Last week, I wrote to you about how to get your restaurant started on Pinterest. And I gave you a couple hints at what you should be doing there, too — pinning, engaging, other generic yadda yadda yaddas that you’ve heard a hundred times before.
So this week, I wanted to get specific. Here are 7Â concrete ideas you can take away for a well-rounded, creative Pinterest marketing strategy. You don’t have to do all of these things — cherry-pick a few that work for you, and as you start to see results, fold in a few more.
(Do you like all that food-centric language IÂ sprinkled in?)
(Dash, I did it again.)
How to Use Pinterest for Your Restaurant Marketing
1. Set up ingredient boards.
We’ve all heard the quip that Pinterest if for people planning their wedding and making dinner. Well … it’s kinda true. Engage in the food-porn with beautiful pictures of your own food, going all the way back to the source of the food — the ingredients.
Set up ingredient boards that highlight all the stuff people love about local, wholesome food. Introduce them to your butcher, the local brewery where some of your beer comes from, and anything that promotes the good stuff that makes your meals delicious.
2. Pin recipes.
Pins with recipes get 42% higher clicks than pins without. Share some of your secret sauces (literally or figuratively) — and that includes cocktail recipes, too, not just your delicious food. The more repins you get, the wider your reach on Pinterest grows.
And if you’re nervous sharing a recipe will make patrons recreate your dishes at home, I wouldn’t worry. You’re selling more than just the food; your establishment’s value is in the entire experience. Plus, food you make for yourself is never as good as the food someone else makes for you 😉
To learn how to set up a recipe pin — which is a pretty new feature on Pinterest — read their Rich Pins how-to page.
3. Pin your own YouTube videos.
Did you know Pinterest supports YouTube content?
Stand out from the crowded Pinterest feed with videos — of your chefs preparing meals, your bartenders making cocktails, or special events going on at your restaurant. These videos can showcase your atmosphere, or you can take an educational approach — taking one of those recipes you just pinned and turning it into a how-to video.
4. Set up a group board.
Group boards are a brilliant and totally underused Pinterest feature. Group boards allow you to invite people to pin content to a board you’ve set up, basically giving the green light for your customers to do your marketing for you.
User-generated content (UGC) is important for more than just the efficiency of crowd-sourcing your social media marketing. UGC is actually critical to how millennials — otherwise known as the largest consumer group in history with an annual spending power of over $200 billion — make purchasing decisions. 65% of consumers aged 18-24 use information straight from social media to help them decide where to spend their money, and 8 in 10 say UGC from complete strangers not only influences what they buy, but tells them whether a brand is high quality.
Use Pinterest group boards to help generate some of the critical UGC for your restaurant, and watch the millennials pour in.
5. Organize your boards like your menu.
If you have a large menu or a frequently-changing menu, consider organizing your boards like your menu. It helps pinners visualize what it’s like being in your restaurant, and gives them a one-page view of all you have to offer. Take a look at Chili’s, for an example:
6. Optimize your pins for SEO.
Pinning all this great board content isn’t enough — you’ve got to make it easy for your pins to get found in search, one of the primary ways pinners discover new content. Make sure you optimize your pins for SEO so you can get found in the Pinterest news feed, and in search engines like Google. This means you’re naming your images with relevant keywords that reflect the contents of the image, and using descriptive keywords in your Pin descriptions and board names.
7. Pin at the right times.
Did you know you can optimize your Pinterest visibility based on the time of day you pin and repin content? According to SMTM, you should be pinning at the highest traffic pin times — which are 2PM-4PM (when people are bored at work, I presume?) and 8PM-1AM (when people are sad about going back to work).
Image credit: mkhmarketing
Data credit: HubSpot, BrandonGaille
