Your website serves as a virtual home for your business, and contact information, menus, and social links serve as its foundation. These are all necessary details for any restaurant website you build. Think about your site as your home: there are really only a few rooms that give you the chance to express yourself. There are a few luxuries you can add to this home, such as online ordering, gift cards, and a restaurant-loyalty program, all of which enhance the website experience; however, you only have few pages to really make your website stand out, reveal the culture of your restaurant, and feature exciting happenings. You may need to renovate and build a new addition, and in comes your new blog. There aren’t many restaurants venturing into this space. Managing a restaurant blog is a time commitment; it requires a creative mind, and it means you’ll have to constantly update your website. However, the positives outweigh the negatives. Even if you’re only blogging once a month, that one post is building your brand, speaking directly to your customers, and keeping your restaurant on guests’ minds. Many restaurant owners don’t know how to get started with blogging. To help inspire you on this new venture, check out these examples of restaurants who blog with finesse. (Click on the images to enlarge.)Blogging is, at its most basic, storytelling. Luckily as a restaurant, you have many stories to tell. From your lightbulb moment to open your own place, to your expeditions researching menu items, to your observations of the changing food industry – there are so many tidbits about your journey worth sharing. Washington Street Eats from Providence, Rhode Island, uses their blog to share their history, new and old flavors at their restaurant, and to even feature their partners. They make it clear they would be nowhere without their customers, and invite them to join the journey and share their own stories in the comments. Many restaurant websites have a press page where they share newspaper and magazine mentions or awards they’ve won. Small changes are not always press-worthy, but they are worthy of your own blog. Publish your own press release about new menu items, new locations, or new employees. Make your blog an official news source for your restaurant. Amato’s, an Italian eatery in New England, announced the opening of new stores on their blog, with addresses, phone numbers, and links to each restaurants’ take-out menus. Tip #3: Hold fun contests to engage your readers If your blog is already well established, it could be a great place to hold contests. Give away a gift certificate to a random commenter, or ask readers to share their honest experiences at your restaurant in exchange for a 10% discount on their favorite item. Pizza Express celebrated their anniversary with a photo contest, asking readers to post photos of their favorite Pizza Express experiences on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with the hashtag #PizzaExpressMoments. All details, including when the contest is running, how to enter, and prize details, were explained in a thorough blog post, which also makes it easier to share on social media.
Road to Eye-catching Landscape
The new common language will be more simple and regular than the existing European languages. It will be as simple as Occidental; in fact, it will be Occidental. To an English person, it will seem like simplified English, as a skeptical Cambridge friend of mine told me what Occidental is. The European languages are members of the same family.