₦airaland Forum

Wrapping up.

Accept my sincere apologies.

I should have stated earlier that you were about to consume a post of over 3000 words long.

I just pictured many of you going for a dash if I disclosed that at the beginning of this post.


Now that you've made it to the finished line, I'd like to remind you of how awesome you are.


Before you look down on yourself as not capable of doing all that was discussed up there, I'd like you to remember how far you've come.


You're strong.

You've got what it takes to make delicious delicacies.

Even when you feared you added too much salt, feared that customers won't come to your restaurant, or fear that you'll run into debts.


You still managed to make it through. You've come so far to give up on your dreams to be widely known for your creativity when it comes to cooking.


So I believe in you.

That you can grow your Instagram followers to millions in 3 months, that you can relate to customers in the most professional, helpful and humorous way on Instagram.


Just make sure to make use of all that was taught in this post.

Finally...

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I can't give you Laura's contact (to say I don't even have it lol), but I can give something a little bit more like Laura's direct phone number.


"What?!"

A free one-on-one consultation with me! :-).


The consultation will last for only 30 minutes and participants will be chosen randomly every week.


Yes, every week I'll choose one person randomly to answer the questions you have about using social media for business.

Also, I'll give out some bonus tips like the one I gave earlier in this post about garnering followers.

More on this giveaway later. Till then, stay blessed, master all that was discussed up there and..... Bye Bye!

Lesson 6: Laura leveraged Linda's influence

As one of the foremost bloggers in West Africa, I've been an ardent reader of Linda Ikeji's blog since about five years ago.

And that was how I got to know about her sister, Laura.


Although Linda is fond of announcing her accomplishments on her blog, most of the time, news about the Ikejis family were published by Laura - on her Instagram page of course.


From the news of the family house in their hometown to the most recent one of Linda's pregnancy, Laura Ikeji is no doubt, the public relations officer of her family �.


Talk about Influencer Marketing, Laura has been leveraging her sister's influence since the beginning of time.

The Takeaway for Restaurant owners


According to Hubspot, a recent study comprised of marketers from a variety of industries, 94% said influencer marketing was an effective campaign strategy. That's great news for marketers -- right?


Influencer marketing is designed to tap into an existing community of engaged followers on social media. Influencers are specialists in their niches. These individuals have influence over an audience you might be trying to reach and can be helpful marketing to those buyers.

What does this mean for you as a restauranteur?

How exactly do you perform influencer marketing to promote your foods & drinks?

And how does it differ from the normal celebrity spokesperson advertising model?

There is some overlap between celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing campaigns.


But followers of influencers trust that their endorsement of a product comes from a well-researched, more holistic place, rather than something as simple as a signed contract between a brand and a person of influence.


And while there is often a formal agreement in place between both parties, influencers tend to be more selective about their affiliations, choosing to partner with brands that reflect their unique personal brands and won't alienate their followers.


With that in mind, here are four things you need to keep in mind when launching an influencer marketing campaign for your restaurant:

1. Expertise: Would the content of your campaign be appropriate coming from this influencer, given what he or she is famous for?

2. Reach: [/b]Can this influencer engage your audience? Does she specifically have reach on the social media channels where your audience spends its time?

[b]3. Demographic: Is this person's following similar to your restaurant's buyer persona? Does he or she affect the same people?

4. Notoriety: Is this influencer well liked? Is his/her fame split between admiration and condemnation, or are they a person of mass appeal? (The latter is what you want, so as to not alienate potential customers.)


All these (and more) are important for you to put together before paying an influencer to promote your brand.

Lesson 5: Laura tries her hands on videos.

I've never used it to make one before.


Mother knows I'm very good at making Eba - a popular food synonymous with the Yoruba tribe of Nigeria.


So she had called earlier to asked that I made it before she comes back from work.


Here I was three hours later after she called, staring at the boiling pot of water whilst holding a can of milk in my right hand.



Thing is, I was tired of making eba the same way - boil water, add cassava flakes and stir until it's a little bit hard.


And considering the fact that I had watched an advert of a milk brand on Facebook, where the chef added milk to a boiling water before adding cassava flakes.


I decided to bring out the millennial spirit in me.


I went ahead and added a considerate amount of milk, pour in my cassava flakes and yes, it turns out to be the best eba I'd ever make.


Now let's talk about you; the amazing restaurant owner.


Tell me, when you saw the word 'video', were you gripped by the same fear that taunts you the first time you tried cooking a new recipe?


When you saw, 'tried her hands on videos', I hope you didn't give a thought to how clumsy you were the last time you stand in front of a camera?


Please don't be.

Because on Instagram, a picture is worth a thousand words!


Now let's do some maths.


