Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Today I want to talk about organic social media. Specifically, I want to give you some quick tips. I want to hammer them home so that we understand the best way to use organic social media so we make the most of it. All of that on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
[00:00:16] There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers anyone who's looking.
[00:00:47] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast dedicated solely to helping you build a more profitable restaurant. Each week I leverage my 25 years in the industry to help you build that more profitable and sustainable sustainable business. But I also work with owners and operators from all over the world in my P3 mastermind program. Now, I talk about this every single week. But if this sounds like you, if you've got a restaurant that's been around for a while, if you make a lot of people happy, if you generate a lot of revenue but struggle to generate a consistent, predictable 20% return to the bottom line every single month, then I want to chat with you. The best way to start a conversation to see if the P3 mastermind is right for you is to set up a call with from my team. You do that by visiting our website restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule we'll get to learn more about you and your restaurant. You'll get to learn more about the program that we run and we see if you're a good fit for that program. That call is absolutely free. There's no pressure to join. It's just a way for us to exchange information to see if it makes sense again. Restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule and yes, that link is in the show notes.
[00:02:03] What's the food cost for your third best selling entree? You don't know. With Margin Edge you could know instantly. Margin Edge is a complete restaurant management software that I like to recommend to all of the P3 members, all the clients I work with. Why? Because it helps them improve profitability. With Margin Edge, you just get to snap pictures of your invoices as they come in and you get real time data in every area of your business. You can see plate costs in real time. You get daily PNLs. Your inventory count sheets are automatically updated. It saves you a ton of time and lets you make informed decisions. So I got a client P3 member gather brewing down outside of San Antonio. They started using Margin Edge a month after they joined my program and within one month of them bringing on Margin Edge, their food costs went from 38% to 28%. It was incredible savings. That's 10 points that dropped straight to the bottom line. There's a reason I recommend Margin Edge to so many of the P3 members. It's because I know it works. If you're interested in learning more or you want to see how Gather brewing went from 38% to 28% food costs, head over to Marginedge.com chip. There's an incredible video there that talks about their story, talks about their journey with the platform. Again, Marginedge.com chip see a really great See a really great story about the folks at Gather Brewing. Go do that now. Of course, that link is in the show notes.
[00:03:30] Now, today's episode's gonna be short and sweet, but packed with very important information. I want you to pay attention to this. If you are the one who manages your social media presence, then you're gonna wanna take notes. If someone else on your team handles this for you, you wanna send this onto them. If you have an agency partner who manages your feeds, you want to send this to them and you want to have a conversation about what we're going to talk about. Now listen very carefully. Today's episode is all about organic, but a full throttle, full integrated social media strategy includes both organic and paid. I want to be very clear when I say this. If you are paying someone to create content, curate content, schedule that content, post it, and then engage with your team, that's great. But you also need them to handle the paid ads. Or you would need to engage someone, an agency, a consultant, a partner who can run paid ads for you. And like we talked about last week, again, episode 3 26, you don't have to spend a lot of money to get started on social media advertising. But meta, specifically Facebook and Instagram, are the most sophisticated advertising platforms ever created. They are sophisticated because of the degree of specificity that you can target. You can target your audience based on demographics, based on location, based on interests. You can target them with incredible granularity.
[00:05:10] But those tools are paid tools. So if you want to make sure that a specific person or a specific kind of person or a specific group of people sees your post, that is not what organic is all about. Okay? So if you're spending all this money to only have an organic presence and sacrificing a paid presence, you are missing the boat on the most powerful advertising platform in the world. Hard stop. Are we clear now, that being said, maintaining a presence on social media, an organic presence, meaning organic. Organic is that you go in, you post a picture or a video, you add a caption and you hit post. That is an organic post, right? Organic posts though are only seen by anywhere between 3 and 5% of your followers and you can't guarantee that it's the followers in your market. For example, I follow hundreds and hundreds of restaurants not only around the country, but all over the world. As you can imagine, there are hundreds of markets that I am not in. So when I see a post from some restaurant in London or some restaurant in Italy or some restaurant in San Diego, I'm not going in for dinner tonight, this weekend, this month, probably not even this year, right? That's just me, right? So when I see a post, I am not the target audience. If you think about using social media as an advertising platform, meaning trying to show your content to people who will become customers, and that's very, very important to understand if you want to reach people who can be customers tonight or this weekend or this month, that's what the paid tools are for.
[00:07:02] Now that being said, what are the organic tools for? I like to think of them in this way.
[00:07:10] Paid social media is a customer acquisition tool.
