How to Use Video for your Restaurant’s Social Media

Why Videos

Videos are the easiest medium to consume and digest. According to a report by Cisco, 74% of all Internet traffic in 2017 will be video. This can be seen as there has been a significantly huge increase in engagement for YouTube videos. We look at YouTube since they are the leading provider for internet videos today, hitting one billion monthly users in March 2013.

YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. People are actually searching for answers on YouTube and watching an explanatory video to get that value they are searching for.

How are we going to use Video

We suggest that you run your video project as a campaign or a sub brand. As a sub brand, you can talk about the industry and all sorts of other things without passing off as a sales-y brand. So talk about steaks if you sell steaks, and if you do Italian & French fusion cuisine, that’s what you can promote.

You want to use your video platform to build a following, and it’s difficult to start a following if you brand yourself as a company who’s always trying to sell or say ‘come to our restaurant and eat our food!’. In those cases, the responses would typically be ‘meh.’ and they’ll move on.

If you’re able to build a following, because of the type of videos you put out there, then you can drop your ‘come to our restaurant because it has all the things that you love.’ card, and people will be more forgiving and may even actually come because, you have captured them as an audience.

Video is a format. Where you upload and share them will vary. Typically, we suggest putting them natively in YouTube – since that platform is great for their native audience/users. From YouTube, it’s a matter of embedding it on Facebook, Twitter, your blog. One exception is perhaps when you do Instagram videos – in which case, you’ll need a shortened version of whatever you’re doing for that video. Research has shown that consumers who view videos are 1.81x more likely to purchase than non-viewers.

Reveal Recipes

You would want to reveal recipes. There’s this thing about chefs — they’ll reveal the recipes that they invented (more like adapted) to the world. But no one can take over them as the expert of that recipe. In fact, the recipe sometimes picks up the chef’s name, if it’s really unique and good. No one is going to claim “yeah! now I know how to cook Jamie Oliver’s famous salmon and I’m gonna put him out of business”

What is more likely to happen is this: “Wow, his recipes taste really good, he knows his stuff. I’m going to go to his restaurant to get more of this kind of food that I like”

Celebritise the Chef

One of the subtle drops of hints would be to make your chef the star of the video series. Have him or her talk about the fine intricacies of your cuisine genre and the way he or she makes the food.

He can talk about how the food can take different shapes in various forms and applications. For example, preparing an entree series for wedding and events, versus, serving it up as a fine dining dish. Same food, different presentation, assembly etc etc.

Eventually, people will have built the brand equity with that personality. And when they know that this Chef is cooking and serving in your restaurant, they’ll flock there to experience first hand.

Of course, you would want to keep your chef happy, since it would be problematic if they were to leave. This strategy would be great if You are the primary chef and owner of your restaurant, which in fact, a large number of F&B businesses are set up that way.

Who doesn’t know Jamie Oliver? The guy’s done a good job with personal branding. 

Food Reviews

People love food reviews. Shows like Man Vs Food, and a lot of these ‘wandering-hosts-who-go-to-restaurants’ types are essentially food review shows. It’s no different on the web video front.

You can start by reviewing your competitor’s food. But keeping it neutral and avoid condemning them. By being upfront and honest, people will appreciate and see you as a morally strong entity when they realise that you represent another business.

If the audience gets interested in your reviews, they will probe further to find out who you are, who is this personality behind these cool reviews. They’ll eventually realise that you run this restaurant and when they remember your honest, objective and truthful reviews of various kinds of restaurants (even your competitors) they won’t see you as a conniving, money minded, ruthless business.

Summary

Do not neglect video as a viable communication medium to push your brand out. It can get you a lot of traction, if done correctly. You just have to start. There are lots of people who get much better as they grow and refine their processes of creating video content. You shouldn’t expect to start and sound like a million dollar business (even though you might be one).

Your audience numbers will not lie. 100 views on a super polished but inexperienced video creator is not a good stat. But 10,000 views on a slightly roughed but entertaining and engaging video is something to be proud of.

Still not convinced? Go check out Tastemade on YouTube. They’ll get your salivary glands running for sure.