Leveraging Social Media for Bar Owners: Grow Your Bar & Engage Customers

The reason behind that is that social media is more about talking to people that have opted into hearing from you , rather than marketing to new customers . Especially if you're in a tourist area , social media is not necessarily what people are going to see .

It's not what's going to bring them in the same way that Google , seo or Yelp or TripAdvisor will , because that's where people check that are not in your local market . Now , with social media , while we aren't necessarily reaching new guests , it is a great way to connect with your current guests , people that have opted in to hearing your message .

As they've opted in , it's almost like they are a warm lead . If we're thinking in terms of normal sales , a warm lead is not someone that you have to convince to purchase . It's someone that has purchased or is ready to purchase .

It's someone that you can speak to and relate to and really build an ongoing relationship with them to encourage them to come back into your establishment time and time and time again . Well , I absolutely think that social media is not the best marketing for new guests . I think it is a phenomenal tool to connect with your current guests .

Let's really be honest here . A lot of things that we hear about on social media , a lot of the people that are now influencers on social media , that's because they went viral . Just like a person can go viral , a business can go viral if you have the right social media .

At the same time , as we all know , most people that post on social media are not going viral , while your chances of going viral are , let's be honest , not that high . There are ways that you can produce content that has the ability to go viral .

There are ways that , regardless of whether or not you go viral , regardless of whether or not you get national , global attention on your brand , you can really help build brand loyalty with people that already like you , that already come in , that already enjoy your product and want to have that experience with your bar .

Today , we're not going to cover how to become viral . We're not going to cover anything like that . What we are going to talk about is what you can do within your establishment and your social media to really promote and connect with your guests and to really drive repeat business and to interact with your guests in a way when they're not in your establishment .

Now , obviously , social media is a broad term . Depending upon the bar that you have , different social media platforms are going to work best for you . If you have a bar in the Midwest or in the South that has a lot of blue collar clientele , a lot of older clientele , facebook is a great way to communicate .

If you're a college bar , facebook probably is not going to work , because a lot of Gen Z folks are not on Facebook . They're using Instagram , they're using TikTok . They're using different platforms . So the platforms that you decide to work with and the platforms you decide to promote your brand on need to be dependent upon the market that you are going after .

I really suggest , too , that when you're looking at platforms for your social media , pick three or four . There are so many different social media platforms out there . You cannot do all of them . You need to pick the ones that are going to work best for your clientele , the ones that speak the most to your demographic , whatever that demographic may be .

If we think about the big players in social media , you have Facebook , instagram , tiktok X or Twitter , and YouTube essentially are really the big five . You could do all of those , but again , a college bar probably is not going to find much traction on Facebook and a country rural dive bar is not going to find as much traction on TikTok .

So don't worry about stretching yourself so thin that you have to cover every platform that exists . Focus on three or four and focus on producing great content for that platform . Before we get into specific types of content and ways to produce things , I want to just start by covering a few of the basics in both what you should do and what you should avoid .

The first thing that I think a lot of folks have a misconception on , especially people that didn't grow up in the age of social media , is an overreliance on hashtags . I remember a decade ago or , frankly , even a little bit before that , when social media was kind of in its infancy , there was a lot of pressure on people to use hashtags for everything .

And hashtags are great , they're searchable , there are a lot of benefits to them .

But the thing is , if you use a hashtag like great food well , you can't sell food to the whole world it's not going to help you connect to people that are going to come in and drink at your bar , because , even if you do hashtag craft cocktails hashtag , mixology hashtag , whatever those kind of generic global terms are just as likely to get you a hit halfway

around the world as they are to get someone to view that post from your local area . And , as a matter of fact , unless you live in a hugely populous area , you're more likely to get people that are not close to you finding you based on those hashtags than people that are close to you .

So , when you think about using hashtags , there are a few things that can make those work , number one being have your own hashtag .

