Should Your Multi-location Restaurant Have Separate Social Media Accounts?
Social media is a powerful tool for promoting businesses, especially for restaurants. Most customers turn to social media to see photos of dishes, read reviews, and even make reservations. Therefore, having a social media account should be a priority for every restaurant. But what happens when you have multiple locations? Should your restaurant have separate social media accounts for each location, or should you keep them all under one account?
In this blog post, we’ll explore 5 essential questions restaurants should ask themselves before making this decision.
- Brand Consistency:
Creating a consistent brand image is one of the most crucial aspects of your restaurant’s success. Customers should know what to expect when walking into your locations. To maintain uniformity across all locations, a single account could help reinforce brand consistency. However, if each location has its distinct charm, ambiance, or unique menu, multiple accounts may be beneficial to highlight these differences.
- Resources
Managing multiple social media accounts for various locations takes time and resources, involving regular content creation, engagement, and monitoring. If you have a small marketing team or a tight budget, having multiple social media accounts may not be advisable. You want to avoid spreading yourself too thin by trying to maintain several social media accounts if you need more resources. Social media is most effective when done right.
- Location-Specific Content
Another factor to consider is the type of content you want to post on your social media accounts. Will all locations have the same menu, happy hour specials, and events? Or will these offerings vary according to each location’s demographic? Having separate accounts may be ideal if each location appeals to a different target market. This strategy allows you to tailor content to each audience’s specific interests. Maintaining separate accounts might become challenging if each restaurant location can’t provide that.
- Customer Base
Consider where your customers are primarily located. If customers typically visit their local restaurant and each location has a strong community connection, separate accounts could allow direct engagement with the local audience.
- Scale of the Business
As your restaurant business grows, having multiple locations and unique social media accounts may be necessary. Your restaurant’s size and location will influence your social media strategy. You may find that creating a unified social media approach for all locations is inefficient and may hinder your growth. Or, if you plan on having hundreds of locations, managing individual accounts could become incredibly complex. In such cases, a single account might be more practical.
Two Scenarios to Guide Your Decision
To better visualize these factors, let’s examine two potential scenarios:
Scenario 1: Local Community-Based Restaurant:
Individual accounts might be beneficial if your restaurant is more community-based, with different menus and events at each location. They can facilitate direct engagement with local customers, allow you to share location-specific updates, events, and specials, and foster a tight-knit community.
Scenario 2: Large, Consistent Chain: If you’re a chain with hundreds of locations and plan to maintain brand consistency with identical offerings across all locations and lack the resources to maintain separate accounts, then a single main account could be more suitable. This primary account can share updates applicable to all locations, announce brand-wide specials, and create a unified brand image.
The decision of whether to establish single or multiple social media accounts for a growing restaurant is multifaceted. Assessing your restaurant’s brand identity, resources, content uniqueness, customer base, and business scale is essential. The brand’s long-term vision is also pivotal in shaping the social media strategy.
Remember that social media strategies should not be static; they should evolve and adapt as your brand grows and its objectives shift, ensuring that your online presence is always in sync with your brand’s vision and ambitions.
