Social media is an excellent way to advertise and market your catering company online. With visual content so popular on Instagram and the opportunity to go viral on TikTok with little teaser videos, you can put one thing that people are addicted to on social media directly in front of their eyes – food.

Many people forget this, but when Instagram first launched as a photo-sharing app the majority of content on the platform was food. Users were sharing pictures of their meals while eating out as well as what they prepared themselves.

This trend has exploded in the food and beverage industry over the past few years, and many restaurants now focus even more on presentation and over-the-top dishes to get more exposure on social media, resulting in buzz and fully booked reservations.

You can leverage this same phenomenon when marketing your catering business on social media. Before social media, you were limited to showcasing your work visually to your website, and now you have multiple platforms that you can use to get your business out there in front of a very engaged audience.

The key is to understand your audience, what they want to see, how they engage with content according to the special social network, and what platforms you should focus your effort on. Let’s break down several tips to help you effectively market your catering company on social media.

1. Understand What Type of Content Will Trigger the Most Engagement

Whereas another business might need to lead with a different approach rather than with their “end product,” when it comes to marketing a catering company on social media you want to lead with your product. You want to blow people away with what you do. Think of your end product as a form of art.

Unless your work – the actual catering product from dishes, to presentation, etc. – makes a huge visual impact, consumers aren’t going to notice you, nor will they just randomly seek out your catering company on social media without first being intrigued visually.

Take your presentation and your photography to the next level. For example, a regular picture of a wedding cake is going to blend in with any other wedding cake post on Instagram. However, if you shoot a video of a cake in a dark setting with cool lighting and sparklers and sync it to the right music you now have a piece of content that is going to turn heads, attract engagement, and get your catering company discovered – and followed on social media.

There isn’t a correct answer to the question, “What type of catering content performs well on social media?” Get creative and experiment. Find out what works best at attracting the type of consumers you ideally want to follow your business on social media.

2. Focus on the Social Media Networks That Are Highly Visual

There are going to be some social media networks that work better for you in terms of lead generation and customer acquisition, and others that will be the clear leaders in terms of engagement.

This will depend a lot on your style – and there is no right or wrong approach when it comes to creating content. You want to showcase your specific skill set and talents – over time you will learn what works best and evolve into your unique style and vibe.

These are the social media networks your catering company should be active on:

Instagram: This is that app that started the food sharing craze that everyone either actively participates in or is guilty of doing in the past. Using location tagging and the correct hashtags can get you found by local foodies.

If you get on their radar with creative images, unique dishes, and a different angle when it comes to the content presentation you can quickly gain an incredible amount of followers.

Facebook: The easiest solution is to connect your catering company’s Facebook page to its Instagram page, and enable cross-sharing. Each time you post on Instagram it will also post on Facebook. Look at the most popular video content on Facebook – it’s either memes or food.

If your content is performing well on Instagram that momentum will generally carry over to Facebook as well, giving you double the bang you each piece of catering content created.

TikTok: TikTok’s algorithm is very creator-friendly, whereas Instagram and Facebook have an algorithm that limits organic exposure to a degree. Why? They want you to pay for ads to get the most exposure. TikTok will eventually reach that point as well, but right now in its infancy, you can gain major traction.

Using the same hashtags for discovery, focus on creating content that thrives on this platform – like slow motion lava cake exploding, or a chocolate fountain in slow motion with perfectly matched music.

Pinterest: Creating boards on Pinterest for each industry your catering company serves – like weddings, birthday parties, office parties, corporate events, etc. – and loading them up with images that are optimized for search can drive an incredible amount of traffic to your website.

For example, an image of a wedding cake pinned to a “Wedding Cakes” board by a catering company located in Seattle would want to optimize that image around the target phrase “wedding cake designer in Seattle” and then another image for “Seattle wedding cakes” and so forth. Pinterest is often ignored by many catering businesses, so be sure to take full advantage of that opportunity.

3. Create Catering Content of All Processes from Prep to Finished Product

While amazing images of food will attract engagement on social media, don’t be afraid to test different aspects of the entire process, starting with food prep and the actual cooking. TikTok and Instagram stories are great places to highlight behind the scene content.

If you take a moment to really deep dive into food content that performed in the top two percent you will see that there is usually some form of uniqueness to it that isn’t found elsewhere. For example, a slow-motion saute pan flipping video or a time-lapse video of a cake baking and rising.

Think beyond just the final product your catering company creates before serving your guests. It’s all of the little details that happen to arrive at the final product that many people are addicted to viewing and sharing on social media.

4. Post Content That Starts Conversations

The best approach to take with your catering company social media strategy is to create content that is going to cause a reaction when viewed, thus starting conversations – between followers and social media users amongst themselves and with you as well.

A video of an elaborate wedding event that you did the catering for that focuses on a multi-layer cake, which then features a time-lapse video of its construction, is going to attract views in itself. But, when you then ask viewers to tag someone that would love to have this at their wedding you create engagement that works on autopilot.

Amazing content is rewarded with shares, tags, and likes. This helps to further push your content up in the algorithm, and it also shares it throughout your followers’ (and those that come in contact with it) connections.

This type of engagement and reach is impossible to match via paid promotion for the same cost, which is essentially nothing aside from the time it takes you to creates the content. This is why focusing on your social strategy is so important. The return on investment can be unparalleled when you crack the code and learn what works for your business.

Final Thoughts

The images you share are going to always be the first aspect of your content that is going to determine whether or not someone is going to pause for a second while scrolling through their feed. You could have a well thought out caption written, a unique message to share, or a special promotion to announce, but if your food image doesn’t stop traffic, it will never be seen – or read.

When you combine creative images and photography concepts with the right targeting on social media it can help build buzz surrounding your catering company. When you snowball that buzz you can position your business as the go-to catering choice in your market.

You want to establish your style – foodies connect with the company as well as the pictures of food, so think of this as an overall branding play. If you have any questions related to social media marketing for catering companies feel free to contact us at your convenience.

Our team of catering marketing professionals will be more than willing to answer specific questions you may have, as well as review your current social media presence and campaigns. We can offer you suggestions as well as explain how our catering social media marketing full-service campaign management works.

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