No matter what point of your business journey you are on, you’ll be familiar with blogging. Blogging is hugely popular in the restaurant world. In fact, finding blog ideas for restaurants is a great business strategy.
A restaurant blog posts anything from op-eds on food trends to favorite dish recipes and cooking tips. It is an online platform where food bloggers begin to build a community with a loyal customer base. And for a restaurant owner, building this extra customer base as a form of restaurant marketing can be helpful.
Blogging is one of the best ways to attract potential customers to your restaurant. It is also a minimal-risk strategy for business owners - costing next to nothing if you write blog posts yourself. In short, blogging is a total hack for restaurant marketing. Ready to start publishing blog posts? Great, check out everything you need to know about blog ideas for restaurants.
Why Use Blogging for Restaurant Marketing?
In the back of your mind, you know that using blog posts is perfect for growing your business. It is one of those effective business strategies not many people utilize. Before we tackle the main reasons, it’s important to note that the low risk and cost are massive draws.
Using blog ideas for restaurants is a cheap and minimal-risk part of a marketing strategy. And, even better, you can do it yourself once you research. The only negative is that blogging can be time-consuming. It isn’t an overnight fix either, although things will improve once you get into the swing of it.
Using blog posts is best for patient restaurant owners. Let’s dive into our main reasons why you should use blog ideas for restaurants.
- It improves social presence.
Building a restaurant blog is ideal for growing your social presence. Sharing blog posts is the perfect way to interact on social media. And enticing posts are likely to reach avid readers and potential customers when you share them on social media. We highly recommend starting blogging if you want to grow your social presence but aren’t sure how.
- It builds your brand and trust.
Next, blogging helps to build your restaurant’s brand and customers’ trust in you. You establish yourself as an expert by writing blog posts about your niche. As an expert, you become a trustworthy source for potential customers. Similarly, it builds a sense of brand and personality - perfect for scaling your business and making it memorable.
- It captures website traffic and converts it to foot traffic.
Website traffic needs no physical base. By blogging, you reach potential customers you could never get organically. This website traffic is then easily converted into foot traffic.
Restaurant Blog Examples
Sometimes the best way to learn is to see what other people are doing - especially those who excel. Checking out other restaurant blogs is a fantastic way to get inspiration for blog design, writing style, and topics.
Before opening your restaurant blog, we suggest you analyze at least three other blog competitors. See what works and see what doesn’t. This stage is vital for creating your dream restaurant blog. Hopefully, you’ll find some blog ideas for restaurants along the way. Not sure where to start? These are our top restaurant blog examples.
The Restaurant Maifesto aims to help foodies connect with waitstaff and vice versa. Rather than just targeting how restaurants can improve, it shows how diners can improve. This unique outlook has a strong niche.
Paris By Mouth is a food and wine tour company. However, it also runs a successful blog. The blog is structured as a huge index of all the different restaurant in Paris. Paris By Mouth analyzes each restaurant, providing useful insight for guests.
This food blog is owned by the New York magazine.It covers everything related to New York food - like how to order wings and the problem with New Yorker pints.
India’s McDonalds branch runs a blog called Coffee Tales. This blog covers everything coffee related - from the best seasonal coffee options to new coffee announcements.
Starbucks runs a blog detailing personal stories. For instance, interviewing customers about topical events like Pride.
Top 4 Blog Ideas for Restaurants
You know why you need to use blog ideas for restaurants. And you know where to find excellent examples of restaurant blogs. The only thing missing are some ideas for blog posts to start writing.
There are top 4 types of blog posts to publish on your website. Check out these four blog types to boost your restaurant marketing, from cooking tips to the chef’s favorite dish.
1. Blog Ideas for Restaurants: Advertise Upcoming Events
An obvious way to utilize blog ideas for restaurants is to advertise upcoming events. By doing this, you are catching the attention of any potential attendees and spreading the word. Posting about upcoming events has the potential to be an evergreen marketing strategy to a certain degree as well.
You could run a monthly wine-tasting session - in which case, one blog post would last for years. There are annual events, too, like national food days. By sharing upcoming events, you also create an evergreen image of your restaurant having fun activities.
The key to successfully advertising upcoming events through blog posts is to stay authentic. Perhaps instead of an RVSP-style post, you could organize an interview. Or maybe you could tell your story about the company’s links to this event or create something more engaging.
An interview with a fascinating local wine producer builds both intrigue and authority. And by the time you casually drop in that they’ll be hosting tasting events each month, more people will bite.