If a picture is said to be worth a thousand words, a video that lasted a minute, will be worth how much words?



Tens of thousands, right?


Good!

Do you see the reason why you shouldn't entertain fear when it comes to making Instagram videos?


Laura wasn't born with the power to make Instagram videos that get viewed by hundreds of thousands of people.


She learned to make them.

The takeaway for restaurant owners

Food photographs are the most compelling content on restaurant social media platforms.


Statistics show that they get commented on, shared and talked about exponentially more than any other type of social post.


An Instagram video takes that one step farther.


If a picture of a perfectly cooked aged sirloin is inspiring, think about the response to a short video depicting the sizzling meat on the grill being expertly plated with freshly roasted rosemary potatoes.


You can take your patrons on a quick tour from purveyor to the palate.

And a simple tip while videoing in the kitchen: Because random noises are inevitable (even the odd expletive) when shooting in the kitchen, it’s simpler to keep your thumb over the microphone than have your cinematic efforts spoiled by an unexpected crash.


Uncork a wine bottle, pour into a glass, and raise it to salute the weekend, introduce diners to your chef at work in the kitchens, whatever you do, just ensure you take advantage of Instagram videos and any other features up the sleeves of Zuckerberg & team.


Finally, remember, Laura didn't just use any Nkwerre juju to make eight hundred thousand people stay glued to her page, she introduced videos (fun videos, dance videos, happy videos) that made people look at her differently.



For more on Instagram features, check out this amazing post #GrowOnlineWithChinny from my very good friend at BellaNaija - Hi Chinny �.

Lesson 4: Laura handles comments professionally.

Trolls!

They are the scourge of the Internet. They lurk in comment sections spewing hate and negativity.

Trolling is very rampant within the Nigerian entertainment scene.


Remember Gbemi Olateru, Niyola, Uche Jumbo?


How about Leslie Jones and Method Man?

These are regular cases of singers, actors and actresses lashing out and ranting at trolls who are most probably laughing their heads off when they look at the screens of their mobile phones.


Since the Internet is still relatively new and propelled by unrestricted freedom of expression, a lot of people get away with saying hurtful and demeaning things about other people.


In some countries, the UK especially, there are laws created specifically to curb Internet trolling.


You probably won't have to block out this keyboard terrorists like Laura Ikeji always do, but you need to learn how to interact with them.


The takeaway for restaurant owners


Setting up an Instagram account for your restaurant not only allows you to share enticing images of your food but creates a space to interact with customers before and after they leave your establishment - customer service.



That's why you need to take Instagram comments seriously and learn how to respond to them.


No matter what the social network, there will always be people out there posting negative or inappropriate comments.


Respond to positive comments on your Instagram content if a user takes the time to ask a question and participate in any conversation you’ve started.


As a best practice, check comments at least once a week thoroughly, especially for contests/timely posts.


If you use Iconosquare to manage your Instagram for Business account, check out the comments tool to mark things as reading/unread, moderate inappropriate comments and reply to the positive comments and questions on your desktop without having to manage these from your phone every time.


Engage with people who follow you, or other people in your category that you follow, i.e. you Give love to get love.

Spend time daily or at least weekly “liking” and commenting on other posts besides your own.


Not sure how to respond when different types of comments start rolling in on one of your posts?


Follow these guidelines outlined by[i] HubSpot[/i]’s social media and content strategist, Brittany Leaning:

Lesson 3: Laura carved a niche for herself and stick to it.


If you've ever had the opportunity to discuss Instagram and what it entails with a Nigerian, chances are that he/she will have mentioned the likes of Maraji, Instablog9ja, and yes, Lasisi Elenu.


Allow me to save you the trip to Google, as Maraji is an Instagram comedian whose skits depicts the daily life of an average Nigerian and you can easily relate to them.


Instablog9ja allows Nigerians (and the world) to keep up with the most exclusive news about their favorite celebrities without leaving their favorite social media app - Instagram.


The rate at which Lasisi Elenu became a phenomenal success is something that still baffles me till today.

It baffles me at the same time confirmed the saying about how people will love you for who you are.


What Lasisi basically do is make use of a Snapchat filter in his 'ranting' videos on Instagram.


And within three months or so, man has gained over five hundred thousand organic followers.


The Takeaway for Restaurant owners


Instagram is a just another place where everyone does what someone else is already doing.


Restaurant owners post the same way. Y'all uses the same hashtag. You use the same filters. You follow the same advice and uses the right hand to add seasonings to your cuisines (I’m assuming).


Why do we do this?

Well, we’re conditioned to behave this way.


When you’re young, standing out is often times the most embarrassing thing imaginable. You’re rewarded for conforming, so you dress the same way as your friends, listen to the same music they do, and say the same silly expressions they say.