[00:07:16] Organic social media is a retention tool. So you use the paid tools to reach new customers and to lure them in, persuade them to come in and have a dinner at your restaurant. And you use the organic side as a retention tool to remind people who you are, why they would be interested in you, why they had such a good time, right? To bring them back.
[00:07:49] Almost everyone who is a follower of yours on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok knows your brand, right? They know your brand. They were interested enough to click follow. Many of them are already customers. They have been to your place or frequent your place regularly. For all intents purposes, when we think of the word follower this is from my friend Rev Ciancio, one of the smartest restaurant marketers I know. He's the one who co hosted the P3 Marketing Summit just this past January in South Carolina. He co hosted that with me and he says every time you see the word follower in our industry, I want you to replace it in your mind with the word guest. Almost all of your followers are guests or prospective guests or soon to be guests.
[00:08:33] In Kind is the largest and only dual sided app based marketplace offering low cost capital investment for restaurants paired with exclusive dining rewards for restaurant goers. To date, In Kind has provided over $200 million in capital, giving restaurant operators alternative funding anywhere from $10,000 to $10 million to its over 1 million users. In kind is a free app to pay your restaurant tab and earn rewards while dining out to the over 1800 US restaurant owners who have been funded by In Kind. It's the source of capital that takes a lot of the pain out of starting running and growing their restaurant. Enjoy 15% back at thousands of restaurants and access exclusive dining perks and offers by downloading the In Kind app, you go to app.inkind.com or to see how In Kind can benefit you as a restaurant owner and operator. Restaurant strategy listeners can redeem a special offer by going to In Kind VIP restaurantstrategy. Both those links are in the Show Notes Create a safer, more efficient kitchen and better protect your bottom line with restaurant technologies. Its Total Oil Management solution helps minimize the dangers that come with traditional oil management such as oil burns, spills and slip and fall accidents. The end to end automated Oil Management system delivers filters, monitors and recycles your cooking oil, taking one of the dirtiest jobs out of the kitchen and no upfront cost. Control the kitchen chaos with restaurant technologies and make your kitchen safer while maximizing efficiency. Visit rti inc.com you can email customer care@rti inc.com or call 888-796-4997 to get started. All of those links will be in the Show Notes, so it is a retention tool. You are trying to stay top of mind for them with a couple of exceptions. Now I want to bullet point these all really, really quickly because like I said, I don't want this episode to be very long. When we talk about organic social media, the first point I want you to make, the first point I want you to get is that it is a retention tool. Because only 3 to 5% of your followers see your post. It's a pretty It's a pretty good chance that no new people are gonna see your content. If the content performs well, maybe they'll show it to more of your followers and maybe if it goes viral, then it will go to people who aren't your followers. But that is a rarity. I promise you. It is very, very rare. And if you try to game the system to come up with something very viral, it just won't work. So our organic posting on social media is a retention tool. A very small percentage of our current followers will ever see that post and almost no one else will ever see that post.
[00:11:33] Now, like I said, I'm not telling you that you don't Need a presence. I think you do need to maintain a strong presence on those platforms. Now, don't bother being on all the platforms. Just pick a couple and do them well. Facebook and Instagram should absolutely be there. If you want to do Twitter or X or whatever they call it as your third, fine. If you want to do YouTube as your third, great. If you want to do TikTok as your third, great. But I think, for the most part, do three, and do three really well. Now, when we talk about organic, each of the platforms operate differently. There are things you can do. You can include links on a Facebook post. You can't do that on an Instagram post. So there are things that you can post, like reviews or mentions in press articles. There are things you can post on Facebook like that, that you wouldn't necessarily post on Instagram because you can't include the link. You can't send them to the thing that you want them to read, which would get them excited enough to come in and eat. Right. Meanwhile, Instagram is a much more visual medium. It's turning into a video, an entertainment medium. Right.
[00:12:39] Facebook, you can too, but much more so on Instagram. I don't know why. That's just how people think of it.
[00:12:45] So again, the first point is that organic is about retention. Second point is that very few of your current followers will ever see your post. So almost no one else who doesn't follow you will ever see your post. That becomes really important. The crucial part about a feed is that you're maintaining what I like to call a lookbook, so that if somebody. This is how. What happens often, how people land there, right? They hear about a restaurant, they go, they're talking to a friend, they say, oh, we dined at Restaurant X, Y and Z last night and say, oh, I don't know, Restaurant X, Y and Z. Oh, oh, look it up, look it up. It's gonna. It's really great. I gotta show you. And then what do you do? You take out your phone and you check out Facebook or Instagram or TikTok and you go look at pictures and you scroll through. That is a crucial moment in the customer journey where they hear about a place and they immediately start learning more, researching the place. Your social media feeds can be a very powerful capture point for a prospective consumer in that moment.