It can be as simple as the name of your bar , or it can be something punny , it can be something related to your bar , but if you have a unique hashtag that you use on all your posts , someone wants to see everything that you've posted or everything about you , and we'll talk about user-generated content towards the end of this episode , where you're actually

encouraging people to use that hashtag on their posts related to your bar . Having a unique hashtag you use every time can be useful . The other place hashtags can be useful is if you have strong local hashtags . So let's say you're in Houston and a bunch of bars in Houston are using hashtag Houston Nightlife , that's great .

Or if you're in Atlanta and it's hashtag Atlanta bars great . So if you have a local hashtag that other folks are using , it can be a great thing to piggyback on . But again , generic hashtags hashtag great food , hashtag mojito Is not really going to help you because you're more likely to attract people to your posts from some other place in the world .

Then where you're located . And I will tell you . The reason why I started with this hashtag piece is Because it is probably my largest pet peeve when it comes to most bar social media . Now , looking beyond that , one of the most important things that you can do in your social media and this is across all platforms is maintain a consistent brand voice .

Just like we talk about cohesive branding within your bar , how the whole experience should be cohesive , how your menus Should reflect your environment , your ambiance , everything from your signage , your logo it all needs to tie together . It all needs to fit together . Well , your social media needs to have that voice .

It needs to show that same consistent Experience , that same quality that everything else in your Atmosphere and your branding shows . It needs to feel like a cohesive piece of your bar , not like something outside of your bar . One of the keys to accomplishing that is to have a consistent brand voice .

Your brand should always sound the same and you can go a lot of different places with brand voice . You could be upscale if you're a gas repub , you could be edgy , you can be whatever you want , but make sure it's consistent , make sure it fits in with your overall brand . One of my favorite corporate restaurant social medias is Is Wendy's .

If you have not looked at their social media seriously , go look at it . They do great stuff , they have a great corporate voice and they are a little edgy . They do troll people a little bit . They are coming out with funny puns and comments and going after Burger King and McDonald's and people on a regular basis , which you can do as well .

Now , obviously , if your brand voice is going to be edgy , if it's going to be aggressive , if you're gonna try to troll on people , if you're going to try to use humor , you need to do it Well , because what you don't want to do is piss off a lot of people because that's not gonna bring you business , that's going to detract from your business , but being

edgy , being trolling , is not always a bad thing . You just need to make sure it fits in with the concept and the atmosphere and the overall cohesion of that concept for your establishment .

Another thing you have to do for social media , just in the broad scale of things , is you have to post frequently , and when I say post frequently , I don't mean once a week , I mean at least three times a week . Preferably , you're posting every day . Probably , you should be posting multiple times a day . That depends on your establishment when you're open .

Obviously , if you're closed on Mondays , you may not post on Mondays , but you need to get out there . You need to be in people , in front of people . They need to see you in order for your social media to have an impact on them , to help bring them in , to help remind them that you exist .

The thing on this , though , is that every platform is going to have a slightly different cadence that works best for that platform , so , if we're talking about something like Instagram reels or other short form video , youtube shorts , things like that , you Can post a couple of the day and it's no big deal .

But now , if we're talking about Facebook posts going towards an older audience , you probably don't want to post more than once or twice a day . Otherwise they're gonna feel spammed and they're more likely to Unfollow you then to remain following you .

The only way to make sure that you're hitting your social media on the right cadence , that you're posting the optimal amount , is to actually research each platform you're using . Different platforms are gonna be more effective at different levels of posting , different frequencies of posting and beyond that .

You really do need to spend some time Learning and researching social media every month or so . Right , because social media is constantly evolving . It's constantly changing , as we've all seen in the last year or whatever it's been that Twitter has been in , purchased and changed , and Everything at Twitter is evolving every day .

Now , that's part of the reason why I am not Personally on Twitter . It just doesn't appeal to me . But if Twitter was a platform you're using , you better be staying up on all the changes , everything going on . If you're using Facebook , you need to understand the way that Facebook's algorithms change every once in a while .

You need to understand the way that paid advertising works on , whatever platform you're using , whether or not it's a smart idea to boost your post .

