What Should Restaurant Owners Blog About?
If you are a restaurant owner just starting to develop an online presence, you’ve probably read a bit already about the power that running a blog on your restaurant’s website can have for your local business. Blogging helps your website get discovered, which in turn can bring more customers through your doors and boost your profits. But for many new bloggers, the question comes up: what exactly should you blog about? Does a blog have to be ALL about your restaurant, and if so, how can you keep things interesting?
The good news is, as a restaurant owner, you can blog about a whole lot more than just your business. Your blog posts should be related to your restaurant and who you are as a business owner, but they don’t have to be all on the topic of your eatery alone. Here’s a few ideas for things that you can blog about as a restaurant owner, some related directly to your business and some only tangentially so.
1. Your Staff
Beyond just your great food, your staff is one of the most important reasons why people choose to come into your restaurant time and time again. Customers develop relationships with their favorite servers and learn to appreciate their favorite cooks, and you can highlight some of your staff in your blog to translate these relationships into the online world. Write posts interviewing some of your staff members who have interesting lives or histories, and make sure to post update posts if any of your staff members leave or have big events in their lives.
2. Your Recipes
Don’t worry: you don’t have to share your recipes directly in order to get people interested in reading a blog about this subject. But breaking down how some of your food is made, what ingredients you source for what dishes, and how everything comes together can be very interesting for your regulars who know your menu well. Start by blogging about the cooking process of one of your signature dishes, and make sure to include lots of pictures and videos to keep things appealing!
3. Your Cuisine
For this topic, you don’t have to write JUST about your specific menu items, but can share information about the larger ethnic or cultural tradition that your food originates from. You can start by sharing informational posts about some of the history or origins of your signature foods, and get more personal by sharing your own family history or the origins of your specific recipes as appropriate. Food is a huge element of culture around the globe, and highlighting how your cuisine comes from and contributes to the culture it originates from can be an interesting idea for a post.
4. Restaurant Updates
Many of your loyal customers probably think of your business as a second home, and are very interested in notes on the future and planned updates for your eatery. If you have any big construction projects or menu updates coming down the pipeline, talking about them on your blog can be a good way to share information and give your regulars some insights into your thought process and what they can expect to see from your restaurant moving forward. Plus, if you notice that a lot of people are asking a lot of questions about an update that you have advertised is coming, pointing them to your blog can be an easy way to answer their inquiries.
5. Local Acts
Especially if your restaurant ever hosts music acts, blogging about local music or entertainment acts can be a great way to build community around your eatery. The local artists themselves will be very appreciative of your writing, and may share it with their own followings and boost the reach of your posts. Plus, if you think you could ever host a musical act in the future, blogging about them now will give your readers a chance to get acquainted and should build up some excitement if you ever announce they are performing.
6. Community Events
Remember that your restaurant is a community hub, not just a business. And writing about different goings on and events in the community can help your community feel more connected to your establishment and you feel more connected to the community. In that situation everybody wins: you get more business, and the community gets to benefit from your excellent food and ambiance. Any community events are great to blog about, but especially focus on ones where your establishment will have a presence.
Think Big!
You can blog about just about anything, as long as you can find some way to tangentially relate it to your restaurant. Don’t get tripped up and think that you can only blog about your food: anything is fair game, and writing about diverse topics will help keep things interesting!