In today's digital age, virtually everything is present online. From your most preferred bakeries and coffee shops, to their renowned recipes, you can discover just anything! This easy access to everything online makes it essential for food brands to be present on social media.
According to a Cornell University study, 59 percent of chain restaurants and 79 percent of independent restaurants use social media. Although a massive chunk of bakeries are present on social, many of them struggle to figure out ways to successfully increase brand awareness.
Every day we hear how significant is it to have a successful social media marketing strategy for the bakery business, restaurants and coffee shops; yet many business owners are worried about missing out on big deals and pushing customers away with their cold social media presence.
If same is the case with you, I have some good news! This article is for you.
"Successful social media marketing is like baking - you need to understand the fundamentals, have the right baking tools, know the right ingredients, and have the confidence to follow a recipe with a dash of creativity"
This article is a go-to guide for brands looking to get started on social media, develop an effective online strategy, or spice up their current social media to drive business and brand reputation. In this guide to social media for bakeries, restaurants and coffee shops, we'll talk about:
- Why does every bakery business need to be on social media?
- Setting up your profiles for success
- Effective social networks for a bakery business
- Create a social media posting strategy for your bakery
- Choose great images to post on social media
- Listening and engaging with the audience
- Post ideas for your local bakery
- Analyzing all of your work
Click here to download infographic.
Now let's get cooking!
Why does every bakery business need to be on social media?
If you’re not active on social media, you’re missing out on a large customer base. Social media is an easy way to acquire customers. According to a research, 61% of people find out about restaurants, bakeries, and other food stores through social media. Only second to word of mouth or recommendation from peers.
Social media marketing, in recent years, has turned into an inherent part of the marketing strategy for bakery business and all restaurants— big and small.
So, how do you market your bakery on social media?
Set up your profiles for success
Your profile is the first thing that people come across when they search for your bakery on social media. Thus, ensure creating a perfect profile with accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date information like your location, business hours, and contact details. In addition to this, you can also include information like your website, offers, or deals, etc. depending on the social network. The fewer clicks it takes to find out about your bakery, the better.
For instance,
- Camelia bakery uses the limited Instagram bio space to speak directly to their customers. All information that is required to reach out to them, such as their location, e-mail address, and website URL is easily accessible on their Instagram profile.
- Magnolia Bakery has also cleverly incorporated their specialties and multiple locations along with their website URL into their Twitter bio.
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While Instagram and Twitter provide a limited set of words to include in the profile bio, Facebook, on the other hand, allows you to input information including opening hours, address, messaging options and popular times to visit. Not only this, Facebook provides you with various other advantages too:
- Allows you to add a 'Book Now' button: This would help you convert curious visitors into confirmed bookings
- You can upload your menu: By adding a menu to your Facebook Page, it becomes easy and convenient for existing and new customers to view what you offer
- Allow recommendations and reviews: Diners prefer to go to a spot that has a reputation as well as good ratings. An appropriate Facebook marketing plan for bakeries help you gain these ratings and reviews. And most importantly, have a direct conversation with your current and potential customers
Read more about reviews: Outsmart Fake Negative Reviews On Google My Business & How To Spot A Fake Review? 5 Tips And Tricks
- Allow you to set up multiple locations: While setting up multiple online locations could be troublesome initially, a huge advantage is that every time your potential customer triggers a search for your bakery or restaurant, your outlet that's closest to them will spring up.
Effective social networks for a bakery business
Social media marketing for a bakery is an great way to generate brand awareness and online reputation. As a bakery, it is essential to be available on all major social media channels that empowers you to share images that are the heart and soul of your bakery!
Google My Business
Google My Business is especially crucial when it comes to social media marketing for local businesses like bakeries. It is a free online tool that enables business owners to mark their business on Google Maps, permit photographs of that business to be labeled through GPS information and above all, it's what empowers your clients to utilize Google reviews.
The first thing anyone does when they want to explore a new food place is either ask their friends for recommendations, or pull it up on Google and look at the reviews. A Google My Business listing would help improve your stores Google search rankings – where your business shows up in the list of a Google search.
"Statusbrew now allows you to monitor Google Reviews for your business. All you need to do is connect your Google My Business profile to Statusbrew account and start replying to the users' reviews directly from within the Statusbrew app."
Related: Check out our blog on 7 Key Ways To Optimize Google My Business Listing For Business.
Instagram and Pinterest
When it comes to social media, Instagram and Pinterest are some great platforms to showcase all the potential your brand beholds. Both are massively image-driven platforms — perhaps the most popular with bakeries and restaurants — and with a digitally savvy dining audience, both these tools are fantastic for bakeries.
Posting GREAT photos is an unsaid prerequisite of these platforms which will help your bakery business attract more eyeballs, collaborate with influencers, effectively engage with your online community, and eventually make more money!
According to the Pew Research Center, Facebook remains by far the most popular social media site. Therefore, you absolutely need a Facebook page for your bakery. Ensure to translate your brand identity through the page, maintain a consistent brand voice in your posts, and become familiar with the different options for posting. Provide value to your fans by posting useful information, tips, discounts, and special promotions.
Lastly, explore Facebook paid advertising. This can be hugely successful for your bakery.
"Using Statusbrew, you can directly schedule Ads for Facebook, boost published posts, and track all the comments and engagement for your ads."
Twitter is one of the most popular platforms and is ideal for all sorts of compact posts that customers will appreciate. You can use Twitter to create:
- Fun and simple polls on potential new creations; Twitter polls are a great way to get feedback plus more visibility.