So , for those three or four platforms that you are going to focus on , you need to actually learn those platforms , become an expert at those platforms or hire someone that is and we'll talk more about hiring people for social media here towards the end of our conversation but at this point , suffice to say you need to make sure that you're posting frequently and

Frequently is not once a week , it's not twice a week , it's maybe three times a week , it's probably every single day of the week that you are open , maybe even days that you're closed , maybe even multiple times a day . Learn your platforms , learn the impact you can make and go after it .

Now , one of the things that I see a lot of bars do and this is my second pet peeve after hashtags , I will be honest is post pictures of food and drinks , and that is great . It is wonderful to show people what you're serving . But let's be honest .

I know that I follow a bunch of bars and restaurants on my Facebook and I know I scroll past most of the food picture posts . If I'm on Instagram or something like that and I see pictures of food . Yeah , I might look at everything .

Oh well , that's that looks cool , but a lot of times I'm looking at the picture of the food and I'm not even registering what business it is , let alone the fact that , if it , the picture is not super high quality , professional , a cool looking photo , I'm not even paying attention to it .

So posting just pictures of food and pictures of cocktails worked really well ten years ago . Doesn't work so well now . That being said , it should be part of your strategy to include some of that .

It's not something to avoid altogether , but if you're going to post pictures of food , if you're gonna post pictures of cocktails , make sure the pictures are awesome , awesome , stage them , get your lighting right , use a good camera . I mean , I don't know anyone that still uses a flip phone , but if you use a flip phone , that camera isn't going to do it .

You have a nicer iPhone , a nicer Android phone , no problem . You can use that to generate great professional looking pictures . But you need to be generating professional looking pictures for your establishment .

A lot of times that means doing things like getting light rings or different LED lights so that you can create highlights and shadows and really get some composition behind the pictures of food and drinks that you're just doing as pictures . Now , one of the problems with pictures , like I said before , is people scroll past them .

So if I told you , hey , here's a picture of a really cool cocktail , come in and drink this , you'd be like , hey , that's kind of cool . Maybe I will . But what's going to speak more to people is if we , instead of doing a picture , we do some short form video .

But , as a matter of fact , you can make short form video into a series and you can have multiple series of short form videos .

Maybe every Monday you have a new cocktail come out and when that new cocktail comes out , your head bar tender , your bar manager whomever puts out a video making that cocktail , explain that cocktail , telling guests all about the flavor profiles behind that cocktail , really making it an experience . Yes , you're telling people how to make it at home . That's great .

I love that . They're still going to come in and drink it . Don't be afraid to give a recipe , thinking that'll stop people from coming in . It's not going to . But when you create that short form video now , you're going to get a lot of eyes on that . People might share that . You have a chance of going viral with . Here's how you make a cool cocktail .

A lot , lot more than you have a chance of going viral with a picture of that cocktail . As a matter of fact , I would say that the video has some chance of going viral . The picture has basically zero .

So short form video is really a thing to do nowadays and , like I said , within the short form video you can make series , whether that's food specials on video , whether that is cocktails on video . Say you were a brewery , you could make videos about the whole process of beer is going through before a release .

Say you were going to do a barrel-aged cocktail , you could start making videos when you put the cocktail in the barrel . You're building anticipation . You're building anticipation among your customers . It's going to make them more likely to come in and buy that when that barrel-aged cocktail is finally aged and is available .

So there's a lot of benefit to short form video . Now , one thing , especially if you're doing short form video , that you should do is spotlight your employees . So , absolutely , we can have a bartender making cocktail . Obviously , we can have the kitchen manager or the chef preparing some food .

But you can do a lot of other things and , depending upon what your brand voice is , you can even get into trying to do some humorous sketches that you can make into series . You could try to do something like things that happen at the bar and just tell funny stories about things that happen . Now , obviously you have to be careful there .

You don't want to embarrass any of your regulars . You don't want to necessarily publicly call people out .

The kind of generic bar-centric social media posts that are in video form can go a long way to promoting your establishment and I'm sure many of you , just like I do , know some social media influencers that essentially are producing content aimed at folks that work in bars and restaurants by showing some of the funny things we run into .

