Good to see you. Today in your favourite Instagram Academy we tackle Instagram for restaurants.
In earlier lessons we covered plenty of Instagram subjects, among them:
- how to improve your Instagram profile
- how to grow your Instagram followers
- when to post on Instagram
- how often to post on Instagram
- how Instagram for business works
- what Instagram Stories are, which we will see matter a great deal to Instagram in the food sector.
Don’t miss our lessons — you will find them all in the Instagram Academy.
Instagram (on desktop too) is a photo-led social network for giving and finding inspiration through images. Used for business, it also serves, above all, to find customers. And who is always hunting for new customers? Restaurants, of course, but also pizzerias, bars and venues in general. That is why we decided to run a lesson on Instagram for restaurants, to give you a hand finding new customers.
What better way to make your business known than using Instagram to promote yourself in food?
If you run a restaurant, a venue, a pizzeria or a patisserie and want to use Instagram in the food sector, we will help you work out how.
Ready to start.
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We are about to walk through how to promote a restaurant on Instagram, or any other business.
Let’s start by saying that Instagram is a meeting place where people publish what they love and follow people or pages matching their interests.
The moment a company or an individual publishes something on Instagram, they are sharing it with people they don’t know, which means people can take an interest in new companies, new products and people with similar interests they may not know. In that it is very different from Facebook, where people interact mainly with their friends.
What does that mean? That if you have a business, Instagram has enormous potential for drawing potential customers towards you.
Are you a restaurant? Excellent — with Instagram you have every chance of finding new customers.
Let’s see how to use Instagram for your restaurant.
Instagram for restaurants: let’s start by saying that food is one of the most popular fields on Instagram, alongside fashion, beauty, sport and travel.
Did you know Instagram users interact throughout the day with people who work in and run a page in food on Instagram?
Did you know that through Instagram people discover new places to visit, restaurants to try and new things to order?
And remember, those people can become customers.
Let’s see how Instagram for restaurants works.
First, some figures worth thinking about:
- 97% of spirits brands sell on Instagram;
- 58% of food enthusiasts on Instagram have a strong interest in cooking, food and restaurants;
- 36% are more inclined to try new things thanks to Instagram.
Screenshot of @ristoranteluccamilano
First you should know that images and, above all, videos are the content web users appreciate most.
Starting from that, if you run a restaurant, why not take advantage and photograph the dishes and the room, so you can share the essence of your place and say who you are, what you do and how you work?
First, if you are thinking of making the most of Instagram for your restaurant you will have to open a business Instagram page and start producing quality content.
Before eating at a restaurant, people look it up and judge it by the photographs they find. So if you want to promote a restaurant on Instagram you will need a good Instagram strategy for restaurants.
Let’s get to it.
Screenshot of gioele_gustoetradizione
Remember you have to offer people an experience. Using Instagram for restaurants means letting people into your world, being open, taking quality photos and shooting quality video for your feed, using Instagram Stories to draw people in while you cook or to tell stories.
The things to pay attention to are these:
- show where the restaurant is;
- introduce your staff to your potential audience;
- let people see the environment you work in;
- convey the atmosphere and work to build respect and trust.
And once the road your content has to follow is clear, we can think harder about how to use Instagram for your restaurant, venue or pizzeria.
First, though, a short but important aside about the beautiful Instagram photos you will have to take.
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For you with a business, photos cannot be neglected — so let’s look straight away at how to take good photos for Instagram and at Instagram image sizes.
First, these suggestions:
- don’t shoot photos directly in Instagram: shoot from the phone camera instead, if you are not using a professional camera;
- don’t choose subjects that are too distant or too small;
- symmetrical images work very well;
- be creative and shoot from different angles;
- remember not to use Instagram’s filters, but rather photo editing apps (Afterlight, Lightroom, Snapseed, VSCO);
- focus on details to tell the story of the dish;
- photos should be taken at 45°;
- if a dish has little height, shoot it from above; if it has plenty, shoot it head on;
- fill the whole frame;
- shoot without flash and with natural light where possible (not the restaurant’s artificial light);
- put the dish in context: you can place it near the chair, in your hands, on a counter in the room;
- keep the same style across every photo you publish: every dish should point back to you.
As for format, Instagram image sizes are:
- horizontal 1080 x 566 pixels;
- vertical 1080 x 1350;
- square 1:1 at 1080 x 1080.
Now you have plenty of useful pointers and can work on your Instagram strategy for restaurants.
To the point: curious to find out how to promote a restaurant on Instagram?
Here it is:
- use Instagram Stories to bring people closer to your restaurant;
- run photo contests on Instagram, rewarding the people who post the best photos with a hashtag you have chosen;
- offer special deals;
- encourage your customers to publish selfies (offering discounts or a free dessert) tagging your restaurant;
- run events to bring your followers together;
- get in touch with local bloggers and food bloggers, offering free meals in exchange for good publicity on their profiles and blogs;
- contact influencers who match your audience;
- use Instagram ads to promote your restaurant;
- don’t publish too much, or too little: at least two posts a day, three at most;
- use the right food Instagram hashtags.
Let’s look at that last point now: the food hashtags you can use to promote restaurants on Instagram.
Screenshot from Instagram
Food hashtags on Instagram
We could hardly cover Instagram for restaurants without this.
Hashtags matter if your content is to be seen by your audience. So using the right food hashtags is fundamental, and we will look at the best hashtags for a restaurant.
You have a limit of 30 hashtags, but Instagram rewards consistency with the content, so it is better to use fewer that fit perfectly than 30 chosen at random.
Which food hashtags should you use?
- #city: start with the hashtag carrying your city’s name (so people in that city find you)
- use #restaurant
- add hashtags that highlight the region and local produce
- use hashtags such as #italiancuisine or #mediterraneancuisine, or other cuisines, to reach your ideal audience
- use trending food hashtags, but don’t overdo it (#instafood #foodporn #yummy #foodie #delicious #eat, but no more than 4)
- choose hashtags of varying reach: some with 1 to 5 million posts, others with 100,000 to a million, others under 100,000 — build a mix, as long as they are consistent.
Conclusion
To close: if you run a venue, a bar or a restaurant you will have to open a business Instagram account.
We have given you a picture of what using Instagram to promote yourself in food means today. You have plenty of useful information on how to move and on how much the photographic element now matters to people, shaping what they do.
Finally we looked at the restaurant hashtags on Instagram you can use — but the work is now yours, testing which are more effective and which are less.
Instagram in the food sector is a fine marketing channel; make the most of it.
We will see you in the next lessons, where we will go deeper into other Instagram subjects you are sure to find interesting. Stay tuned and keep following your favourite Instagram Academy.
Want Instagram consultancy? Get in touch — we will work out the best Instagram strategy to do what it takes and reach your goal.
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