Behind almost every successful restaurant is a solid online marketing strategy. One of the most important parts of every online marketing strategy is to setup a social media campaign for your restaurant. There are several social media platforms that restaurant owners should being paying attention to including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and others. Today we’ll be talking about Facebook in particular and how to set up and optimize your restaurant’s business page.
6 Steps To Set Up A Facebook Page For Your Restaurant
Follow these steps to set up and optimize a Facebook page for your restaurant. In doing so, you’ll be opening up your restaurant to a whole new set of customers.
Step 1: Sign Up For Facebook
The first step is to sign up for a Facebook account if you don’t already have one (if you do then you may skip this step). Go to Facebook and create yourself a personal account. You must use your personal account to set up a business page on Facebook. Enter your first and last name, email address, password and birthday then click ‘Sign Up’ to continue.
Step 2: Create A New Page
Once you have signed up you are now ready to create your restaurants Facebook business page. Click ‘Create Page‘ on the left side of the dashboard to begin. Select ‘Local Business or Place’ if you have a physical location and fill in your restaurants name, address and phone number to continue.
Step 3: Fill Out Your Restaurants Information
Now you can set up your page by adding categories for your restaurant, a description and your website link. At this step, you can also choose to ad your Facebook profile picture and choose your target audience. Select ‘Save Info’ to continue. You do have the option to skip this step should you want to add this information to your page at a later time. Be as detailed as possible and make sure to include all of the information that your customers may be looking for.
Step 4: Design Your Page
The two main ways to design your page are to add a profile picture and a cover photo. Facebook profile pictures are shown at 160 x 160 pixels, however you should be uploading an image that is 180 x 180 pixels and Facebook will then resize it. Your Facebook cover photo, the large one, should be 828 x 315 pixels. Use these images to showcase your restaurant, logo and food in the best way possible. Facebook does periodically change the style and dimensions of page, to keep yourself up to date you may want to checkout the Sizes and Dimensions page.
You can also add customized tabs to your restaurants Facebook page to show other information, Twitter/Instagram feeds, specials or hold contests. Checkout the Tab Tutorial by Facebook to learn how to set up a tab for your page.
Step 5: Choose A Username
Under your restaurant’s profile picture and name you will see a link that says “Create Page @Username”. If you don’t see this, your page may not be qualified to have a username or it may not have enough likes yet.
Click the link and choose a username for your page. Ideally, your username will be your restaurant’s name as long as it isn’t already taken. If it is taken, try adding your city/town to the end of it.
This username will be used as a custom URL for your Facebook page. It also let’s people find your restaurant on Facebook much easier.
Step 6: Start Updating
Begin updating your page with fun and relevant information about you and your restaurant. This can be anything from specials, new menu items, chef bios or anything that you believe your customers and potential customers may find interesting. Use original images and link back to your website as often as possible. Once you get enough likes on your page you will be able to see analytics of each of your posts including how many people saw it and how many clicks it received.
One post a day is usually enough depending on the size of your following. You don’t need to overwhelm people with too much as they may decide to unlike your page if they get annoyed.
See what your competitors are doing and try to replicate what is successful. Most importantly, have fun with it and be real. Your customers will respect you more if you’re casual and open.
