The competition in the restaurant business is fierce. If you are a restaurant owner, in order to keep up with all the other restaurants out there, you have to be more technology savvy than in the old days, which includes being aware of amazing social media marketing tips for restaurants. Your online presence through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram needs to be top notch and trending.

Now more than ever, people before they visit your restaurant are going to want to check it out online. They look to well kept social media pages that routinely are updated with the latest specials and events at your restaurant. You can’t just blindly post your menu and drink specials on your website. It has to be more entertaining than that.

Keeping a fickle crowd engaged can be difficult sometimes when there are just so many dining choices out there. This is especially true in metropolitan areas where the big city lifestyle means dining out on a regular basis, at least a few times per week. Keep ahead of the pack with social media marketing that stand out above the rest of those in your industry. Here are 10 social media marketing tips for restaurants that will help bring in the droves of customers.

Tip #1: Update Often

This may seem like common sense, but many restaurants don’t update their social media pages enough. There are always things about your establishment that you can promote, even if your menu doesn’t change at all, or everything is fairly status quo. Find things that are new and exciting about your restaurant to post often. There isn’t any point to advertising or using ppc methods (pay-per-click), if nothing changes about your website or social media pages. Keep it fresh with new updates on a daily basis if possible, or a few times a week at the very least.

Tip #2: Use Inviting Images

Pictures of food are geared towards making someone’s mouth water. Don’t you just immediately want pizza when you see a picture of a cheesy deep-dish pie strait from the best of Chicago’s restaurants? Make sure that when you post on social media, you also use high quality personalized images that are professionally taken of your food. You want people to see the picture, and instantly want to come into your restaurant to order that dish. Making people crave your food starts with perfect pictures. Instagram is one of the best social media places to highlight extraordinary pictures of your meals that will keep diners coming back to look at more fantastic food. Don’t under estimate the power of killer food porn to draw people into your world of food.

Tip #3 : Giveaways and Offers Do Wonders

People just love to win stuff. It seems to be part of our DNA. So capitalize on that fact by offering specials, and giveaways often on your social media pages. It can be as simple on Twitter as asking customers to “retweet to win.” Then you can randomly pick out of those that have retweeted your post to win something. Free dinners, a cocktail or two, and even cool t-shirts are prizes that people would like to win.

Tip #4: Geographically Target Your Facebook Ads

This works very well in favor of restaurants. Facebook lets you geographically target your customers with ads for a specific area. It’s easier to get new “likes” that way so you can draw customers into your restaurant. You can tag your posts by location to get the word out about your restaurant locally.

Tip #5: Use Hashtags That Are Trending For Twitter

Each day Twitter posts trending hashtags that change often. Keep up with what exactly is trending to see if you can #tie-in to whatever is most popular. A great one to utilize are some that go along with the days of the week, like “#ThursdayThoughts” or “#TuesdayMotivation.” So for example, if you want to promote your taco night on Thursday, you could tweet, “Are you craving tacos, right now? #ThursdayThoughts #NeedTacos.

Tip #6: Show Your Personality

That means make your “tweets” and posts personal about your restaurant. Highlight certain stellar employees you have with photos and compliments. It gives your place a more human touch, so people will be looking for that amazing bartender, “Kelly” who makes the best Hurricanes this side of New Orleans, for example.

Tip #7: Include Links To Your Homepage

With any post on Facebook, or other social media page, you want to link back to your homepage. So whether you are promoting “half-price wine” night each Wednesday, you want to link it to your wine menu page as a tie-in.

Or if you are posting a picture of the latest dessert your sensational pastry chef has whipped up then link back to the page with the entire menu of desserts you offer.

On a side note, make sure your website is up-to-date and loads quickly. People will not stay on a page that takes forever to load, so keeping your website advanced will prevent that. It’s estimated that 47 percent of consumers want a webpage to load in 2 seconds or less. If they have to wait over 3 seconds, they will navigate elsewhere.

Tip #8: Tweet At The Right Times

If you are open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner then you want to “tweet” out your specials right before those important times of day. That way if the time is 11 am, it’s about an hour before the lunch rush, so those people on Twitter will see a “tweet” about your restaurant and naturally want to go there. See how easy that is? When you remind customers of your place right before a meal, they will want to eat there especially if you post a terrific, mouth-watering picture of your latest burger creation, or mile-high nachos.

Tip #9: Work With Local Bloggers To Get Mentions

You want to build up your Facebook page following by having as many people as you can “like” your page, or “follow” you on Twitter or Instagram. Get local food bloggers to come to your restaurant, and write about it. That way you can have them market for you in a covert way on their websites. Make sure it links to your homepage, and social media pages.

Tip #10: Tell The Story of Your Restaurant

This goes for any digital marketing that is geared towards all the major social media sites. Have a story to go along with your restaurant’s brand. Don’t just be a faceless name on a marquee. As one of the very best tips for restaurants, it’s vital that you tell the story of your establishment with some flair. Be meaningful in your efforts. This will make people eager to look at your postings on social media to find out what is going on each week at your popular restaurant.