So as long as you're staying within your brand voice , within your brand image , in that cohesive concept of what your bar is , you can produce content like that and again , that now has a chance of going viral . It's interesting , it's entertaining , it's more fun than just a picture of a cocktail .

Another thing that you can do with your social media is have contests , and contests can be really anything .

For instance , maybe you are in a college town and before spring break you say , hey , if you take a picture on spring break wearing one of our t-shirts , the coolest picture wearing one of our shirts over this week that is spring break wins a $50 gift certificate .

So now you have a cool contest and you're going to get all this user generated content from your patrons that promotes your establishment , because they all want to win that prize . Now you might have to give them more than $50 , but you can figure that out , and a contest on social media can be almost anything you want it to be .

It doesn't matter what it is . What matters is that you're generating user engagement and that it fits within your brand . Now , along those lines , we're talking about user generated content , something that anyone on the internet is producing related to your brand . One of the easiest things to do on your social media is to share it .

Just share a post someone else made about you , share a video someone made having a great time at your bar , and if you remember when we were talking about design and concept and things like that , one of the things I always said is make sure that you have food that's Instagramable , make sure that you have drinks that are Instagramable , make sure you have

locations in your establishment for people to take pictures that are Instagram worthy . Well , that's great because they're pushing that content , but then you should interact with that content . Social media is social , so if you have people out there generating content about your establishment , you need to interact with them .

Now , of course , you should always interact with them in a way that's going to promote your brand image . But you can have fun if you have an edgy social media persona . Be edgy with them . But you have to interact with what other people on the internet are generating about you , and you should encourage them to do that through things like contests .

But user generated content is , quite frankly , one of the best pieces of social media Because , again , not only are they promoting you without you spending a dollar , not only are they now getting you to people that may not follow your bar they may not see your content otherwise but they're friends with this person or follow this person , and so now they're going to

see content related to you , and the biggest benefit of that is that works like a testimonial . It tells people hey , I'm cool , this bar is cool , you should go there and interact with them .

You cannot get better word of mouth than that , because , essentially , what that comes down to is word of mouth marketing , but it's social , that based word of mouth marketing , which means the potential reach of it is much greater than just someone having a great time at your establishment . So you always need to make sure you're interacting with people .

You always need to make sure that any content out there you're being a part of Be social on social media . I am sure some of you now are sitting there scratching your head going , okay , this all sounds great , but how the hell am I supposed to have the time to pull this off ?

And the thing is that the knee jerk reaction among most bar owners , restaurant owners , most small business owners in general is to hire someone to manage their social media . That can work . It can also not work .

Frankly , I think the better way to do it is to use your team to generate content , especially if you're going to focus on them , if you're going to feature them , if you're going to have them in short form videos . Let them generate the content for you .

Maybe your bartender is going to make a short form video on how to make the cocktail of the week every week . Maybe your kitchen guys are going to do videos about different kitchen specials they have going on and how food is prepared . Maybe your cocktail servers are going to tell funny stories about guests or tipping or things like that .

The more of it you can do in-house , the better content you'll produce , the more cohesive it will feel , the less likely your brand is to end up looking generic and boring .

Because , let's be honest , most social media management companies , especially the guys that find you online and offer to do it and just kind of cold call everybody some of those are , I'm sure , great , but the vast majority of those are going to post generic content .

It's not going to really engage people , it's not going to drive business and if you're going to put money into social media or time into social media , you need to make sure it's driving business , not just producing average , boring content that doesn't really speak to your establishment and your concept and your voice .

More likely than not , in every bar in the world , there is someone there that is younger , that uses social media all the freaking time , and if you can identify that person , you can make them your social media manager . I don't care what their job is , I don't care if they're the dishwasher or the bartender or the manager .

They can help manage your social media and obviously you need to give them some incentive , you need to pay them a little bit for doing that , but it's going to be way cheaper , way more consistent and way better quality than hiring some random social media management company .

Now one thing that's very important when it comes to social media and figuring out some of this stuff , because it's going to take a while to develop your voice , to really hone in on which types of content work best for you , to get the right cadence down and all of that . You need to do some A-B testing .

