How You Can Use Facebook To Connect With Customers

Talk with your customers on social media, not at them.

Smart restaurant owners know the best place to create, build and maintain a relationship with their customers is right where they spend the most time – on Facebook.

Whether it’s their smartphone, tablet or desktop, you can bet your customers are using Facebook. In fact, of the more than 500 million active Facebook users, more than 50% log in to their accounts every single day.

That’s a whole lot of people checking in to their Facebook accounts on a daily basis.

In this article, we look at how you can use Facebook to connect with your customers to build strong, long-lasting relationships.

Use Facebook Live Video

One of the newest and most promising ways to connect with your customers and build a community is with Facebook Live Video.

With live video, you actually take your restaurant online on Facebook live. You can talk in real time to your audience and even take their questions.

Facebook Live Video enables you to have a live and engaging conversation with your followers. You can even gauge how they like your live broadcast by watching their live reactions roll over the screen.

What might you showcase? You could live stream any of the following:

• Kitchen session with your chef showing how to make a dish
• An event at your restaurant
• An inside look at the inner workings of your restaurant
• A live stream through the eyes of your server – you could engage customers if they are willing
• Take followers on a tour of your specials
• Do a live tour of your shopping trip to a local farmers market

Live video is successful because it gives people an inside look at your restaurant, it’s authentic, and people love watching video. (tweet this)

Your restaurant will benefit from reaching your audience in new and exciting ways. You’ll also have a superb chance at acquiring new followers as they catch on to your live stream.

With Facebook Live Video, you can generate extra excitement for your restaurant.

Before you get started with live video, here are a few tips:

• Make sure that you have a solid community. If you don’t, work to build it first. You can do this by regularly posting content that matters to your followers. Share your story and work to build a relationship with your followers.
• Make a Facebook marketing plan. Decide when you’ll live-stream video and set a plan in motion for promoting it.
• During the live stream, pay attention to your viewers. You can see their questions, comments and reactions. Call them by name as this is a friendly set-up.
• Engage your viewers with interesting, educational and funny information.

Share professional imagery on your Facebook page.

Encourage User-Generated Content

You may spend a lot of time crafting and curating content for your restaurant’s Facebook page. You’ve got a social media planning calendar, and you’ve got posts lined out for the month. If this is the case, great job.

Yet, keeping up with your social media page is a lot of work. It takes patience and dedication to craft engaging Facebook posts on a consistent basis.

You can take some of the work off your shoulders while at the same time connecting with your customers.

How? Encourage your customers to be a part of the conversation.

Not only will this be fun for your customer, but it will draw in new followers as well because Facebook has created a platform where it’s okay to be a voyeur. We can watch what others are doing in safety and even react to it.

Look at these ways you can encourage customers to fill up your restaurant’s Facebook page:

• Run a contest where customers have to post pictures or videos or complete a quiz for entry. The prize could be a gift card or free dinner.
• Have your diners take photos while they’re in your restaurant dining. Then ask them to post it to social media with a specific hashtag. For example, ask them to post their photo with the hashtag #LoveBistro99. Then, you can find the photos and share them on your Facebook page.
• When creating a branded hashtag, make sure no one else is using it, and that it’s easy for your customers to remember. Use it in your posts as well.
• Respond to every question and comment that people post on your page.

Remember that word-of-mouth advertising is still king, yet it has evolved in today’s digital age.

Facebook is the platform for word-of-mouth. You can bet that your potential customers are looking at your reviews and the comments on your Facebook page before deciding to dine with you.

Promote Facebook Check-In

You want people to “check-in” at your restaurant when they’re on the premises. This increases your visibility in the Facebook News Feed. (tweet this)

This is a terrific way to connect with your customers.

Go one step further and set up offers on your page that are shown to your customers once they check-in at your restaurant. Using Facebook Offers, you’ll not only connect with diners but enhance their loyalty as well.

Enhance Your Facebook Page

Make it easy for customers to find your menu. It should, of course, be on your website, but did you know it can be on your Facebook page as well?

It’s easy to add a menu tab to your Facebook page. This is a great way to connect with your customers.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to Facebook, the possibilities for connecting with your customers are endless.

We’re going to leave you with a few more tips for using Facebook to connect with customers:

• Complete your entire Facebook business page profile.
• Add a profile photo and a cover photo. Utilize this space to your advantage by including your logo and a professional, beautiful photograph of your restaurant and your food.
• Write the description for your page. Use this area to tell your story – get creative and keep it interesting. Do include your website address here as well.
• Post at least once a day. Use the Facebook scheduling feature to do this so you don’t have to worry about it when you’re busy.
• Consider allocating some money to Facebook advertising. For as little as $10 per day, you can boost posts, increase your reach and connect with more customers.

As we mentioned earlier, shrewd restaurant owners know they can build and maintain relationships with their customers by meeting them where they are – right on Facebook.

Make today the day you leverage this powerful platform to engage, delight, educate, connect with and reward your customers.

At Restaurant Engine, we build responsive, mobile-friendly restaurant websites that intrigue and tantalize your customers.

Contact us today for your free website consultation. We’d are here to help you stand out in the crowd and stay ahead of your competition with your restaurant website.

Images: Rémi Walle and Brooke Lark