April 4, 2024 (Printed: April 2, 2024)
Social media advertising and marketing gives an efficient and inexpensive means for espresso retail outlets to connect to doable shoppers and construct a fan base. Since nearly everybody owns a pc or smartphone, social media can lend a hand your espresso store get spotted, be in contact with shoppers and construct a powerful emblem id.
On this weblog put up, we’ll talk about how you’ll be able to leverage espresso store social media methods to create a colourful on-line presence. We’ll start with an summary of crucial platforms for espresso retail outlets and finish with sensible, time-saving guidelines for growing content material and managing your social media presence.
Learn directly to discover ways to leverage on-line platforms like Google Industry Profile, Fb, YouTube, and Instagram to lend a hand construct a thriving espresso trade.
What Social Media Websites Must You Use?
When selecting a social media platform, prioritize the ones the place your target market spends maximum in their time. This is helping to maximise visibility and achieve.
A 2023 survey discovered that 62 p.c of eating place shoppers use Google to seek for a cafe – greater than another on-line platform!
That’s why we propose optimizing your retailer’s Google Industry Profile even prior to putting in place a presence on social media like Fb (52.3 p.c), YouTube (46.2 p.c), and Instagram (39.2 p.c). Overview-only websites like Yahoo solely achieve 11 p.c or much less of doable shoppers.
To successfully achieve a bigger target market, new espresso retail outlets will have to imagine beginning with two very important platforms – Google Industry Profile and Fb. After getting created a cast presence and time table for producing and posting content material on those preliminary platforms, you’ll be able to imagine increasing your presence on different platforms, relying to your to be had time and sources. This weblog put up specializes in the most well liked platforms for espresso retail outlets.
Google Industry Profile
An entire and correct Google Industry Profile guarantees other people can simply uncover what you are promoting by the use of Google Seek and Google Maps.
It’s just like the virtual identical of hanging an indication for your window. It is helping other people in finding you when in search of a espresso store within reach. Make certain your profile has your location, hours, and a few tempting footage of your espresso and area. It’s simple and takes little time to arrange or replace.
Whilst it’s ceaselessly regarded as a neighborhood seek device, your profile may be the fastest means to succeed in native shoppers who crave your scrumptious espresso drinks.
A coffee shop that regularly updates its profile with enticing images of its menu offerings, cozy ambiance and friendly staff is likelier to pique the interest of users searching for a nearby coffee spot. Using Google Posts to share updates, promotions, and events directly on the profile can increase engagement and drive foot traffic to the coffee shop.
Responding quickly to reviews, answering questions, and sharing updates shows you care about customer service and satisfaction. Coffee shops that acknowledge positive reviews with gratitude, address concerns with empathy, and respond promptly to inquiries can build trust with potential customers and create a good online reputation.
It’s common for coffee shops to have a Facebook page and a Google Business Profile. Some of our new 7 Steps coffee shops create Facebook pages during the build-out phase and share the construction process to create excitement about their upcoming business.
Owned by Meta, Facebook is the world’s most popular social media platform. Over three billion people around the globe use Facebook to keep in touch with family, friends, groups, and businesses. Over two billion use it daily, and over one billion connect with businesses weekly.
Founded in 2004, this established platform is most popular among millennials and older audiences and least popular among teenagers. This makes it ideal for reaching today’s coffee drinkers, but less appropriate for reaching those who might become your customers in a few years.
Want to stand out on Facebook? Attractive image and video posts get the most attention and are more likely to engage audiences through likes, comments and shares. Focus on creating visual and video posts that showcase your menu items, drink-making process, baristas, customers and local partners. You can share monthly and daily specials, host live events, and encourage customers to check in or post recommendations. Facebook’s event feature is perfect for promoting coffee tastings or barista workshops.
Keep the text accompanying your images simple by using easy-to-understand language with short sentences. Put the most important information first and avoid using technical terms or complex jargon.
Encouraging user-generated content can be a great way to foster a sense of belonging and loyalty within your online community. Sharing photos of customers enjoying their favorite brew and positive reviews can turn your customers into brand advocates who actively promote your coffee shop to their networks. This can help you to build a strong and loyal customer base.
YouTube
Expanding your coffee shop’s social media strategy to include YouTube can add a rich, engaging layer to your online presence.
With over 2.7 billion monthly users, YouTube offers a platform for storytelling, sharing experiences, and connecting with coffee lovers. The video-sharing site is also the second most popular search engine.
When launching a small business on YouTube, it’s important to understand the platform. What works on Facebook and Instagram may not work on YouTube.
Creating video content is crucial to succeeding on YouTube or Instagram. While quality videos are important, consistently uploading content and building relationships with viewers through comments and positive interactions are equally crucial. Videos showcasing the creators’ lives and personalities are more successful than those that corporations mass-produce.
Instagram, just like Facebook, is owned by Meta. It has more than 2 billion active users worldwide, with adult users in the U.S. spending an average of 33 minutes on the platform daily. About 65 percent of Instagram users look for amusing and entertaining content.
In the dynamic world of coffee, Instagram can be a powerful tool for coffee shops to showcase their products and services to potential customers and coffee enthusiasts.
