7 Tips for Creating A Restaurant Blog that Boosts Sales
Countless restaurants and diners want to attract more customers. These traffic increases have already become a reality for many establishments, as they’ve already considered reaching more customers with a powerful marketing tool: creating a restaurant blog.
Although it might take a while for a blog to grow (since search engine algorithms can be fickle at times), the good news is that creating a restaurant blog is an excellent opportunity to connect with current and potential guests online. When you do it correctly, a blog can become your most effective restaurant marketing strategy. You can control the message and create content that will resonate with your target customers.
Here are seven things that you need to know about creating a restaurant blog:
Plan And Post Consistently
“Have a plan before you post something,” says Nicole Hicks, a restaurant blogger at Revieweal and OX Essays. “Do your research beforehand, and see what keywords and phrases your customers are using online. Once you’ve generated some ideas on what to post, then post them. And as you post on your blog, be sure to do so in a consistent manner.” You needn’t be an SEO expert to analyze restaurant search trends, either. Many tools like Google Analytics can give you these stats with minimal effort.
Have Appealing Visuals
Your blog must look the part, or else it won’t catch eyes online. Therefore, your blog needs to embrace simplicity in design, so that it doesn’t distract from your writing. If you have an established look or restaurant branding assets (i.e. a company logo), then try and keep your blog consistent with that look.
Good-quality visuals can help you describe your food and dishes in more detail. Plus, good-quality photos can tell great stories about fun events (i.e. birthday parties, special appearances, etc.). And, don’t forget to include photos of your restaurant full of people enjoying themselves. You can apply many of the global principles of effective restaurant website design in making your blog stand out.
Display Recipes
Many people like to search for recipes online. Why not jump on the bandwagon by offering them your restaurant’s recipes?
Offering exciting recipes to users is a great way to create some buzz and bring new patrons into your restaurant. It also creates a sense of transparency and openness with your audience. After all, you’re not hiding your restaurant’s unique recipes, but sharing them with the public. Why not give them a taste of your restaurant by bragging about a fan-favorite cuisine and helping out a potential customer with meal ideas.
Talk About Local Interests
People want to know what goes on in town, especially at or near your neck of the woods. So, if your restaurant’s location tends to have fun concerts or local art displays, these local-specific interests can be a great way to make your restaurant stand out. As you blog about these local happenings, you’re showing that you take pride in your community and want others to join in on it.
Go “Behind The Scenes”
It’s all about transparency nowadays. In other words, people want to see the human “face” of a company. Restaurant social media can provide an invaluable resource in this department, but your blog will have a bit more lasting power.
Therefore, go behind the scenes on your blog too. You might interview some the following to give your audience a glimpse behind the scenes:
- Local farmers
- Independent suppliers
- Coffee roasters
- Bakers
- Chefs
- Bussers
- Dishwashers
Also, show off some of the ways you give back to the community (i.e., participating in charity drives). These remarkable stories can show that your company is human and that your restaurant cares about the city.
Educate Users
“Ultimately, users will go to you for advice or tips,” says Walter Lavelle, a writer at Assignment Service and Boomessays. “And in the food industry, users will look for recipes, cooking tips, etc. Therefore, establish yourself as a food authority, with your blog as the central hub for food content. Your main goal should be to not only you’re your visitors a sense of the atmosphere and personality, but also to educate them about your establishment before they visit so they’re already familiar with the place as they walk through the door. This [content] helps you establish a relationship with potential customers.”
Keep In Mind SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the work you must to for your blog to “rank” in online listings when someone searches keywords relevant to your blog or articles. The higher you rank, the more relevant the search engine has “determined” your content is to the user. Therefore, search engines rank sites higher on the first few pages, deeming them “higher quality” or “more relevant” listings than those further down the list.
If you want to show up on top, use keywords naturally — don’t try to force keywords to work for you to “cheat” the algorithm. These increasingly-sophisticated systems use “web crawlers” to continually analyze the internet’s entirety and penalize websites that “stuff” irrelevant keywords, removing it from searches entirely. Think of keywords and phrases that people are searching, and see if whether or not those words and phrases are relevant to your content.
It’s also important to remember that the search engine landscape is fluid, and ranking usually isn’t immediate. There aren’t any shortcuts, though! Think of your blog content in the way you would a garden. You won’t see an immediate yield, but if you do the work carefully and consistently, the results will follow.
Creating a Restaurant Blog — Conclusion
So, want to create more buzz for your restaurant? Then, look to blogging, a powerful marketing tool that lets you talk about your company, the food, your workforce, and your community. In this way, you’ll not only boost restaurant sales but also have more customers flocking to your establishment.
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About the Author
Katherine Rundell writes at Custom Essay and BigAssignments. She is also a blogger at Top assignment writing services in Western Australia. As a writer, she specializes in blogging.
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