Journal / Social media marketing
Restaurant social media marketing in Glasgow: what actually fills tables
Most restaurants in Glasgow post. Far fewer post in a way that fills tables on a wet Tuesday. After years of running social media for independent restaurants across the city and beyond, these are the habits that make the difference.
1. Shoot for the feed you want, not the menu you have
A menu photo tells people what you sell. A reel tells them why they should leave the house. We plan every restaurant shoot around three kinds of content: hero dishes, the room and the people, and the moments in between, like the sizzle of a platter or the pour of a cocktail. One well planned afternoon gives a month of posts.
2. Vertical first, always
Instagram and TikTok are watched on phones held upright. We shoot in 9:16 for reels and 3:4 for feed posts, and never default to square. It sounds small, but it is the difference between filling the screen and sitting in a letterbox.
3. Every post needs a next step
A beautiful post with no booking link is a missed cover. Put the booking link in the bio, the story and the caption footer, with the address, phone number and opening hours. Make it impossible to want the food and not know how to get it.
4. Write captions people can find
Hashtag blocks are fading. Search inside Instagram and TikTok now reads the caption itself, so we write the location, the dish names and the occasion naturally into the text: Sunday lunch in Merchant City, a birthday dinner in Kilmacolm, the best biryani near Glasgow Central.
5. Work with local creators, properly
Influencer nights work when they are planned like an event: a clear brief, a menu built for the camera, and a date that leaves time for posts to land before the weekend. We track which creators actually drive bookings and invite them back.
6. Measure covers, not likes
Likes feel good. Bookings pay the rent. We tie posts to booking link clicks and offer codes so you can see which content brings people through the door.
The best restaurant content makes someone hungry and tells them exactly how to book.
If you run a restaurant, café or bar in Glasgow and want a plan for your social media, tell us about it. We will come back with a plan, a timeline and a price.