Your Instagram feed should serve as an inviting digital storefront. Through a curated selection of high-quality images and videos, showcase your coffee, the ambiance of your shop, and the people that make it special. Incorporating hashtags related to coffee shop marketing can increase the visibility of your posts, making it easier for coffee lovers to discover your shop.
Use a mix of fleeting stories, single-image and carousel image posts, short video reels, and emerging content forms to attract and build a thriving community around your brand. Hashtags, location tags and keywords can expand your reach, making it easier for coffee lovers to find you.
Getting Started in Social Media Marketing
If you are starting with social media marketing for your independent coffee shop, keeping your strategy simple and focused is important. You can begin with one or two platforms such as Google Business Profile and Facebook, which can help establish a strong online presence without stretching your resources too thin.
The goal isn’t to be everywhere at once but to effectively engage where you are. Establishing a strong, engaging presence on one or two platforms allows you to connect with your community and build a loyal customer base. Once you’ve mastered these, you can consider branching out to other platforms if you have the time and resources. Keeping it simple and genuine will resonate with your audience and help brew success for your coffee shop.
Step 1: Crafting Your Message
As a coffee shop owner, you juggle multiple tasks with limited time and resources. Creativity under pressure is hard! But social media doesn’t require much time or money to work for you. Planning goes a long way in creating a consistent and manageable social media schedule.
Start by brainstorming the kind of content you’d like to create. If you’re unsure, follow a few other coffee shops you like for inspiration.
Consider organizing your content into different category buckets. Here are some we’ve used with our 7 Steps coffee shop customers:
- A general product promotion without an associated discount – i.e., a monthly promo drink, a new product offering, delicious imagery, the products that make you BETTER!
- A segment discount promotion with an associated discount – i.e., $2 Tuesdays, teacher appreciation day, healthcare worker day, etc. Your discount promo targets a particular audience segment.
- Human interest—General messages about things that certain groups of people find engaging. Examples include honoring veterans, remembrances, holidays, celebrating small businesses, giving back, National Coffee Day, etc.
- General offerings promotions – “Did you know we …?” – talk about value-adds your business offers, such as reservable meeting space, lots of comfy seating and outlets, outdoor seating fireplace, convenient drive-thru, mobile app, etc.
- Events – Post about events you’re hosting at the coffeehouse to drive traffic and attendance.
- Employee features – Your employees are a dynamic extension of your brand voice … celebrate them! Post about their birthdays, accomplishments, talents, and quirks. Your community will love learning about their favorite barista, which also drives engagement with their friends.
- Announcements: Holiday hours, emergency shutdown, community awareness, etc.
If you’re already posting on social media, evaluate what messages have worked in the past to generate engagement – new followers, likes, comments, shares. Then try to replicate these.
Once you have your categories, brainstorm message topics under each one. Before you know it, you’ll have a long list of potential topics!
Step 2: Adding Visuals with Your Smartphone
It’s a good idea to purchase a smartphone to keep behind the counter in your coffee shop. Your smartphone camera can help you capture authentic and personal moments in your coffee shop. Thanks to the high-quality cameras available on smartphones today, you can easily showcase your coffee, your shop’s atmosphere and the joy on your customers’ faces.
Using your smartphone camera, you can capture spontaneous moments like steam rising from a fresh cup of coffee or an intricate latte art design. You can use portrait mode to highlight new products or special ingredients. Experimenting with natural lighting can help make your content even more inviting.
In addition to photos, you can also create short, captivating videos or live sessions to give your audience a behind-the-scenes look at your coffee shop. Sharing stories about your coffee’s journey or offering brewing tips can help your audience feel more connected to your brand.
Using your smartphone camera is a great way to create engaging social media content that resonates with your audience. You can help build a community of coffee lovers who appreciate your work by sharing authentic and relatable moments.
Step 3: Creating a Schedule Template
Many of our 7 Steps coffee shop owners use Excel. There are automated tools, like Hootsuite and Sprout Social, but they are another expense. You can also schedule posts for Facebook and Instagram using Meta Business Suite.
For each post topic on our spreadsheet template, we have the following sortable fields:
- Promo title
- Topic category
- Start date (the date you post)
- End date (or event date)
If you publish a single post, the start and end dates will be the same. But if you’re posting about an event, the start date will likely be before the event, with the end date being the date of the event.
The frequency and timing of your posts depend on when you get the most interaction from your followers. We recommend posting at least two to three times a week. A simple scheduling template will help ensure you have enough posts scheduled for the week.
Tip: If you have an organized and filled schedule, it’s easy to delegate the task of managing your social media posts. To get started, just email hsyx@crimsoncup.com, and we’ll be happy to send you this template!
Starting your social media marketing journey as a coffee shop owner can be both exciting and overwhelming. However, you don’t have to go through it alone. As part of our 7 Steps to Success consulting program, Crimson Cup provides social media support and other services to help ensure the success of your coffee shop.
Our team is here to guide you, from creating your first post to building a unique online presence. Let’s work together to leverage the power of social media to connect with your community and beyond!