This conditioning continues when you reach adulthood.


Companies usually don’t hire the guy wearing the super comfy and sensible sweatpants – they hire one of the dozen guys wearing a black suit.


Pretty girls usually don’t go for the guy with the blue Mohawk – they go for one of the million guys with “the businessman” haircut.


But here’s the fact…


Blending into the crowd can only take you so far.


Tiwa Savage did backup for George Michael, lent vocals for Mary J. Bling and even performed on stage with Destiny's Child.


Yet, no one paid her a lick of attention until she started singing in her local dialect - Pidgin English and Yoruba.


You (probably) won’t have to repeat the fact that you don't do Kele Kele Love to succeed as a restaurant owner.

But you are going to have to separate yourself from the crowd both on Instagram and in the real world.


You’re going to have to be that one gray suit in a sea of black.

You’re going to have to find your voice.

The views are encouraging enough, so I've decided to post the rest of the article today . Oh, by the way, I'm having issues dropping images in-between sentences, anyone wants to help with that?




Lesson 2: Laura's Followers kept soaring higher�.


"I went from 100 followers to 1k followers and 1k to 5k and from 5k to 20k"

As at the time of writing this post, Laura's follower's count stands at 835,678.


However, just like you didn't set out to start cooking hundred bags of rice the first day you opened your restaurant.


Just like Laura's sister; Linda Ikeji, was once a 'broke bartender' before she became the billionaire blogger we all know today.


Just like I could hardly imagine, years ago, that I'll be writing for y'all amazing people today.

The same thing goes for Laura's Instagram followers count.

She didn't have that amount of followers in a day.


Instead, she kept attracting people to her page - many thanks to her consistency in making dance videos.

The Takeaway for Restaurant Owners


There are two ways to get more followers: targeted following and engagement.


It's highly advisable that you make use of this two ways if you really want many followers who will also engage with your posts.

Targeted Following

Targeted following is exactly what it sounds like, following the right kind of people. You can do this several ways.


The most common is to follow hashtags that are relevant to your industry.

For example, an Afang place may want to search for #soup #igbosoup #nigerianfood #bestafang, etc.


Here’s a tip: Instagram has this nifty little feature in their search bar that will display tags that are closely related to or commonly used with the tag you are searching for.


Then the highest performing posts (most likes, comments, retweets, etc.) with that tag will show up first.



Click on the post or tweet, then click the on the number of likes it has. This will pull up a list of users who have liked the post. Follow them!


I'll talk about engagement in the next lesson.

Bonus tip.


Follow the big guns of the food industry and turn on the notification on to get notified as soon as they post something new on their page.


Once you receive the push notification that a new post has been added to their page, just leave everything you may be doing at that moment and rush to the new post on Instagram.


Now, all you've got to do is to click on the likes number count. This will bring up all the people who have liked the post at the time it was posted.


Start following as many of them as you can.

Even if their handle reads 'ihatefood', just click the follow button.


A study has shown that people are more likely to follow back an account that follows them whilst they are still active on Instagram.

Cc:

Lalasticlala
Ishilove
Semid4lyfe
Obinoscopy

Hi Restaurant owners!
[img][/img]
I know what you’re thinking.


Considering the stack of customer's invoices in front of you, a post titled '6 Instagram Lessons Laura Ikeji's page can Teach You as a Restaurateur’, sounds too hip and trendy to be of any real or tangible value to you as a restaurant owner.


In fact, reading anything about Laura Ikeji pose a 'threat' to your dreams of owning branches from the deep suburbs of Surulere (Small London) to the most serene environment of Lagos Island.

And I truly understand why you can't see any similarity between this author of a highly criticized book and you, a restaurant owner.



But shall we take a look at this from a different angle?


OK.


[size=24pt]The bottom pot taste �[/size]

I'm not trying to make you feel bad in any way.

I'd have done the same if I was in your shoes.

I mean, the only place you could ever think of dumping a blog post like this, is inside the boiling oil back in your restaurant's kitchen, right? :-).


But, if you had done that, you'd have 'fry' your chances of winning the restaurants race in this Instagram age.


To achieve your dreams of becoming the official chef to the President one day, some of the important steps you need to take are:


Teach yourself or your staff(s) how to respond to comments on Instagram;
Post contents customers will find amazing and yes:
Drive the awareness your restaurant will ever need all from Instagram.


[size=24pt]What has this got to do with Laura Ikeji?[/size]

[img][/img]

This fashion entrepreneur & the author may not be your go-to expert anytime you need advice and inspiration about what to wear, how to live and even, an advice from her on how to author a book might be a no-no thing for you & your entire clan



No offense Mama Rok, I know nobody comes to this world to suffer, lol.