- Interactive tweets asking questions. The first person to get the answer correctly shall receive a sample or discount.
- Announce new products with a short yet detailed description.
- Tweets offering exclusive discount codes.
Related: If you still have doubts on using Twitter for your bakery! Read on this guide on 10 Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Use Twitter
Create a social media posting strategy for your bakery
And stick to it! Yes, you read it right.
There is nothing worse than a customer looking at your social media pages and finding that you haven't posted in months! The newsfeed moves really quickly, so you have to be visually active there if you want to stay relevant in your customer's mind. Just as your bakery produces fresh products daily, ensure that you have a posting schedule that you and your team can maintain and consistently give your audience a reminder about your presence.
Pro Tip - Design the social media posts for a month in advance and bulk schedule all of them at once using a social media publishing and scheduling tool like Statusbrew. Doing this will help you efficiently deliver all your social media content at the best posting times.
Choose great images to post on social media
Posting photos consistently and regularly will remind consumers to order that new flavor of cupcake and will get them through the door. But watch out, the quality of your photos and videos reflect the quality of the goods to the online customer, so make sure the photos are top-notch.
"Social media marketing for bakeries lives and dies by the quality of their photos."
So never compromise on the quality of visuals you use.
- Select 6 high-resolution images showing the great variety that your bakery offers
- Use design tools and editors to add a spark to them. Whether you have a single person handling social media marketing for your bakery or a team of experts, Canva is the right tool for you as it promotes collaboration between all team members and helps make the design creation process quicker and easier
- The images should be of the best size for best appearance on different social media networks. If you need more information on image sizes, check out our complete guide on social media image sizes and walkthrough
Listening and engaging with the audience
Social media is a fantastic place to learn from your customers. Have you ever wondered if your customers even like your latest cupcake or bread? Or are they looking for a new flavor or frosting?
Just listen to the conversations and ask them! This is the key.
Look for relevant hashtags or keywords to find new conversations around your bakery and respond to them thoughtfully so that your customers know you are listening to their suggestions and you care!
This is how you can capture people’s interest, connect with your loyal customers, and build online communities.
Pro Tip: Begin collaborating with your team, listening to what people are saying about your brand and replying to DMs, Mentions, and Comments from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google My Business in real time directly from within Statusbrew.
Social Media post ideas for your local bakery
With all the mixing, baking and frosting you have to do, chances are you don’t have enough time to think about what you’re going to post on your social media channels. Don't worry; we've compiled a few impressive ways in which you can add a little spark in your posts, engage with the audience and keep your social pages fresh and exciting.
- Post a good looking picture of a donut, a cupcake, or a macron. Have your social media fans guess the flavor!
- Give people a sneak peek of some new bakery products and ask them to drop by for a quick baking class. Help them plan their visit by informing them of your work hours and days.
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Go live and take your followers behind the scenes! Show them how you celebrate your work, reveal your love for your team, and even post a mistake you commit. Doing this will help you build trust, spark relationships and grow deep connections with your prospects.
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If you are looking to drive immediate action or boost your sales through social media posts – be creative, create urgency, and make people take a decision they might otherwise postpone. Magnolia Bakery has been doing just that and doing it right!
For instance, you can post to promote a special limited-time offer or a giveaway.
Pro tip - You could add a call-to-action trigger in your posts that encourages yourcustomers to drop a comment tagging a friend for a 15% discount on their walk-in orders.
But, you are a bakery which has more than one social media pages to pay attention to. How do you manage the inflow of such a huge number of customer comments?
Luckily, Statusbrew's Social Inbox makes the customer service experience on social media a fun job by helping you manage incoming messages from all your social networks in one location.
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Creating tutorial videos is another way to keep your audience engaged and interested! Post a video for simple cake decoration tricks or ways to make the easiest strawberry shortcake! This will encourage your audience to visit you more often to see what’s new or what else they can learn!
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Don’t forget the special days! They can mean big social interaction for your bakery. Create an engaging social media post, share your excitement, and provide people with a link to directly opt for reservations. Nothing cab work better than this to boost your sales in a short period of time!
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I'd also recommend you to create a bakery-specific hashtag for platforms like Instagram and Twitter and ask customers to use it in their social media posts. Not only does this encourage engagement, but it will help you directly source quality content from your customers (also known as User Generated Content) for your social media.
Additional tips:
- If a special business milestone like work anniversary, inauguration of a new restaurant outlet is coming up, tell people to come and celebrate with you – especially if you’re serving a special menu and handing out free samples!
- Interact with your audience and ask for their suggestions on social media.
Analyzing all of your work
So you've worked enough on creating content, responding to reviews, and engaging with your audience, now is the time to understand what’s actually working for your bakery!
All the effort you've put on marketing your business on social media mean little without data to back it all up. Therefore, it is essential to measure your progress on social media and then tweak social media strategy for your business accordingly for better results.
Statusbrew enables you to connect all your social media profiles like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google My Business, and LinkedIn and access in-depth statistics for each of them. Statusbrew's social media reporting would help your bakery boost its social media strategy across all the crucial marketing steps by helping you analyze essential insights corresponding to your posting time, audience engagement and demographics. You can create customized reports for everything that is important to be tracked -- from sent message performance, to audience changes, to engagement!
Infographic
We've created a detailed infographic on social media post ideas for your local bakery.
*Found these tips interesting? We'd love to have you try Statusbrew for your brand or even for your personal use. Just head on to Statusbrew and start a free 14-day trial.
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