Did you know that #foodporn is one of the most popular hashtags you can use on Instagram?
If you’re not familiar with the term, it might sound slightly weird. But it is exactly what you, as a restaurant owner, want to be posting on your social media accounts. Especially on Instagram, where the visuals are everything!
But of course, as the social media world grows and advances, being successful on Instagram — or any other platform — becomes about way more than just posting beautiful images accompanied by a couple of hashtags.
So what can you do on Instagram to make your restaurant’s profile stand out from all the others? Keep reading!
Regram
Taking your own photos to post on Instagram is something you should always be doing, but the magic of this social platform is that, if you’re too busy or can’t seem to take high-quality pictures, you’ll probably have plenty of customers doing it for you.
So get regramming (a.k.a. reposting)!
If you don’t see a lot of people posting, you can always encourage them to do so using rewards. So you could organize a photo contest and offer a discount or a couple of stamps on their digital stamp card, for example. In the end, you should have some awesome pictures to regram.
One extra tip: one way to make it easier for you to find other people’s posts is by creating a hashtag for your restaurant. Then, all you have to do is search for it and see what’s new. And don’t forget to use it in all your posts to spread the word!
Experiment With Filters
So you took 57 photos of your amazing new dish and none of them look good. Frustrating, we know. But don’t give up just yet!
You’d be surprised to know how much editing goes into most of the mouthwatering photos of food you see on Instagram. So look for a good photo editing app with filters that match your Instagram style (which should always be cohesive!) and start experimenting.
Choose Your Hashtags Wisely
We cannot stress enough how much of a difference hashtags can make in your Instagram game. In fact, posts with at least one hashtag get 12.6% more engagement than a post without any.
But of course, you can’t use just any hashtag — they need to make sense with your posts. So don’t overlook the importance of doing proper keyword research. Like we mentioned before, #foodporn is always a good choice, and so is your own restaurant hashtag.
But as you become more familiar with the art of Instagramming, you’ll understand that there are many more that can help you. It’s all a matter of doing your homework before publishing!
Work Alongside Food Influencers
The word of the moment when it comes to the online world: influencers. It’s undeniable that influencers do have a lot of power. They can reach immense audiences and make each of their followers almost feel like they’re friends with them.
This means that their followers trust them. And sales are very much based on trust!
By partnering up with food influencers you reach potential customers you probably wouldn’t reach otherwise and do it in a way that’ll more easily convince them to give your restaurant a try.
Have an Insta-Worthy Space
Our first tip in this article was for you to repost photos and videos that your customers publish on their own profiles. Now, you’ll only be able to do this if your restaurant and food are worthy of being posted, for all your customers’ followers to see (and envy).
A couple of things you can do to make your restaurant 100% Instagrammable are:
- Create (at least) one item in your menu that completely stands out. Remember Starbuck’s Unicorn Frappuccino, that ended up going viral? The idea is for you to make your own version of that.
- Have good lighting in your restaurant. We’ve all given up on trying to take a photo because we just couldn’t see anything, so make sure that doesn’t happen with your customers by having good natural and artificial light. And don’t forget about the bathrooms? After all, who hasn’t taken a cheeky mirror selfie in a restaurant bathroom before?
Instagram is one of the most visual social platforms there is out there and selling food is all about how appetizing you make it look. So what are you waiting for? Start using Instagram for your restaurant today!
