By Ron Stefanski, Contributor

Although we live in an era of digital art, a lot of people still find appeal in hand-lettered chalkboard signs. We come across them every day inside restaurants or on sidewalks – these fun, charming, and rustic signs with funny quotes or mouthwatering menus that showcase a restaurant’s food style and make you stop dead in your tracks. 

These signs are great for attracting the attention of passersby, but you can take it even further and amplify their marketing power by using your restaurant chalkboard signs as a form of social media marketing.

If you want some inspiration for your own signage or chalkboard menu, read on to discover five restaurant chalkboard ideas for social media, as well as a few awesome examples from around the web. 

But first, a quick look at why restaurant chalkboard art is social media-friendly. 

Why Are Chalkboard Paintings so Effective on Social Media?

Chalkboard marketing is a cost-effective way to energize your advertising. It can make your business stand out without breaking the bank. 

And while those signs are great on the sidewalk or in the interior of a restaurant, they are even more effective when used in social media. 

This is because social platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc. are growing in popularity with each passing day. They provide restaurant owners with an easy and affordable way to spread the word about their business – especially if your efforts go viral. 

This type of marketing will generate a lot of free exposure for your brand as your pictures get follows, likes, comments, and shares online. 

Ultimately, you’ll improve your customer traffic, brand engagement, social media status, and meet a range of other business objectives.

5 Restaurant Chalkboard Ideas for Social Media

1. Use Humor to Capture Your Audience’s Attention

If you’re planning to use restaurant chalkboard art as a way to grow your restaurant, but aren’t sure where to begin, humor is a great place to start.

Eye-catching art is the fastest way to get your food hub trending on major social media platforms. And when you add humor, you’ll find it a lot easier to catch the attention of your patrons and promote your brand online. 

For instance, you can share some humorous quotes as shown in the example below seen outside a popular local restaurant:

As an alternative to quips, you might consider inspirational quotes for your chalkboard signs. After all, humor and inspiration can be found even in the smallest of things (as any business owner will tell you). 

You can then share pictures of these chalkboard quotes on your restaurant’s Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, or other similar social network pages.

Pinterest, in particular, is a great place to showcase collections of humorous and inspirational quotes from your restaurant’s chalkboard art. 

Just remember, when using humor, it’s important to ensure that you pick the right tone for your restaurant’s audience and make sure the type of humor you use in your chalkboard art goes over well with the target market you want to attract.

2. Intergrate Your Restaurant Menu into an Omnichannel Marketing Campaign

Another way to showcase your menu using chalkboard are to turn the heads of potential customers and encourage them to order something new. 

There are a ton of other things you can advertise inside your restaurant, including: 

• Standard Menu
• Happy Hour
• Specials/Daily Deal
• Chef’s Special
• Brunch Menu
• Wine/Beer List
• Seasonal / ‘Fresh’ List
• Kid’s Only Menu
• Take-Out/To-Go
• … and much more. 

These chalkboard menus are great marketing tools once you’ve gotten customers inside the store, but they can also be used to great effect on social media and across your digital marketing mix.

As with exterior chalkboard quotes, you can post photos on various social media channels. However, you can also download a wide range of digital chalkboard templates from Pinterest or use graphic design tools to create your own. 

Restaurants can showcase virtual and in-real-life chalkboards on Pinterest by creating specialized boards. One board may include photos of chalkboard quotes and another might highlight menu changes over time.

Additionally, these virtual chalkboard menus can be shared on other social media platforms and integrated into a diverse range of other digital marketing tools as part of an omnichannel digital marketing campaign. 

For example, digitally designed menus shared on Pinterest boards, Facebook business pages, and other social media platforms can be showcased on landing pages and blog articles on your website quickly and easily with most leading website builders.

You can even integrate digital chalkboard content into email marketing campaigns and update your loyal subscribers about daily promotions and specials, weekly menu changes, seasonal offerings, and new wine or beer pairings. 

The key is to use multiple platforms to familiarize loyal customers and yet-to-be patrons with your restaurant brand and culture, as well as the delicious dishes highlighted on your in-real-life and digital chalkboard menus. 

3. Use Chalkboard Art for Unique Calls to Action

Oftentimes, customers walk into a restaurant with no idea what they want to order. However, when they can see beautiful, attractive signage with the house specialty, it makes their decision a little easier.

