15 May How creating a blog for your cafe can benefit your business
If you run a cafe, you can likely attest to the tough competition in this marketplace. However, being a small, independent outlet doesn’t have to significantly count against your chances; according to London Coffee Festival figures mentioned by The Guardian, there are twice as many independent coffee shops as there are cafes run by branded chains.
However, we shouldn’t play down the need for you to distinguish your coffee shop’s offerings as much as possible in the bid to stay afloat. A blog could provide a valuable differentiating factor…
It’s the people that make a place
In a marketplace largely populated by soulless behemoths, you can draw attention to the more personal touch that your own cafe can bring. Gabe Shohet of Black Sheep Coffee told The Guardian: “Our typical customer cares about the quality of what’s in the cup, the expertise of the barista, and consciously avoid large chains that are unable to deliver the same attention to detail and quality.”
You can especially effectively fuel faith in your coffee-making methods by maintaining a blog on which you regularly show your company’s expertise in these methods. As content marketing guru Corey Wainwright has pointed out in an article for HubSpot: “If you’re consistently creating content that’s helpful for your target customer, it’ll help establish you as an authority in their eyes.”
Regular blog posting can create publicity in itself
No matter how many impressive things you say about coffee on your blog, you can’t necessarily expect to see its visitor numbers soaring if you don’t ensure that the blog is actively promoted. Fortunately, simply keeping that blog periodically updated with fresh content can largely do that job for you – especially if the blog is tied to your cafe’s social media channels.
With each new blog post, Google has another page of your site to index and so bring to the attention of people who use the search engine. Furthermore, by focusing those blog posts on topics not directly related to the cafe itself, you can help garner attention and interest from people who may never have otherwise come across that blog or even learned of the cafe’s existence.
You could also set up your blog in such a way that, whenever a new article is published there, this new content will be advertised on your eatery’s social media pages – such as those on Facebook and Twitter – as well. This strategy, too, can help you reach out to a new audience.
Allow people to easily access the blog even at the cafe
A genuinely interesting and informative blog could also help you keep current customers returning. You could use our own guest access WiFi solution to let people readily access your blog as they eat and drink in your bricks-and-mortar outlet. Don’t make them sing for their cuppa… or Internet access, for that matter.
You could also urge those customers to use this Internet access to post an online review of the cafe, as coffee-making equipment maker Handground advises.