Coming up with ideas for your restaurant blog can be a challenge. Focus on culture: What makes your restaurant special? What do your customers love about it, and why do they keep coming back?
Ready to keep your customers coming back for your delicious meals? Here's a quick list of restaurant blog, content, and newsletter ideas. These will help you stay connected with your restaurant customers after they have eaten their fill:
The Top Ten:
- Drink of the week recipe
- Daily/ weekly recipe
- How to cook ________
- Chef interviews
- Owner interviews
- Kitchen confidential
- Holiday specials
- Menu changes
- Sale / specials
- Birthday deals
- Ingredient spotlight
- Corporate events
- Functions
- How to prepare videos
- Step by step recipe photos
- Menu item image posts
- Local farm spotlight
- Vitamins in meals served
- Calories in meals served
- Cooking classes
- Education
- Videos
- Staff bios
- Staff favorite picks
- Testimonials
- Answers to common questions
- How to fix a “ruined” meal
- Patron spotlight
- Seasonal trends
- Promote food festivals and events
- Food photos!
- Happy customers with food posts
- Loyalty programs
- Link to Yelp reviews and testimonials
- Link to your Google + account
- History of ______ food
- Create a brand menu item its own social media account
- This week in……
- Memes
- Food pairings
- Drink pairings
- Restaurant history
If you're looking for more restaurant blog, content, and newsletter ideas, check out these posts from Business2Community and Toast.
Your Restaurant Blog and Social Media
Make sure you have a plan for pushing out your content across multiple social media platforms. Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, Instagram, and YouTube can all be beneficial.
As a restaurant, social media should be a major part of your digital marketing strategy. However, you can't leverage social media without content. Use a mix of curated content (articles you find online) and your own content.
Plus, don't forget to complete your restaurant profiles on review sites such as Yelp, Zomato (previously Urbanspoon), Zagat, Gayot, OpenTable, Yellow Pages, The Infatuation, Google, TripAdvisor, Angie's List, FourSquare and the Better Business Bureau to help drive in more local traffic.
The idea is to keep your followers engaged so your restaurant stays on their mind. Once they're ready to go out to dine, they may remember all the interesting things they read on your blog.