Building your social media reputation comes in a lot of shapes and sizes. Here Tom McNeeney from The Oxford in Rochdale shares his tips for creating online success.
Facebook, obviously. Instagram, sure thing. Twitter, in it’s twilight years? TikTok, surely not? Where do we draw the line and what’s the best way to maximise the different platforms to their full advantage for your business? Knowing what to post and where can be half the battle, as what works for the Facebook crowd could well tank on Instagram. Are your Instagram stories too good to disappear after a day? Or is there any point keeping your Twitter going?
Now, I’m lucky as I enjoy it, but for many pubs, socials are something offloaded to one of the kids or posted once you’ve finally put your feet up – long after your audience has called it a night. But however you use it, the world’s biggest free advertising opportunity is available at the end of your thumbs – and you need to be making the most of it.
Tailoring our content by platform has given us the ability to appeal to different markets all at once. Our food photos make their way onto Instagram, while our wordier posts make up the backbone of Facebook. Why? Well, look at how you personally use each of these apps. Facebook is for information, however it’s dressed up: people complaining about roadworks, links to news articles, the hotbed of the world’s gossip, it’s the home of lengthy posts, rants and oversharing. So, approach your posts in the same way.
Facebook has the longest time spent per post, so use this to your advantage, fewer photos – more information. A weekly round-up, a post about your new menu, a moment of appreciation for the staff – whatever it is make it a little more of a read with one or two good photos attached and your followers will find themselves engaging more with you because you’re using the app as a business, the way you’d use it as a customer.
Likewise, when we find ourselves scrolling mindlessly through Instagram, we’re looking for images not necessarily the words. Good quality, regular images should be the backbone of your Instagram. You don’t need to have a massive outlay to start creating eye-catching media. Anyone with a smartphone can make the kind of content 10 years ago you’d be paying a photographer to capture for you – check my tips below:
- Find somewhere with good natural light to be your designated photo spot. Not having to think about where you’ll take photos saves a lot of time.
- Always take a video with each photo, just a few seconds or live photos will do this for you, I find having a bank of small bits of video gives me loads of content to draw from when I’m making reels or whatever.
- Remember what time you’re posting, you want to be getting your content out there when your audience is at is biggest, schedule your posts or write a few up in your notes ready to post in seconds.
- Change your habits. Tweets and Instagram stories take seconds and have great engagement, so while you’re waiting for the kettle, doing your tills, hell, when you’re on the toilet, rather than scrolling get productive!
Don’t be too embarrassed to ask a younger member of the team for some pointers on good photography – we did it years ago and we wouldn’t have half the skills we have now if we were too proud to keep learning. We’ve always had great success giving a real human element online to what we do here, in the first few years of our decade at The Oxford the whole Team McNeeney brand came into its own on Twitter – a constant stream of consciousness, great photos of food and behind the scenes, mixed with our thoughts and frustrations, dotted with a lot of dry humour, all gave the pub’s account an almost cult-like local following.
In recent years we’ve found the Story feature on Instagram to be the spiritual successor to this. It lasts 24 hours, it feels very engaging, it’s quick and feels less faff than putting up posts with comments all the time. We’re never going to fully phase out the Twitter account, but it certainly feels like at this point the two audiences are merging a little more. If you don’t have the time, then focus on doing one really well. TikTok is a difficult one for me because at the age of 33, it makes me feel old, but there’s a danger to ignoring such a huge slice of your market. It’s got huge reach and the viral capability of this platform seems to leave the others in the dirt currently. Going viral isn’t the goal here, getting noticed is. Socials are always hard to get right straight out the gate without any expert help and if you just want instant results, there isn’t going to be a quick fix.
Paying Instagram stars to promote your pub might seem like a great idea at the time, but will the reality live up to the expectation? And do we want a pub full of posers who are only here ’till the next big thing comes along? Online growth has always been attributed to good, regular content, simple as that. Where there are flashes in the pan, that will build your following overnight – but 700 followers all within 10 miles of your front door is much better than half a million all over the world. The bottom line is, always look at how you use each of these platforms as an end user and just work backwards. There’s not a whole heap more to it than that. We read more on Facebook, we laugh more on Twitter and when it comes to Instagram and TikTok, quality of content is king. Good luck out there.