For example, if your restaurant serves the best burgers in town, you might use chalk paint to show tasty-looking burgers on your restaurant’s sidewalk sign as a way to entice hungry passersby.

You can then share these visually appealing photos of your special items on social media channels to reach even more potential patrons. 

When done right, this type of artwork can be a great marketing strategy and a powerful way to communicate your restaurant branding online.

And this doesn’t have to stop at the menu, either. 

In addition to creating outdoor sidewalk signs, you can build mouthwatering menu boards for your interior to encourage customers to try some of your promotional items as in the example below: 

You can also use chalkboard art to update your customers about tons of other things, such as: 

• Restaurant Welcome: Use chalkboard signs to greet patrons at the entrance.
• Dog-Friendly: Let them know your restaurant welcomes pets.
• Reviews and Ratings: Politely ask your patrons to review your restaurant online.
• Reserved Tables: Place small, custom chalkboard signs on VIP tables. 
• Restroom: Create fun bathroom signs to hang on the doors.
• … the list goes on. 

Basically, you can use chalkboard signs for a lot of things, but the important thing is to always take high-quality pictures of each of your signs so you can use them to expand your marketing campaign on social media. 

For example, you can create Pinterest boards to showcase groups or categories of signs, such as your restroom signs, reserved table signs, pet-friendly signs, etc. 

4. Get Your Customers to Make Their Own Chalkboard Art

Yet another creative way to supercharge your restaurant’s chalkboards marketing strategy is to get your patrons to make their own chalkboard art. 

Encourage customers to create their own art by turning it into a fun contest. These types of challenges are extremely popular on social media and will increase the chances of your pictures going viral.

Not only will you boost customer engagement inside your restaurant, but these mini-DIY projects will also increase engagement on social media.

A simple way to get customers to make their own chalkboard art is to provide them with chalk markers and boards and ask them to unleash their creativity while they wait for their dish. 

You can then hang up these artworks on your walls, in your windows, or use them to decorate tables. 

Take pictures of the best entries and post them on social media. 

Customers will appreciate being able to help shape your restaurant’s image – even if only for one day. In fact, you can think of it as enhanced customer engagement through shared ownership, which is a very powerful strategy to boost loyalty among your patrons.

5. Create TikToks of Patrons Interacting with Your Chalkboard Art

As a restaurant owner, you may find it difficult at first to discover the perfect marketing approach for your business. But, if the people you want to attract hang out on TikTok, then you have a massive marketing opportunity at your fingertips. 

You can create a strong social media marketing strategy from your restaurant chalkboard art by shooting videos of your clients interacting with your chalkboards and then posting them on TikTok. 

These types of chalkboard marketing ideas and DIY projects make a great advertising strategy on video-sharing sites and will help you establish a brand identity while reaching out to your customers in a personal and approachable way.  

Regardless of your business goals, you can tap into the power of TikTok, one of the world’s leading social media websites. 

The platform’s TikTok for Business feature allows you to post content and then use real-time monitoring, smart audience targeting, and various other features to get your content in front of your target demographic and monitor its performance.

You can even create special hashtags for your restaurant chalkboard challenges and incentivize customers to share your hashtag in order to get the word out about your establishment.

Conclusion

Gone are the days when chalkboard art was limited to school art and home DIY projects. Today, smart restaurant owners use chalkboard content, both digital and in-real-life, as a powerful business tool to showcase their brand’s style and bring their restaurant’s exterior (and interior) to life. 

One of the best things about this form of advertising is that it doesn’t require much in terms of monetary investment. Restaurants can substantially cut variable marketing costs while still creating consistently changing and always engaging content.

Chalkboard content can be used outside and inside physical restaurants as well as on social media and a variety of other digital marketing channels as part of an omnichannel marketing campaign.

All you need are a few basics – a chalkboard, liquid or dry chalk markers, and a bit of creativity – and you have a cost-effective way of attracting and engaging with your restaurant’s target customers. 

Which of these 5 chalkboard ideas for restaurant social media marketing will you try first? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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About the Author
Ron Stefanski is a website entrepreneur and marketing professor who has a passion for helping people create and market their own online business.  You can learn more from him by visiting OneHourProfessor.com

You can also connect with him on YouTube or Linkedin.