How Restaurants Can Increase Their Facebook Fan Base and Presence
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Facebook Layout
When you walk into an Apple store, the experience in itself is part of their value proposition. In the same sense, consider your Facebook fan page as your own Apple store. Everything from your Facebook timeline to your Facebook Cover page image should be optimized and branded for your business.
Checklist:
- Facebook Cover Image
- Facebook Timeline (milestones, highlighted stories, visibility)
- About information
- Photos (visibility, organization – albums, captions)
- Page permissions (admins, posting permissions by fans)
Fan Page Badge
Using Facebook’s business tools, you are able to create a Fan Page Like Box that can be embedded onto other websites and blogs. Aside from allowing fans to see your Facebook Fan Pages’ latest updates, it can also be customized to show photos, different border colors and any embed size.
Get Visual, Get Fans
One of the biggest mistakes that a business can make with their Facebook Page is to neglect the visual component and storytelling that Facebook makes possible. Using Facebook’s Photo sharing features, consider posting images of dishes off your menu, your restaurants environment, special events and even your happy customers.
Remember: A user is more likely to engage with an image that grabs their attention than a page full of only text.
Paid Advertising: Facebook Ads
If you have a budget, Facebook ads can be a good option for driving traffic to your Facebook page.
Before you jump in though, we provide a word of caution: Facebook ads are only as effective as the work that goes into it.
If you are new to Facebook ads, take some time to familiarize yourself with the the terminology and process in setting up your Facebook ads (CPM, Audience, Location, Friends of Friends, etc.). One of the biggest mistakes that business owners make is thinking that Facebook ads will immediately drive traffic and engagement, which is false. Facebook ad campaigns should be optimized for your audience and targeted so that your marketing dollars are spent wisely.
Team Effort
Helen Keller once said “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Using that same message, remember that social media in general is a team effort. Educate your staff on the proper way to use social media and even your own customers on how they can connect with you on Facebook. Even before going to customers and telling them to follow you on Facebook, it’s important to first get your own team to ‘buy in’ otherwise you will be a 1 man team.
What steps are you taking to increase your Facebook fan base and presence? What has been the most effective strategy? Let us know in the comments below.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- What is Gamification? Definition, Examples & Framework
- Top 10 Marketing Gamification Cases
- Top 10 eCommerce Gamification Examples
- 90+ Gamification Examples & Cases with ROI Stats
- Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges & Leaderboards
In what can be considered a sort of social media arms race, brands and businesses are in a hurry to ramp up the number of fans they have on Facebook and Twitter. Restaurants in particular are slowly, but surely joining in the race. While some are better at using Facebook pages and all of its features, there is still a large percentage of restaurants that are still in the ‘make or break stage’ of Facebook.
By the ‘make or break stage,’ we refer to the time period in which a brand may become frustrated at poor results which may discourage them from moving forward with social media. Rather than feeling like your efforts are wasted and that there is no hope, consider the following tips on how restaurants can increase their Facebook fan base and presence.
⚡ Speed Run Notes
- Restaurants have an unfair Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness advantage most other local businesses will never match. Food is the most shared content on social media, by a massive margin. Every customer is a potential content engine. The restaurant's job is to design experiences that are inherently photographable — the share happens automatically after that.
- Fan base growth on Facebook is downstream of the moment inside the restaurant, not the post afterward. You cannot post your way to loyalty. You can design a single unforgettable bite, table setting, or surprise gesture that customers will talk about for a year. The marketing is the experience; the post is the receipt.
- Core Drive 7: Unpredictability is the underused tool in restaurant marketing. Secret menus, off-menu specials, surprise desserts on birthdays — these generate stories. Stories are free distribution. A restaurant that runs zero surprises is leaving its most marketable content unmade.
- The worst thing a restaurant can do on Facebook is look like every other restaurant on Facebook. Templated content (hours, specials, generic food photos) is invisible. Personality — the chef's voice, behind-the-scenes, opinionated takes — is remembered. Boring posts earn no followers, however “correct” they look.
- The deepest play: treat the Facebook page as a second room of the restaurant. Customers who follow feel like regulars even if they haven't visited in months. When they finally come back, they already know the staff's names. That familiarity is worth more than any discount.