A-b testing in its root is really just doing two separate things that do the same thing and seeing which one produces better results . So , for instance , let's say that you have a new menu item and your A-test is a picture of some food and your B-test is a picture of some food .

The pictures are very similar but you organize them differently , you design your posts a little bit differently , and then you see which one performs better . So essentially , you're using a control and a similar post . That's a little bit different and seeing which one does better .

And if you constantly do that , if you constantly are testing posts against each other and when I say , testing posts against each other . I mean like you might literally post them at the same time , you might post them 20 minutes apart , but you're posting these very close together .

You're then learning what engages your audience best and by using A-B testing , by looking at your data , by measuring your statistics how much reach you're getting those sorts of things you can hone in on what's going to be the most productive for your business .

Another thing that you should always be testing is what time of day gets you the best results , and , just like I said before , with platforms all being different , time of day for posting on platforms is going to be different .

But let's be honest , is bars Not a lot of our patrons are necessarily up and getting at it at 5.30 in the morning , when the folks that are coming out late to a bar normally sleep pretty late too .

So you need to check times , you need to test every little aspect and record data until you can build out what is the most effective , most efficient , most productive way to do your social media for your bar Is , at the end of the day , not only is that going to give you the most reach , not only is that going to give you the most impact with your guests ,

but it's also going to minimize the time that you waste putting out content that is not producing results . Now , one of the things that comes up a lot with social media is boosting posts , using ads to drive additional viewers to your page .

That can work , and one of the wonderful things about social media and using that as a marketing and boosting posts to reach people is that you can get your demographics down really , really tight . If you think about old school mailings you get with the post office , you send a mailing to every person that lives in this area .

Well , you're not using any psychographics . You're really not using that much demographics . You're just saying , okay , this zip code , let's hit it . You're wasting a lot of money advertising to people that are not going to like your product . Social media allows you to kind of hone in on your psychographics , your demographics .

It depends on the platform as far as how specific you can get , but if you want to target a wine event to women between 25 and 55 that make over a hundred grand a year , usually there's a way to do that . You can get really , really granular in who you're targeting , which is great , and if you're going to advertise on social media .

You should be thinking that granular and you should be A B , testing different groups against each other .

Now there's an argument to be made that boosting posts , paying for social media , is not always worth it . And let's be honest , if you're not getting engagement , if you're not seeing results from doing that , focus on the content . Boosting content or using social media as advertising is only going to be beneficial if your content is great .

And if you have sub par content or mediocre content or average content or just a little bit above average content , it's probably not worth spending the money .

But if you're producing great content , if you know you have things that engage people , if you know that you can speak to a spirit and demographic whether that's because of an event you have coming up or the social media content you're producing or just the type of establishment that you have it can work and it can work really well .

But it can also work really well to not do that and produce great content and hope it goes viral and spreads and get people to share and interact with people . So advertising on social media can be part of your overall strategy , but it should never be your strategy entirely .

It is not a strategy in and of itself , one piece of advertising on social media that has just exploded . In the past well , really five years , but really COVID on has been influencer marketing and influencers . Some of them can do great things for your brand . Some of them are just going to be a pain in the ass to work with .

There's no way to say influencers are always good or always bad , because it all depends on who you're interacting with , who that influences , what their reach is , how much social media they have that they can get , that they can bring to you , how much visibility they will bring you . But you need to be cautious .

A lot of people in the influencer game are going to ask for more than they should get and produce less results than you want . If you have people that are doing a great job , that are really speaking to your brand , that are huge in your specific market , could be great .

But an influencer , just because they live down the street from you and they have 250,000 followers , may not be able to help your brand if those 250,000 followers are scattered all over the globe . It's no different than using a hashtag . In some ways , it all depends upon the visibility of that influencer and the effect that influencer has in your market .

To tell you a quick story , there's a restaurant that is in the town that I'm in and I'm about 45 minutes from a town where there's a majoring university and there's an influencer there that happens to be foreign I forget where , from somewhere in Asia , I think and is really popular among the Asian students at that university .

