Let me start by saying how much I love Instagram as a social platform. It awakens the photographer in me (I’ve decided I can take good pictures), I think Instagram does that to everyone. Anyways, I enjoy updating my Instagram, on a personal level.

From a work perspective, It’s a bit different. Instagram opened a new window to express brands. I’m just gonna go through F&B since it’s where my expertise are.

The Instagram Trend

Restaurants nowadays are paying more attention to their Instagram accounts, building content visually rather than focusing on the written content. Photography, image setting, table top shots, mood setting is all part of the updates that restaurants adopted. The focus shifted to how ‘beautiful’ the imagery is, and i’m not saying that’s wrong, I find myself wanting to go to restaurants that take that extra mile and work on visual content that reflects on lifestyle or how pretty the setting is.

People want to experience the restaurant that they just liked on Instagram. It doesn’t matter if the food was mediocre, it’s the visual experience that they want to reflect on, that new ‘It’ place on Instagram that everyone seems to snap photos of. So how is your food? ‘It’s beautiful! It’s pretty!’ It might be tasty, we’re not so sure.

Instagram is my ally 

Instagram is that pretty marketing / social tool. Want to introduce a new menu item? Post on Instagram. Want to up-sell an item? Post on Instagram. Entice people visually on this platform and you’ll see the results right there. Whether using videos, boomerangs, imagery or design, as long as your visual content is trendy, you will see fantastic results. So you’re quite covered from a marketing point of view, but note that the taste is as important as the visual content.

How Instgrammable is your concept?

That’s the buzz factor now. Ambiance inside the restaurant, your tables and chairs, the walls, the decor and design. What about the dishes you use, the presentation of the food and drinks? You want people to feature you in their stories, you want posts about your restaurant, you want that social word of mouth. That’s when you come up with crazy menu items and interesting experiences that people will talk about and take pictures and videos of.

Worldwide beauty, worldwide reach 

The perfect social tool that travels worldwide with a few hashtags, through a few people and friends that are spread around the world, re-posted on various Instagram accounts around the globe. Use it wisely. Other than it’s quite easy to boost and promote a post on Instagram to reach your target and reach the whole world, don’t forget that people love food imagery. Foodies enjoy snapping photos of food, setting scenes and table setups to share with their friends and their followers.

All images featured are images that I’ve taken myself (photography skills plus filters are on point), told you :p

Dee xx