5 Steps to Build a Social Media Presence for Your Pizza Business

Our latest series for pizzeria owners is all about improving your online presence in 2023. After laying the foundation for why digital presence is important, we began to explore various aspects of online presence, starting with your pizza business website. Today we continue with a new topic – your social media presence. 

Social media has amazing potential for pizza businesses looking to increase awareness, customers, and sales! Just check out some of these stats: 

• Increase Brand Awareness: 55 percent of customers learn about new businesses on social media.
• Increase Customer Engagement: 68 percent of customers agree that social media enables them to interact with brands.
• Increase Sales: 78 percent of consumers are willing to buy from a company after having a positive experience with them on social media. 

The numbers make it clear that every pizza business should have a social media presence. But how do you get started? Today we’ll get you up and running in just five easy steps.

5 Steps to Build a Social Media Presence

Social media marketing is a complex subject we cannot cover in one article. We would love to dive into this at greater length in the future (and perhaps we will in 2023!). But for now, we will break it down into 5 simple things you can do to start building a social media presence for your pizza business immediately. 

1. Determine What Social Media Channels You’ll Use

Selecting your social media channels is a logical first step if you don’t currently have a social media presence (or you’re on too many channels and want to figure out where you should focus). According to Search Engine Journal, the top 10 social media channels by monthly active users (MAU) are:

1. Facebook (2.9 billion MAU)
2. YouTube (2.2 billion MAU)
3. WhatsApp (2 billion MAU)
4. Instagram (2 billion MAU)
5. TikTok (1 billion MAU)
6. SnapChat (538 million MAU)
7. Pinterest (444 million MAU)
8. Reddit (430 million MAU)
9. LinkedIn (250 million MAU)
10. Twitter (217 million MAU)

Some of the things to consider when choosing social media channels are:

• What channels do your customers/prospects use? 
• What channels do your competitors use? 
• What content type do you want to share (video, images, articles, text posts)?
• What resources do you have (time, money, etc., to create and maintain your social presence)

Answering these questions will help you determine what channels (and how many!) you should pursue. As a general rule, it’s usually good to start with one platform and focus on doing it well rather than spreading yourself across too many channels and failing to keep up with consistent posting and engagement. This is helpful advice if you’re just getting started OR if you currently have profiles on many platforms but aren’t giving them the TLC they deserve. 

2. Fill Out Your Social Media Profile

After you’ve decided which channel(s) you’ll use for your pizza business social media presence, you’ll want to create your account and fill out your profile. This may sound like a ‘no-brainer,’ but you must do it and do it right. 

Many social media users visit a business social media page when they have a question. When your social media profile is filled out with all the important details about your pizza business, visitors can easily find answers to their basic questions (like hours, menu, etc.). This provides a positive customer experience and increases the chances that they’ll order from you.

Here are some tips for creating your account and filling out your profile:

• Use your business name when you sign up, and choose a related username that customers will recognize as your brand.
• If you create profiles on multiple platforms, use the same username on all of them for brand consistency.
• Always use a profile image (and cover image, if that is an option). Your profile image can be your business logo, which also helps brand recognition. Make sure to follow the image size rules for the social platform so it looks professional (here’s a cheat sheet).
• Remember that SEO applies to social media profiles, so sprinkle keywords (like pizza, pizzeria, etc.) throughout your profile to help your business be found in searches.
• Include full contact details for your pizza business, including address, phone number, email, hours of operation, etc.
• If the platform has the option, include your full menu. For example, here are the instructions for adding a menu on Facebook. 

3. Create a Content Calendar

Now that you have your social media page created and profile set up, it’s time to think about how you will consistently use social media in the weeks and months to come. Consistency is the key, so the best way to do this is to create a social media content calendar to guide you each month.

A social media content calendar helps you plan and organize your upcoming content. So first, you’ll need to decide your posting frequency. According to HubSpot, most businesses post on social platforms at least once per day. However, you’ll want to choose a frequency you can realistically keep up with in the long term, so if that is twice a week or some other number, go with what works best for you.

Now that you know your schedule, you can create a calendar of the date and time of each post for the coming month. Then, fill it in with the post topic, the specific text, additional creative assets to accompany the post (like images and videos), and any links or hashtags you’ll use. With your content created, you can use the platform’s social media scheduler (or a third-party app) to schedule your content in advance.

4. Interact with Your Community

In step #3, you created a month’s worth of content and scheduled it all to post automatically on the days/times of your choosing. So, the work is done, right? No! Having a social presence should never be passive and one-sided. The point is to encourage engagement with your brand and interact with your community. So, you’ll need a social media manager to check in on your social media platform(s) regularly to monitor direct messages, comments on posts, tags from followers, and other interactions.

5. Measure and Adjust

The final step that should not be neglected is measuring your results and adjusting your strategy as needed. Some metrics to pay attention to include the following: 

• Followers/new followers
• Likes
• Comments
• Shares
• Link clicks
• Reach

These statistics will help you measure your success—and it’s always motivating to see that your efforts are paying off and your community is growing! Metrics can also help you determine what content works best for your audience, if some days/times get more action, and if a particular post deserves to be boosted with an ad.  

Building a Social Presence Takes Time

These five steps will get you started using social media to boost the online presence of your pizza restaurant. Follow steps 1-5, and then repeat 3-5 each month to develop a consistent presence and grow your online community. 

But keep in mind that building a social media presence takes time. Your progress may be slow, but keep going, and it will add up over time. The jump from 0 followers to 10, or 10 to 20, may seem small, but it’s huge! And you can use other methods of online presence to help build your social presence. For example, you’ll want to link to your social profiles on your website and encourage email contacts to follow you on social too.

We would love to dive into more details about each element of building a social media presence listed above – and maybe we will do that someday! But as for next time, we will continue to the next method for boosting your online presence—the intriguing and often confusing topic of SEO.