Here are our top tips for building your audience and stepping up your social media game.
Get a professional account
If you don’t have one already, switch over to a Professional Account. If you also have a Facebook page, you’ll be able to connect both your Instagram and Facebook pages to your one business account. If you don’t have a Facebook page, you don’t need one to access your Instagram account’s analytics and insights. Having insight to these metrics will allow you to better connect with your followers by knowing who they are and the type of content they want to see, by assessing what they respond to the best.
Call to action
Make sure to add a link to your experience in your bio. You can get a personalized link for your bio in your marketing toolkit.
Chef Courtney’s Instagram page with a clear link to get tickets to his supper club.
Who is your target audience?
The social media platform you focus on will depend on who you expect to come to your supper clubs, i.e. your target audience. Is this a more sophisticated fine-dining experience catered to an older audience? A more home-style approach for millennials looking to mingle? Or a networking pop-up for yuppies? This all needs to be considered when choosing what social media platform to focus on, as well as the kind of content to post.
Younger audiences are likely to spend more time watching online video content such as reels on Instagram and videos on TikTok, whereas an older audience would be more likely to find you through Facebook.
Market research
Benchmark your most successful competitors on social media: What are they doing? What’s their tone? What pictures are they using? How frequently are they posting? This way you’ll be able to structure your own activity in a way your target audience will respond to it better, as they’ll be familiar with what your competitors are doing.
Amplify your reach
Video content
The type of content that should be posted varies between the social platforms. However there is one binding theme, and that is video. On Instagram, Facebook and definitely Tiktok, video is the most popular type of content.
Therefore, you need to be focusing on video content!
This section on its own needs a blog post, so this is a brief summary for how you should be formatting your videos.
In general, keep it snappy. Most videos you post should be under 15 seconds. No long introductions, everything presented on the screen needs to have purpose. So, get to the point and don’t drag. The first second of the video will determine whether a user will watch the video to the end, and the longer someone watches, the larger the audience it’ll reach. Saying this however, the current 2023 algorithm on TikTok is pushing longer videos, but bear in mind that it needs to be engaging! For Instagram though, the shorter the better.
Have a look at the short reel Chef Courtney in London made, with over 8000 likes despite having around 400 followers.
When you’re making more aesthetic videos, such as scenes from your supper clubs, you may not have text so a viral sound is key. You can find viral sounds by looking at other stories, and saving tracks that you think you could do something with. So yes, you need to use social media and watch reels and TikToks to keep up to date on all that’s hot. Hop on different trends!
For more explanatory videos, adding text, a voiceover and a viral sound (with the sound turned down low), is your key to gold.
SEO
Do not forget SEO, standing for search engine optimisation. This means making your video more likely to pop up on someone’s search!
To do this:
- Include keywords in your title, description and inside (in-video text) of your video!
- Create an appealing thumbnail image (this is the image of the video before it’s played)
- Quality is key. Wobbling or a blurry lens will reduce your SEO visibility.
Key words could be: social dining, supper club, the cuisine you’re cooking, the area, the dishes…
Tag locations
Getting ingredients at a local market? Have a favorite shop you like to buy products for your event? Tag the location. When you do that, you allow your posts to be discoverable when people are searching that specific place. Additionally, if there is a market or shop you frequent, you can explore potential collaboration opportunities where you tag each other. When you do this, both parties can reach new audiences.
Collaborate
If you use a special brand of handmade kitchenware at your experiences, tag their account and highlight them in your post. Similar to tagging locations, you may want to reach out to the brand to see if there’s a potential to collaborate.
Interact
Interact with other social media accounts, especially 20 minutes before and after posting on your account. If future guests check out your account after you have interacted with them, they will see your fresh new content! Keep in mind that the Instagram algorithm takes into account comments, shares, and sends – less so likes!
Follow similar accounts to yours.
And don’t forget to ask your guests’ to tag you and Eatwith so we can repost their shots of the evening!
Engage with local culinary influencers
You don’t need to tell your life story, a simple comment to start a conversation will do. The more you engage, the more they notice you. Build online relationships.
Tag Eatwith!
Tag @eatwith when you post will make your post visible to our marketing team and can give you a chance to be featured.
Post regularly
Consistently posting and sticking to a content calendar will give your audience a regular rendez-vous. By being consistent you will also become a regular staple in their Instagram feed and allow you to stay top of mind. The algorithm changes very often, however in 2023, we recommend, if you can, to post on Tiktok every day, and on Instagram around three times a week.
This is not to say however that you should sacrifice quality over quantity. It is better to post less but better quality!
Choose the posting time by testing and looking into Instagram Insights. Usually early morning 8am, afternoon 11am and evening 8pm work well but don’t take our word for it. Look into your professional account insights and find out how your audience is behaving!
