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CAFE & RESTAURANT MARKETING: The Rise of the Food Blogger – The New Celebrity Endorsement

Ever been scrolling through Instagram and stumbled across one of those insane #foodporn pictures that have made you literally drool, prompting you to manically tag all your mates “brunch this weekend?”. We’ve all been there. It’s evident just how susceptible we have become to being influenced by what we see on social media.

In the past five years, Instagram influencers and food bloggers have emerged on the marketing scene as a cost-effective method for promoting your cafe or restaurant. Love them or loathe them, there’s no denying that influencers and food bloggers have the ability to affect customer opinions and reach large audiences. With accounts solely focused on food photography and sharing of dining experiences amassing upwards of a thousand likes per post, and hundreds and thousands of followers, the proof is in the pudding (literally). With the ability to reach the multitudes in a single post, partnering with food bloggers and influencers to promote your venue could be one of the smartest business moves you will ever make.

However, if you want to partner with an influencer for your cafe or restaurant, you need to ensure that you are choosing a blogger who is the right fit for you. Being selective about who is promoting your venue is extremely important. Some hospitality businesses can be sceptical of the value said bloggers and influencers provide for their venue, noting that a comped meal in exchange for a post limits legitimacy, especially since Instagram likes have disappeared across the platform. However, if you collaborate with a food blogger or influencer who is a genuine fan of your venue already or is passionate about food, this can create exposure and have a valuable impact on your brand awareness and perception.

Cafes and restaurants should hand-select influencers in accordance with the quality and subject matter of the content they post, the number of followers and level of engagement. A combination of these factors can all be a good indicator of the value this influencer will provide to your venue. You should also ensure that they are posting regularly about what they are eating and places they are dining at and most importantly that they are locally based! There is no point in connecting with bloggers that are not geographically close to your venue. By reaching out to influencers and food bloggers and inviting them into your venue, the subsequent post can generate leads and be seen by hundreds of thousands of hungry eyeballs but better yet – potential customers. In addition to this, the third-party content generated can be utilised on your own platforms.

Sometimes determining which influencers or food bloggers are the right fit for your business can be tricky. You have to take into account the possibility of fake engagement and/or followers and now that Instagram has wiped all likes from peoples feeds, it’s even harder to know which influencers are genuine and which have bought followers to achieve their ‘food blogger’ status. That’s why CPM Online Marketing has developed its own comprehensive network of Sydney based food bloggers and influencers that we work with on a regular basis. We have genuine relationships with these people and can, therefore, vouch for them to say that we have seen first-hand the value that influencers and food bloggers can have for your business.

If you’re interested in connecting with influencer accounts to help with your cafe or restaurant marketing strategy, get in touch with info@cpmonlinemarketing.com today.

Influencers are one part of a good overall marketing campaign you should be running for your cafe or restaurant, you can read what the others are in the article below: http://cpmonlinemarketing.com/10-effective-ways-market-cafe-restaurant-2019/ 

Image Credit: @taramilktea

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