Learn how a blog editorial calendar helped a popular restaurant group produce strategic, informative content to engage their audience online.
The Challenge
A regional restaurant group, who owns several popular restaurants in the Northwest Florida area, wanted to get involved in social media. Each restaurant has a distinct clientele, menu and tone, so there was a great opportunity to create original content that spoke to these audiences individually. They saw the potential to connect with their audience through social media, but didn’t know where to begin.
Their Goals
Their purpose for getting involved in social media channels was to connect with their current customers and attract new ones, particularly tourists to the area. Specific goals included:
- Generate excitement, awareness of special events (cooking classes, live music, holiday menus)
- Create lots of engagement with fans
- Produce content that was highly sharable and viral
The Opportunity
Before jumping into social media, we helped them think through their content marketing strategy. We assessed their resources and goals to determine the best tools and tactics. In their case, we suggested starting with a blog that social media posts could be sourced from. A blog would allow their various in-house experts (chefs, special event directors, owners) to speak to the restaurants’ distinct audiences and provide more depth to their social media efforts.
Our Action
As part of their content marketing strategy, we met with the team to create a three-month blog editorial calendar for each restaurant. The calendar included enough topics to publish two posts per week with due dates, publishing dates, and appropriate keywords.It also included strategic content categories that each post would fall into to ensure consistency of message and deliver the results they were looking for. By providing a healthy mix of content, the blog posts could easily be repurposed to educate, inform, engage, spark dialogue, promote sharing and increase fans in social media. The content mix included:
- Recipes and how-to’s
- Features on celebrity chefs
- “Foodie” related editorial type content
- Promotions of restaurant events, news and happenings
The Results
The blog editorial calendar helped the restaurant group thing long-term about the purpose of creating valuable content. After one month of blog posts, they had enough content to begin promoting their blog in social media. As their Facebook fans and blog comments grew, they saw the importance of planning for content to keep it on-brand and consistently delivered.
After the 3-month start up plan we helped them initiate, they were able to take the blog in-house and manage it with their team. Their ability to utilize internal staff (chefs, wait staff, interns) as resources for content creation and inspiration saved them a ton of money. Keeping their blog regularly updated helped them create a content asset that they could repurpose in social media.
In less than two years, the group obtained more than 23,000 Facebook fans. They were also able to begin a monthly newsletter by repurposing the most popular content from their blog.
Why it Worked
They clearly knew their audience and knew they could reach them through social media. Based on our recommendations, they remained patient about jumping into social media without a plan for keeping their content updated. As we worked with the client to recommend the right platform and strategy for their resources, they remained engaged in the process and excited about starting content marketing.
This project took place in 2010 and they are still using our editorial calendar template to stay on track and speak to the unique personality if their clientele.