[00:13:51] So the feeds need to look great, they need to look on brand, they need to get people excited about a meal there, or excited when you remind them of what a meal there was like. It needs to be very easy to navigate it needs to have a link that's prominent or a link that links to a link tree with multiple.
[00:14:16] With multiple links. Don't send people in a hundred different places. Be really clear about what you want them to do. If they land on your Instagram page, for example, and they're so excited by the content, what do you want them to do next? Usually it's order now or reserve a table. For most restaurants, it's one or the other. That's it.
[00:14:38] Very rarely will it be anything else. Maybe on a new restaurant, if you open up the feeds for the 90 days or six months before you open, maybe it's an email capture, right? Be the first to know when we begin taking reservations. Sign up for our list.
[00:14:55] But usually you want to try to capture reservations or capture orders. That becomes really important. Now, when I talk about the Lookbook, I always talk about thinking in terms of content pillars. Most restaurant feeds need to have five content pillars. Most of them are the following. Food, beverage, the space, the people, and then a wild card, your fifth thing. So maybe that's giving. Maybe your particular restaurant promotes a lot of community events and charity. They donate a lot. Then that would be your fifth thing. Food, beverage, people, space, and charity. Maybe your neighborhood factors prominently into your restaurant. Certainly when I was working at Gotham Bar and Grill, they're in the heart of Greenwich Village. Greenwich Village is a big part of that restaurant's identity. Washington Square park, right down the street, Fifth Avenue, right around the corner, Union Square, two blocks away. It's a prominent piece of their identity. So food, beverage, decor, people, neighborhood. That was their fifth thing. Right. There are all different things that you can do as your fifth wild card. But for the most part, every restaurant's gonna have five content pillars, meaning every single thing that is posted is gonna fall into one or a couple of those five buckets. Now, maybe you have a chef demonstrating a new dish. That's food and people. Right? That makes sense. Hopefully this is clear.
[00:16:25] Every piece of content you post should fit into one of your content pillars. For the most part. I would post, let's say, five times a day on Face. Five times a week. I'm sorry, five times a week on Facebook, five times a week on Instagram. If you're going to do TikTok, you really need consistently. It needs to be every single day or sometimes twice a day. I don't know why, except the quantity there. The frequency needs to ramp up. It's just what those algorithms are looking for at this moment. Consistency. You don't have to go overkill but you do need to be consistent with the quantity, quality and the cadence of your content. Again, just so you're putting your stuff out there, just so the feed changes little by little every day or every other day. You don't have to kill yourself with a whole bunch of stories. You don't have to kill yourself with highlights and all of that.
[00:17:15] Just post consistently to the feed. If you can do a story a day that I find is helpful. One of the things that, again, Rev Ciancio says, post every other day and on the off days, post a story, meaning post Monday to the feed, post Tuesday to the stories, post Wednesday to the feed, post Thursday to the stories. Now that's one way of doing it. One of the things that I've heard is you can post less to the feed, let's say three times a week, but then do a story every single day so that you always pop into the top of someone's Instagram when they log in, so that you're always there at the top of the feed. And I think there's value to that because what we're trying to do when we market, especially restaurants, is stay top of mind. There are different schools of thought here. There is no right, there's no wrong. I would say pick something and run with it. I would say test a couple of different strategies and see what works for you, for your market and your audience, Right? It's not this one size fits all. This is the gospel. This is how to do it. But I am giving you a couple of different ideas of how to do it. So you're going to post with some consistent sort of cadence. You're going to be consistent with the quality with your content pillars. And every piece of content, I want you to remember this. Every piece of organic content should fit into what's called the EDIE model, E D I E. It should educate, demonstrate, inspire or entertain. Every piece of content you post needs to do one of those four things.
