Marketing is necessary to stand out and become one of the best restaurants in your area and beyond. But, to make it big, you usually need a big marketing budget to help increase visibility and attract new customers.
However, there are a few marketing techniques that are not only free but also incredibly useful for promoting your restaurant. In this article, we will focus on one of them: user-generated content for restaurants.
We’ll show you how to recognize user-generated content, how to encourage it, and how to utilize it to your advantage.
What is user-generated content?
User-generated content is media (images, videos, written words) that people create about your business for free. Compared to influencer content that you have to pay for, user-generated content is created by clients voluntarily.
Read more: Restaurant Influencer Marketing Guide: Tips for a Successful Collaboration
Where you can find user-generated content
There are a variety of platforms where clients create user-generated content for restaurants. Here are the most popular and the type of content to look for:
- Review sites: platforms like Google, TripAdvisor, and Yelp are a treasure-trove filled with positive reviews you can use to promote your business. Remember to always ask for permission when you want to share a quote from the review on your website or social media;
- Social media: depending on the platform, you will find: Facebook – positive reviews, images, and videos where your restaurant is featured; Instagram – images, reels, and stories, in which your restaurant is tagged, TikTok – videos in which your restaurant is mentioned;
- Blogs: while not as popular nowadays, there are still food bloggers out there who like to share their opinions on restaurants;
- YouTube: some content creators like to review restaurants unpaid, and your restaurant may be featured in one of the videos.
The benefits of UGC for restaurants
You should make it a marketing goal for your restaurant to encourage user-generated content because it has numerous benefits for your business, such as:
- Increased foot traffic: customers become brand ambassadors for your restaurant and encourage their friends and followers to visit you;
- More new customers: 79% of consumers say that user-generated content impacts their purchasing decisions. The more free publicity from authentic clients, the bigger the number of new customers;
- Free content for your social media platforms: to be noticed on social media, you have to post very often. But it can be hard to come up with entertaining posts that will persuade people to order. You can incorporate user-generated content for restaurants in your social media strategy to convince potential customers you are worth a visit;
Read more: 9 Tips on How to Create the Best Restaurant Social Media Campaigns
How to encourage user-generated content
Some people create content about restaurants on their own, but some need a little encouragement to get the word out about your business. Check out these tips on how to encourage user-generated content for restaurants:
Make your dishes and restaurant picture-perfect
In order for you to be able to share user-generated content and use it for your own goals, you need to convince people to create it. To put it simply: you need to give your customers something worth taking a picture of and sharing online.
To inspire your restaurant’s customers to create content you can later use, you could:
- Make your dishes look irresistible: pay special attention to the appearance of the dishes you’re serving. Moreover, the table décor can also shine to encourage people to take photos. For example, candles and flowers would look great beside a well-plated dish;
- Create photo-ops: set up a “picture” area with a beautiful space in a corner of your restaurant or even outside. Ensure your restaurant’s name and logo are clearly visible in the background for maximum visibility.
If you give them something beautiful, they’ll capture it with their phones and cameras for sure!
Provide effective calls to action
To ensure your happy customers share their pictures, you can simply ask them to! Effective calls to action are one of the best ways to inspire your customers and have them share their positive experiences with your restaurant. Try some of these:
- What’s your favorite dish at our restaurant? Share your picture!
- Having a nice time at our restaurant? Let everyone know!
- What will you treat yourself with at our restaurant? Make sure to share.
Once your customers start sharing, you can start using their pictures. It’s great advertisement, but the best part is that “because it comes from a real person, it doesn’t necessarily feel promotional”, as pointed out by Huffington Post.
Read more: 100+ Restaurant Social Media Post Captions That Will Attract Customers
Organize contests & giveaways
If you want to up your UGC game and attract new followers on social media as well as new customers to your restaurant, a photo contest or giveaway are the way to go. Kick off a photo contest for your customers and make sure to set up some clear rules:
- post a picture taken at your restaurant
- follow your restaurant’s page
- use specific hashtags
- tag two friends and ask them to follow the page as well
Then, decide how you’re going to choose the winner and what’s the reward. For example, the winner could be the picture with the most likes, one selected randomly, or the one you find to be most beautiful.
The reward could be a dinner for two, a special catering for a party, or a discount coupon code for a big online order.
Here’s how you can easily generate personalized coupon codes for your contests or giveaways:
“The type of user content generated as a part of a competition is extremely effective for your traffic, engagement, and overall popularity on social media,” says Christopher K. Mercer, digital entrepreneur and founder of Citatior.
People will get to see how other people have enjoyed their time at your restaurant and they’ll want to join the party.
Read more: 20 Restaurant Contest Ideas That Will Delight Your Customers
How to take advantage of user-generated content for restaurants
When you get a lot of UGC, take a moment to enjoy your clients’ appreciation and rejoice in the fact that many people appreciate the work you put into creating great dishes and offering an irreproachable customer experience.
After that, it is time to put the UGC to work! Follow these tips to get more customers:
Repost UGC on social media
You can kick it all off by using social media as one of the best platforms for providing quality content and connecting directly to your customers. To master the social media game, cover the following:
Hashtags: Create unique restaurant hashtags and invite your customers to use them. This way, you’ll be able to see and track down all the user-generated pictures posted on social media.
Repost: Once you get ahold of amazing customer photos or videos made at your restaurant, repost them. It will be beneficial on multiple levels:
- The customer who’s the author will feel special;
- Other people will see this UGC and wish to visit your restaurant;
- You’ll inspire other customers to follow the example and maybe be portrayed on your official social media accounts.
“Reposts are not just a way of advertising your brand. It’s a way of telling your customers they are important to you, and their opinion matters” says Amanda Sparks, head of the marketing department at Essay Supply.
Create website galleries
If you want to have a whole section of UGC and update it regularly, you can create a special place for it on your website.
Just like when you’re creating an eCommerce site, you need a rich image gallery for your products.If you want to advertise your restaurant website, you need appealing photos of your food and ambiance:
- Set up a Gallery filled with images of satisfied customers along with their original comments;
- In addition, invite your website visitors to send you their pictures directly to your email address and tell you what is it that they like about your restaurant so much.
This will help you build up a serious UGC gallery, filled with inspiring images made by actual customers.
Even though user-generated content is made by other users, you still need to make sure the content is accurately written and mistake-free.
Double-check everything you write using tools and services such as:
If you have trouble proofreading or editing, Flashessay.com or Hemingway can be helpful, so give them a try.
Final words
User-generated content for restaurants can work wonders to promote your business. It can help you seem more trustworthy, relatable, and attractive to people who’ve never been your customer. Moreover, it inspires people to visit your place and try your food.
Therefore, there’s no reason for you not to use your clients as brand ambassadors. Nowadays, using user-generated content for restaurant websites is the best type of free publicity out there.
This article is a guest post.
By Natalie Andersen
