10 Instagram and Facebook Marketing Mistakes Costing Hospitality Owners

As a restaurant owner, having an engaging presence on Instagram and Facebook is crucial for attracting new customers and keeping your loyal patrons engaged. However, there are several common mistakes that can hinder your social media marketing efforts and end up costing you potential business. Here are 10 pitfalls to avoid:

10 Biggest Marketing Mistakes

1. Inconsistent Branding:

   Using mismatched logos, colours, fonts or visual styles across your social channels creates an unprofessional, disjointed brand experience.

2. Ignoring Comments & Messages:

   Customers expect timely responses when they reach out. Failing to monitor and respond leaves people feeling ignored and undervalued.

3. Lacking Visually Appealing Content:

   Dull, low-quality photos/videos of your dishes or ambiance won't catch anyone's eye. Invest in quality visuals that make your offerings look mouth-watering.

4. Excessive Self-Promotion:

   Constantly pushing sales and promotions gets tuned out. Balance sales posts with entertaining, relatable, or educational content that provides value.

5. Overlooking Reviews:

   Positive or negative, not responding to reviews on Facebook and Google makes your restaurant seem indifferent. Always acknowledge feedback.

6. Not Optimising for Mobile:

   With most people browsing social on mobile, posts that are illegible, blurry or awkwardly cropped on smartphones hinder engagement.

7. Broadcasting Instead of Engaging:

   Simply broadcasting content won't cut it. Ask questions, run polls, reply to comments to spark community conversations.

8. Neglecting to Use Location Tagging:

   Failing to tag your location and add geographic details means locals won't easily discover your posts and offers.

9. Posting at Low Traffic Times:

   There are optimal days/times when more of your audience is actively browsing social feeds. Schedule posts accordingly.

10. Confined to One Platform:

    While focusing efforts is smart, having no Instagram or Facebook presence cuts out a huge potential customer base. Expanding across multiple social platforms will always help expand your reach.

Avoiding these social media faux pas and creating an engaging, customer-centric presence can pay dividends in bringing in new diners and retaining loyal ones.

Utilising tools and services such as BIGR Social will help you avoid many of these pitfalls, making sure that your content's branding is consistent, you automatically post across multiple platforms and your content is held to high visually appealing standard.