Pair this with classic advertising on social media, and you are in for a winning event. You’ll spike interest and get attendees.
2. Blog Ideas for Restaurants: Share Cooking Tips
You aim to intrigue readers with topic knowledge while telling them about upcoming events. So it makes sense that you should trade hot tips to keep potential customers on your restaurant blog. And what better tips to trade than cooking tips? Cooking tips are one of the best blog ideas for restaurants.
There is enormous potential when it comes to cooking tips blog posts. You could cover anything. Keep it related to your brand image (more on that later) and customer base. For instance, if you run a vegetarian restaurant, don’t start preaching about the best ways to cook red meat. Pick a few topics and themes that resonate with your customers and brand image, and go from there.
You could publish a post on the best ways to boil an egg. Or the most unusual ways to use potatoes in recipes. Get creative. And make sure to conduct SEO research to see if there are any topics with hardly any coverage. This is the best way to get Google to rank your cooking tips blog posts in the top three search results. Cooking tips is an excellent blog post to aim for the stars SEO-wise. You’ll attract website traffic from all over since it answers such general questions.
3. Blog Ideas for Restaurants: Introduce Your Chef’s Favorite Dish
One of the most personal blog ideas for restaurants is introducing your chef’s favorite dish. What makes it so effective? A multitude of factors. For one, it establishes a more personal, human relationship between you and your customers.
Customers can put a name to a face. Or rather, if we are honest, a name and face to the brand. Customers rarely see the chefs preparing their food, so breaking through that disconnect is effective restaurant marketing. This is even more the case if the chef is the restaurant owner.
So, let’s paint the picture. You have an image of your smiling chef with his favorite dish. You have a few action-shot photos with the chef in total concentration at various stages of cooking. A personal, memorable quote emblazons the page midway down. And you have a section where readers can try this ever-so-special dish. Do you have a special recipe published elsewhere on your restaurant blog? Or perhaps you have just added it to your menu - ready for guests to try tomorrow. A favorite dish blog post should build rapport and also be actionable.
4. Blog Ideas for Restaurants: Write Online Reviews
Online reviews are a versatile addition to these blog ideas for your restaurant. Be picky with what you review and slightly tactical. For instance, reviewing a new wine beforehand is an excellent idea if you add one to your wine list. Or, if you are adding fresh olives to your starters, write an online review of that olive type and producer.
The beauty of online reviews is that they are helping your customers, not just marketing your restaurant. Customers become consumers as soon as they walk out your door. So knowing they can turn to you for consumer advice is vital for building authority and trust. While if you are adding new things to your menu, giving them an ‘introductory’ review is a significant marketing boost.
Leveraging Your Blog Ideas for Restaurants on Social Media
Blog posts aren’t just for your restaurant blog. Use some of our blog ideas for restaurants on your social media too. TikTok and Instagram (and even good old Facebook) target short videos. In fact, short videos are a key marketing trend.
You can market your blog posts with accompanying videos on social media. For instance, for an interview piece for an upcoming event, you could prepare a reel with the interviewee.
Of course, social media presence is much more than videos. It acts as a form of customer service and a point of engagement. Because of this, it is vital for restaurant marketing to utilize social media and your restaurant blog. The two should work together rather than apart.
Final Thoughts: Choosing Blog Posts for Restaurants
It is clear to see that a restaurant blog is a fantastic investment in your business. When it comes to choosing blog ideas for restaurants, you shouldn’t find it difficult. Of course, you should ensure that your blog posts adhere to your brand image and customer base.
If you run an Italian restaurant, stick to Italian food. And if you specialize in providing for New Yorkers, don’t try targeting Londoners. Consider your restaurant blog as nudging your existing customers while tapping similar potential customers.
Content marketing can feel overwhelming. But with these restaurant blog ideas, you are ready to tackle the world of food bloggers and catchy restaurant slogans. It’s more of a marathon than a sprint, but you can easily set up your website in the evening. Perhaps even with a glass of wine or your favorite snack. And when it comes to writing blog posts, you can easily squeeze in a blog post a week.
Are you looking for some extra guidance? At Beambox, we are always happy to help. As experts in content marketing and making the most out of restaurants, we can help start your journey to success. Outsource to us, and let’s take the following steps together.
Let’s get the ball rolling today. Beambox offers the best all-in-one wifi marketing platform. We leverage a dynamic approach to connect, capture, and keep more customers. Start your Beambox free trial today, and let us help you maximize your content marketing potential.
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