If you’re running a business at all, the likelihood of you needing a social media presence is high. In this day and age, you need social media because that’s how people find you! And if you’re ever on the food side of social media (hello, me!), then you’ll notice how much you need social media if you’re a bakery. Trust me, no one loves a good photo of delicious baked goods as much as the people of the internet.
I know how scary it can be to start a social media account with nothing to go on, so this is what we’re here for today! Learn everything you need to know about building a strong social media presence for your bakery, plus our favorite tools to help make social media management so much easier.
How to create a social media strategy for your bakery
You might hear the words “social media strategy” and want to run for the hills, but I promise! It’s not that hard. No, really.
Being consistent is the biggest key to building your social media accounts and a strategy will help you stay consistent. Because is there anything more annoying than discovering a new bakery and finding out that they just … don’t post anything on their social media channels? How are you to know if they’re open or even what they sell if they’re not sharing that information online?!
Exactly, you won’t know any of that information if they don’t post. This is why you need to be posting and create a social media strategy! Here are our steps to getting started on creating a strategy for yourself:
Determine your goals
What the heck do you want the social media accounts to do for you? Do you want more followers? Better brand awareness? More online sales? Whatever you want, you need to write it down so you can start building ideas around those goals to achieve them.
Know your target audience
As I mentioned above, who the heck is your audience? Who do you see coming through the door of your bakery every single day? Are there any people that you wish would walk through (and no, I am not talking about Harry Styles!)?
If you already have social media accounts, you can figure out who your audience is already by checking your analytics on each platform. It will tell you what the overall demographics are for your accounts so you can better serve them in the future with your content!
Once you know who your audience is, figure out what platforms would be best for you to target them specifically!
According to Sprout Social, here is the breakdown of demographics on each platform:
Facebook
44% are female and 56% are male with the largest age group being 25-34.
34.1% are female and 61.29% are male with the largest age group being 18-29.
YouTube
51.4% are female and 48.6% are male with the largest age group being 15-35.
Instagram
48.2% are female and 51.8% are male with the largest age group being 18-24.
TikTok
54% are female and 46% are male with the largest group being 18-24.
Write out a content strategy
Think of all the goals you originally wrote down. How do you think you can achieve these goals through social? Is it a straight promotion? Is it a series of videos? You need to think of what would entice you as a customer to want to come into your store and buy an item from you.
Start writing down different ideas that you think would appeal to your audience—customer testimonials, behind-the-scenes content, showing your delicious creations, special promotions, and so much more.
Consistent branding
You don’t want to confuse your audience at all when it comes to your brand so being consistent is essential. Make sure that wherever your brand is online that you have the same logo, brand voice, color palette, and more so people know they are following the same bakery everywhere.
Create a content calendar
This is going to be so helpful to make sure that you’re maintaining consistency online. Create a calendar that covers every social media platform and what you’re going to post on each. This will help you stay organized, know exactly what you will need content-wise, and helps you make sure that your content is varied and not just the same thing over and over again.
Engage with your audience
People love being responded to! If you have comments or DMs piling up, make sure you’re replying to them! This will help you build your brand’s reputation online and build a loyal fanbase.
Optimize and analyze
Be sure that you’re regularly keeping updated with your social media analytics. This will help you figure out what is working well for your accounts and what needs to be improved upon. Once you start seeing which content your audience is engaging with the most, you’ll be able to start making more content like that so they have a reason to stick around!
What types of content should a bakery post on social media?
Ready to start putting together your content calendar and figure out the perfect things to post? Here are some examples of things you should start posting on your bakery’s social media accounts:
Product shots
Duh! You should be posting high-quality images and videos of your bakery’s tasty treats every second that you can. Show off those cakes, cookies, and beautiful sourdough loaves you’ve been working on all day. Be sure to highlight the things that make your products unique and completely and totally yours.
Behind-the-Scenes
This is such an easy one to do day-to-day. Take your followers behind the scenes of your bakery. Highlight your employees. Explain how you make a certain item. Show off both the good things and the bad things (this makes you human!). Showing these details will make people feel more connected to you and want to stick around to see what you’re up to next.
Whether there is a holiday coming up, a special occasion, opening a new location, or anything in-between, highlight any special promotions you’ve got going on. Creating a sense of urgency and making your promo a limited-time thing, will make people want to go to your bakery ASAP.
Customer Testimonials
Everyone loves a review by an actual customer! Share those positive reviews and those satisfied customers. One of my favorite things to do is share and repost users’ posts that they have tagged you in—in particular, Instagram Stories! This shows people how much your products are loved by others but also builds trust in your brand and makes others want to go out and try them.
Tutorials and Recipes
People love getting tips and tricks, especially when it comes from someone in the industry! Share any baking tips, recipes, tutorials, and more to help get your audience to engage and show off your skills! You can even ask your followers what they want to see you make, go live, and answer any questions to bring more followers in.
Fun Facts and Trivia
Trivia facts are in and always will be in. Have an interesting fact about baking, the history of your business, or just a random fun fact you love? Share it!
Staff Spotlights
Introduce your team and let people know who works at the bakery! Everyone loves to feel connected and as if they know the people they follow. Share 5 facts about your team. Share their favorite item on the menu! Just give your followers something they’ll love about your staff.
Polls and Questions
Want to engage your audience? Ask them questions or poll them to ask what they want from you, about your bakery, on what they want you to make, or their favorite flavors to get new product ideas. Whatever you want, this will help you get more engaging content and make your audience feel more connected to you as a whole.