most commonly photographed item is FOOD. There is no stronger foodservice marketing tool than an impressed and happy customer advertising your menu to friends? There are easy ways to get you started on the right track:
1. CREATING AN INSTAGRAM BUSINESS PROFILE AND ACCOUNT
Your Instagram account provides a landing page where your customers can interact with your club or hotel. From a business perspective there is also access to Instagram’s analytic insights where you can track your online content and its reach.
2. CREATE A WINNING INSTAGRAM STRATEGY
The vast majority of Instagram users are between 18-35. That’s good information to get you started, but you need to define a target audience unique to your venue. By working out who followed you in other social media channels such as Facebook and websites and knowing who is already a customer for different product offerings in your club, you can begin to build an overall strategy to target different demographic groups and what parts of your product line up they are likely to be most interested in.
3. FOCUS ON ORIGINAL PHOTOS
Start uploading your own photos of your most attractive menu items, across the whole menu: entrees and mains to desserts. Don’t forget to include photos which display the style and décor of your food areas. Photos of chefs prepping and cooking food and back of house kitchen areas are popular and tell a story about your brand. Plenty of happy people pics make your venue more interesting to potential customers.
4. SHARE YOUR CONTENT ON FACEBOOK AND WEB
Creating hashtags that include signature dishes, cocktails or your business name assists customers in finding your content online. Your Instagram photos should be used as content on your website, and Facebook pages. Sharing content with these platforms with hashtag links helps capture the attention of consumers who may not regularly use Instagram but are active on other social media. Instagram’s embed feature allows you to also add photos and video content from your Instagram account to your own website.
5. UTILISE INSTAGRAM STORIES AND INSTAGRAM LIVE
These new Instagram features are great for promoting immediate content to engage potential customers. Instagram Stories enables you to post photos or videos which will stay up for a 24 hour period only. The ability to add links, cross-tag to other social media content and include location data makes this particularly suitable for promoting ‘one night only’ specials, menu offers, events and more. Instagram Live lets you stream video content in real time and interact with your audience as they watch.
6. INTERACTIVE AND ENGAGED CUSTOMERS BUILD YOUR PROFILE
By encouraging customers to upload photos of their experiences at your Club your reach increases when they share it with their friends. Reaching a new audience increases the potential for new customers in your restaurant, café or club are many ways of actively engaging people to do this. Offering incentives such as discounts or free meals for the best photo tagged with your business, or even creating a competition themed around unusual or funny photos are a few ideas to boost social media traffic.
Sources
https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-instagram-for-business
http://clubperfect.com.au/masterclass
