Engaging Your Customers with Social Media (Part 1)

How to choose the right social networks for your coffee shop business

For the next couple weeks, I want to cover a topic, that all of you are dealing within your coffee shop businesses a lot sooner or later: Social Media or the Social Networks and how to use them for your coffee shop businesses.

It’s a series containing 3 articles in total. I want to show you what social networks to use and why, how to be more visible for potential customers with creating the right content and a short guide how to effectively use Facebook and Instagram for your coffee shop business.

The first article asks a really important question:

Have you chosen the right social networks for your coffee shop business, yet?

Let’s be honest for a moment, did you set up a Facebook page and an Instagram or Twitter account for your coffee shop because every other coffee shop you know of, has one of these, too?

Are you one of these coffee shops that believe, every coffee shop has to have an account/a page? Because, it’s just how it works in that business? Because everyone is telling you, you need to be visible online as well? To get attention from potential customers on social networks as well?

Right, it is all about visibility, not just when passing by your coffee shop, but also online. This is true and absolutely essential, when wanting to become known by those coffee fans out there.

But, do you know, if your online coffee community is actually using these social networks you set up an account for and if they’re interested in your social media exploits?

One more question for you: Are the people in your online coffee community the same as the people coming to your coffee shop every week and vice versa?

Step into the shoes of your customer for a moment and think about scrolling through your newsfeed on Facebook or the photos/images on Instagram. What catches your attention? When do you actually read posts or even engage with posts? I’m not talking about liking posts, but actually commenting and/or sharing them.

We’re all busy at some point, so is your online community. Your page is only one of hundreds out there, taken into account, that every new coffee shop is setting up a page as soon as they open their shops (or even before opening).

Having a page or an account only because you can say ‘Mission accomplished, I’m now visible online as well,’ is not the right approach here.

The worst thing would be, wanting to be in all (!) of these social networks… Ugh! Remember, it’s not just done by setting up accounts and posting some photos or videos once in awhile, someone has to take care of each one of these networks and posting photos, videos or other relevant content frequently which is time consuming, when done right and keeps your staff, or even worse, it is keeping YOU, from doing other, more important things, especially when you’re new to the coffee business industry.

Let me tell you about 3 steps to find out, what social network to use and why to use them.

Continue: Read part 2 (club) / Read part 3 (club)