[00:18:54] So now there are some rules, right? We talked about the content pillars, we talked about consistency with cadence, consistency of quality. And now we're talking about the ED principle. I didn't make it up. I heard it from somebody who I'm sure heard it from somebody. It just makes good sense. Every piece of content should educate, demonstrate, inspire or entertain. And yes, you better believe it. If it can do more than one at once, cool. There's nothing bad about that, right? So think in terms of the Lookbook. Think in terms of reminding your people, using the organic feeds as a retention tool to Remind them to stay top of mind. Say you had a great time. Remember, don't you want to come back? That's how we should be using them. I don't think we should be running contests. I don't think we should be doing giveaways. I don't think there should be graphics. I think it should be pictures and videos. And if I'm really honest, four out of every five posts right now, this is in the year 2024. Four out of every five posts should be video. Four out of five, five posts should be a reel. So shot vertically and post it as a reel. If I can be absolutely honest, that's what's working right now. Again, test it, play with it when at all possible. Don't build something in Photoshop or Canva, don't put a logo over it, don't put a graphic, don't put text over it. Unless you're building the text within the platform, within TikTok, within Facebook, within Instagram. Those are native to those platforms, then fine, totally cool.
[00:20:35] But otherwise, don't do it. So don't put your logo in the bottom right corner. It looks cheesy. It doesn't work. I know why you did it. So that if it gets shared, no matter who sees it, they see your logo and there's brand recognition. That's not how it works.
[00:20:49] That's how we utilize organic social media. We do not spend all of our marketing budget on an organic social media strategy.
[00:21:00] So now episode 326 last week we talk about a paid strategy, two tactics that when employed together, link up to create a strategy. And now we're talking about the how we do organic. When we talk about organic. Engagement is crucial.
[00:21:18] When somebody comments on your post, you need to comment back. The more comments that appear on a post, both other people's and your own comments, the more comments that appear, the more you will sort of, you'll sort of judge the, the algorithm.
[00:21:36] Somebody comments, you respond, they respond back, somebody else responds to that person.
[00:21:42] Instagram goes, whoa, whoa, people, people really like this. They're engaging with this. There's a conversation going on and they'll show it to more people. That's how you start broadening your audience. That's how you quote, unquote, go viral. It's not that the picture of the cheeseburger is so good that people just want to keep sharing it. And then, you know, Instagram is going to show to more people there's a lot of good looking cheeseburgers on the Internet.
[00:22:07] Just because you got A really beautiful shot that you like doesn't necessarily mean it's going to get out there.
[00:22:12] But when we talk about the engagement piece of this.
[00:22:16] When people post a photo of something from your restaurant, you got to go in and like it. You got to go in and comment on it. When somebody comments on your post, you've got to respond back to them and make sure you do it in a way that prompts further conversation. Don't end the conversation right there. Right, good point. Blah, blah, blah, blah, what else, right? They're gonna take a picture. This, you know, I love this picture. This is the best burger that I've ever had in New York City. Whoa, amazing. You're gonna say, whoa, amazing. Thanks for the huge compliments. Just for our own record, who was in second place and third place, right?
[00:22:51] Because maybe they're gonna name them and tag them and then you can respond again like, whoa, we're in such good company. Like second place, you know, your second place restaurant is one of our favorites. And your third place restaurant, that chef actually used to work here. Or you're gonna talk about it, right? It's a small community. Even a big city is a small community. And if you can keep that beach ball up in the air, so to speak, it's going to be better for your numbers. One of the possible, if you can use user generated content is this content that's created by your diners. They come in, they take a picture, they post it. See if you can share that either to your stories, right? Or ask if you can reshare that to your feed. It just makes good sense, makes them feel good, makes it feel like a lot of people are talking about you, which they are. And it saves you on having to create content. You get some more variety on your feeds. All of this is an important way to create a presence, an organic presence on social media. But it can't be at the detriment or by sacrificing a paid strategy. So right now, if you only have an organic strategy, I'm going to strongly urge you to rethink that. It's important. It is a piece of the puzzle. But it is not more important than paid. It is not more important than Google search ads. It is not more important than having a strong presence on Yelp and Google. My business responding to all those reviews. It's not. It's just not as important. It's not as important as having a great website that's optimized for the thing you want people to do when they visit your website.
[00:24:30] Organic Social media is actually pretty low on the totem pole. You got to have everything in order, but it's pretty low in the totem pole. It's an important thing to keep in mind. So if you're spending a hefty amount on that or if that's the only thing you're spending money on, I'd ask you to rethink that.
[00:24:47] So that's it. Last week's episode 326 and Today episode 328, there's sort of a one, two punch. We're talking all about social media in the year 2024. Hope you guys got some value from this. If you have any questions about this, by all means, reach out to chip close dot com. That's C H I P K L O S E dot com. I answer each and every email that I get. And even now I get a lot, but I still answer each and every one. I love connecting with all of you guys out there. Appreciate you being here every single week. I appreciate you giving your time here because I know there's a lot of great, a lot of great podcasts out there. Appreciate you making this part of your week. Thank you very much and I will see you next time.
