Why?
To connect with your guests on social media and have an ongoing presence on their feed when not at the restaurant, as well as connect with those that may not have visited us before. This will lead to engagement, loyalty and increased sales.
Expectation:
- Your goal is to post at least twice per week with engaging content on your Facebook page. You should include a photo or video and text description that makes your fans want to respond and interact with you.
- What does interaction mean?
- Likes, shares, comments, views or visiting the restaurant in response to what they saw. Every time a guest interacts with your post, it’s more likely to be shown to their friends.
- What does interaction mean?
More interactions= more views of your restaurant.
- Examples of engaging post content includes:
- Food photos (or videos)
- Daily specials
- Photos or videos of your team
- Menu features
- Flash deals
- Questions to your guests
- Contests
- Community involvement
- Event photos/cross promotion
- Photos of your guests in restaurant (with permission)
- Special hours of operation
- Holidays
- There should be at least one person trained in your restaurant on how to post on social media (if not more) and all posts should be approved by the GM.
- If you need help having someone added to a page, please contact Kathryn.
- It is helpful to have a plan at the beginning of the week or month of what you want to accomplish from your page. Having a clear, thought out plan with what you will be posting will keep you organized and keep content engaging for the guests.
How to Post on Facebook:
Always use a photo with a post. Decide what you’d like to feature and be sure to take or use a clear photo.
Tips:
- Use a flash or
be in a very well-lit area. Use real sunlight when possible.
- If a food
photo, menu item should appear as it would being served.
- Wipe off any drips or spills on the plate
- Place colorful items on a plain background with muted colors
- Ensure any background items look neat and clean (ie. If taking a photo of prep in the kitchen, make sure rags are away, prep boards are clean and garbage not overflowing)
- Don’t include too many things in the photo, keep it simple.
- If team members are in the photo, make sure they are smiling and uniforms look neat.
- Should not be blurry or hard to see item
- Always ask a guest for permission to post if including them.
- If a food
photo, menu item should appear as it would being served.
- Examples:
- Once you have the photo you’d like to post, go to your restaurant’s Facebook Page and scroll down until you see this:
- Click the Photo/Video button on the bottom left.
- Click Upload Photo/Video.
- Choose the photo or video you’d like to post in your library or take on live, and hit Choose on the bottom right.
- This should show you the photo on the post
- Now that you have your photo, write an engaging description
of it.
- Be sure all words are spelled correctly, correct grammar and punctuation is used and no slang.
- If your Facebook is linked and automatically posts to Instagram, use # as needed
- Ensure all information you listed is correct (dates, prices, etc)
- Hit “Share Now” on the blue box on the bottom if ready to post immediately.
- If you’d like to post at a different day and time:
- Choose Share Now with the drop down arrow, then select Schedule. This will bring up a calendar to choose the date and time you’d like to schedule it to be posted.
- Once it is posted, be on the lookout for your fans to comment on the post. If they do, be sure to respond to them with a like or comment back!
- You know you did something right when you see how many people you’ve reached with one post!
- If you do have a successful post or just have
something that would be great to promote even further, we can “boost” a post
with paid advertising. This should be done sparingly and only with your GM’s
permission. This means the post will go past your currently guests who like
your page and their friends and go to a new audience that we select.
- Please contact Kathryn for more information on this if interested.
Example posts:
You can also post directly from your phone! To do so, download the Facebook Pages Manager app.
The steps to posting are similar to above.
Once you’ve decided on your content, go to your restaurant’s home screen. Look for the Photo/Video button (the publish button will let you write text as a post, but highly recommended to post a photo with your content)
Click the Camera Photo/Video button and choose a photo from your library or take one live by choosing the grey camera icon on the far top left. Once chosen, the photo will appear.
If this is the photo you want, now type in the text to describe it where it says “Say something about this photo”
Once your post is finished, hit Continue in the upper right hand corner in blue. It will bring you to this screen.
Click Publish in the upper right hand corner in blue to publish immediately. You can also schedule posts from here.
Be sure to monitor the app for replies to your post and respond back through the app to make it appear as you are responding as the restaurant instead of yourself!
You’ll always know something happened on your page when you see the red box with a number in it next to one of the categories on the top. The Notifications tab shows you all new activity including messages, comments, likes, shares and check-ins. Some of these notifications may not be action worthy, but if you see something you can respond to, you should try.
Stay ahead of new information on your page by checking the notifications (you’ll know if something is unread by having a number with a red box).
These include new messages, comments, likes, shares and check-ins.
| Clicking on notifications will show you all of the new activity. | |||||||
| If there are any action items (someone commented and you haven’t responded, you can invite people to like your page or you see a check-in), click on the highlighted blue area and it will take you to that screen. Check-ins are something I’d encourage you to try to stay on top of, even when not in the restaurant. Guests can choose to “check in” to any business and it tags us. Guests usually check in while still in the restaurant, so you can see how things are going in real time. Sometimes it just says they are there, other times it has more information like them saying it’s a birthday. Being able to immediately tell them we hope they enjoy, or happy birthday, or whatever it might be as they just get to the restaurant, let’s them know we are responsive and happens in real time. It’s a nice digital way to do a table touch. | |||||||
| Next to the Notifications tab is one called Insights, that really lets you know how you’re doing with your page. There’s a lot of information on this page, and you can click into any of the categories to see more. The thing I look for the most are Post Reach and Engagements. Post reach is your post got to their screen in any way, via scrolling through a feed or going directly to your page. It means someone definitely saw what you put out there. Post engagement is the next step that they went so far as to comment, like, share or click on your post. The higher these are, the better we’re doing. This view is just the past seven days. |
Insights Overview
You can see more info on specific posts when you change the date range to the past 28 days.
We run ads to promote page likes and boost specific posts on occasion. Please discuss with Kathryn and she will coordinate and budget. If we have a big promotion (ex: Valentine’s Day), putting $$ a day to promote it can help reach wider audiences.
*Note: Photos with more than 20% text can not be promoted and do not reach as far. Always try to use just a photo and fill in text above.