But whatever you do, I'm imploring you to eat, eat, and eat any cuisine of how Laura Ikeji uses Instagram for business.



You, being a restauranteur and not a part of the social media marketing for restaurants trend is much better than using Instagram for business and not taking cues from Laura's Instagram page.


You'll be making a big mistake.



Laura Ikeji's Instagram story has practical insight for restaurant owners (or anyone else) looking to develop an Instagram page that works (sells) for them.

[size=24pt]What Laura didn't talk about in her book.[/size]

"OK, I'm sold. How do I start using Instagram for my restaurant business?"



Glad to know you made the right decision to learn a bit about what will help you achieve your dreams as a restaurateur!



Social media, Instagram especially, is a rapidly expanding industry that has news apps coming and going every day.


This can be a little overwhelming, so we’ll just stick to the big player platform -- Instagram -- for this blog post.



But once you get the basics down, feel free to experiment with other apps and platforms – you never know what will be the next big thing!



In this post, we will cover the basics of how Laura uses Instagram marketing and how to implement these lessons for your restaurant's page.



Things like: what Instagram features are best for your business, what should you be posting, and how will you grow your followers, will be treated.



Although we wouldn't be repeating what Laura has discussed in her book, How To Make Money On Instagram.



However, we'll be analyzing her Instagram post where she unveiled the book back in January:



“A few years ago I joined Instagram and started posting pictures. I went from 100 followers to 1k followers, and 1k to 5k and from 5k to 20k, I was tagged as attention seeking and loud, some said annoying and many called me jobless. Lol, I disregarded all the smirk talks and continued to make my page fun, I introduced videos, fun videos, dance videos, happy videos that made people look at me differently and kept them glued to my page.
And my followers went from 20k to 50k . As soon as I got to 50k my life changed, I was getting freebies like crazy, a few people recognized me in public and I made my first N100k from just posting fun videos.
Fast forward. Went from 50k to 500k, now almost 700k. everything I get is free, l make a lot of money, different endorsements, different paid ads, opened my dream fashion store, thousands of young people get inspired by me and I got famous from just dedicating my time to this platform called Instagram."






We'll analyze all the ingredients she used in cooking that post one after the other - 6 of them to be precise.



So, are you ready?


Alright, let’s get moving.


[size=24pt]Lesson 1: Laura joined Instagram and started posting pictures. [/size]


Ever wondered why #food is one of the most popular hashtags on Instagram?


Well, during the early days of this amazing app, Mike Krieger; one of the co-founders of Instagram launches the lauded tradition of Instagram food photography with a sepia-toned snap of a dinner table.


Based on the chopsticks, it looks like some kind of Asian food was consumed. There’s also plenty of beer to be had.



Just like Mike, Laura Ikeji was one of the pioneer's users of Instagram in Nigeria.



It wasn't as if I was sitting beside her on the day she posted her first Instagram picture, but one thing I noticed was that she was very consistent with the app.



She kept uploading pictures to a point where I became 'glued' to her page, Lol.



Now let's look at how you can implement this consistency tactic on your business page.



The Takeaway for Restaurant Owners.


Images. Images. And more images!



With over 155 million posts, #foodporn is one largest tag on Instagram, so it's advisable not to skimp out on some premium photos of your dishes.



Social media marketing for restaurants lives and dies by the quality of their photos.



If you have the capability to get a professional photographer to come in, do it.



If you can’t, here are a few tips to take some killer shots with your phone:



Make it bright: Bright, colorful images are more pleasing to the eye and catch attention better than dark, shadowy ones (save the mood lighting for your dining room).


Work that angle: Straight on shots are fine but really common. Try taking the photo looking straight down, or put the camera right a level with the table edge. Play around with your space and see what you come up with.


High resolutions are the best resolution: You want those photos to be as big and as high a resolution as possible, that way any resizing or touch-ups you have to do will be easier. Remember to follow the rules of third.



Filters: Most phones come with several filter options and the ability to do the most basic of touch ups with brightness and contrast.


Explore what options are available on your device and see what magic you can work through that lens.

P.S. - We'll stop here today guys :-). Sorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyy! The complete post is 3000 words long. And it's only the response I got today that will determine if I'm not adding to the boredom Nigeria is showing everyone at the moment, but lifting your spirit. Lol.

P.P.S. - But, not to worry, the complete post can be savored here (http://cococreatorsblog..com/2018/06/6-instagram-lessons-from-laura-.html). However, the lessons will be posted over the course of 6 days here on Niaraland.

P.P.P.S. - There's a giveaway at the end of this post so endeavor to be on the lookout for the remaining parts here on NL or better still, be smart and finish before everyone does. Just use the link enclosed above

Till tomorrow beautiful people
Adeboye.