And so this guy goes to the restaurant and he made a video of himself eating a pork chop . That was the whole video . He goes to restaurants , he reviews them and this video it was him trying this pork chop . I guess it was mostly just him eating a pork chop was the actual video .

He talked about how great it was that drove in huge business from the university . Now I know the owner of this place because I go there on a regular basis . He's a real nice guy and I know for a fact he didn't pay for it . No one approached this influencer to come there .

This is just a guy that goes and eats at restaurants and gives reviews of them for foreign students at the university who happened to pick this restaurant to go to .

It's not always necessary to pay to get influencers to promote you , but in this case you had an influencer that was local , that was specialized , just happened to come in for free and do it , but he would have been worth paying for the benefit that he's had to the business .

Now , if he was an influencer the same guy going to the same university , but his base of viewers was in Asia rather than in the United States , 30 minutes away from the restaurant it wouldn't have made a difference . So it really is .

If you're going to deal with influencers , it's about where their reach is , what their impact is , what they can bring to your business and a lot of them , let's be honest influencers are in the business of sales . They're in the business of selling themselves and their ability to promote things . They might be the type of people prone to exaggeration .

So just be careful if you're going to interact with influencers . Two final points . In all your social media , one thing you need is a strong call to action . You're interacting with these people . They're on the hook , they're listening to you , they're consuming your content . You have their attention , so you need to give them something to do .

I do this every week , right ? Hey ? If you guys have not joined Bar Business Nation , which is our Facebook group , we're trying to build a community of bar owners together to really help each other and promote each other and really develop a wonderful space for bar owners to learn and ask questions . Check out the show notes .

There's a link there for Bar Business Nation . Click on that . Head over to Facebook . Join the group . You have to answer three simple questions to get in . You just do that to weed out the spam and when you join there there are posts , there's conversations .

It is a great thing to do to help interact with other owners to get new ideas on how to grow and optimize your business . I say that call to action in one form or another almost every week . Why ? Because you guys are listening to me . You're a captive audience . And because you're a captive audience , I know that you're going to hear that part . Now .

Does everyone that listens to the podcast go and click that link and join the Facebook group ? Of course not . People consume a lot more content than they purchase things . That's just true in general . But you need to have a call to action .

You need to encourage folks to take whatever action it is that you want them to do , and nine times out of ten in our business that's hey , come in , have a drink with us . Hey , come see us . If you were doing a video on how to make the cocktail a week , you could end it with something like hope . You guys really enjoyed this video .

We are making these all week . It's a limited time special , so if you want to come in and try this drink , if you want to experience the awesomeness that we just talked about , make sure you show up this week and order this cocktail to see just how amazing it is . Always have a call to action .

Encourage them to do whatever it is you want them to do and it could be to like and follow you . It could be to share your post , it could be to subscribe to your email list . It could be to comment and drink .

It can be whatever it is and always include strong calls to action in your social media , because if they like your content , you need to direct that energy somewhere . And the final note I have for you on social media , and this is by far the most important be your brand , show your values , be yourself .

Whatever your core values are , whatever your brand should stand for , that needs to come across in your social media and you need to exemplify your culture consistently in your social media . That's how you create it cohesive with your brand concept .

But it's really important that whatever culture , whatever feel you have , whoever you are as a brand , as a bar , needs to come out in that social media . And with that guys , I'm going to let you go for the week , but first I'm going to give you two calls to action .

If you have not gotten my book how to Make Top Shelf Profits in the Bar Business , check out the show notes . It's available in Kindle , paperback , hardcover or Audible .

So , however you like to consume a book , there is a way for you to check out the book how to Make Top Shelf Profits in the Bar Business and , like I said , there's a link in the show notes for that .

Also , if you ever want to have a one-on-one conversation with me , if you're interested in talking about ways I may be able to help you grow your business , develop your bar , bring in more revenue , become more successful , really optimize your bar to make sure that you're spending your time working on , not in your bar , while putting as much of that profit to the

bottom line as possible , go to the show notes , hit , schedule a strategy session , get a meeting with me . We'll talk . We'll figure out if we can work together to help your bar be more awesome and more successful than ever . With that , guys have a great week . We will talk again later .