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The following Article was written by Emily Roche, Digital Marketing Coordinator at Jestic Food Services.

In my role as a Social Media Marketer, I am constantly asked about what to post, what grabs people’s interest and why should anyone be listening to what I have to say in the first place. The answer is simple – you create a niche for yourself, get cosy and start throwing information out there.

Not everything you post about will be every single person’s cup of tea, but then how is that different from any other type of marketing?

My niche is the foodservice industry, specifically the delicious food created using the equipment my company sells and then expanding in bands of interest through reviews of restaurants we have outfitted, to industry news about which hotel brand is buying out another, to equipment updates and evolutions. I never take the hard sell road that so many adopt with social media – the aim is interaction, creating conversation and sharing things of interest.

I interact with a wide variety of people, from chefs interested in new possibilities for their restaurants and hearing about what others have been doing in their kitchens to architects designing a new kitchen and trying to work out the best way to get a flow into the space, how the products fit into their concept. The key is to understand that while each of these people will find a different element of your niche particularly interesting, most of it will impinge on their awareness anyway, so long as you remain consistent within the genre you have decided to post in.

So, what is my purpose in grabbing these people’s attention? Partly, it is to interact with clients and show the human side of the company. However, I also use the information I post to pique interest and raise awareness of my company. Ultimately, I want as many people as possible to associate my company with the best foodservice solutions possible and to visit the website in order to find out more and turn from interested bystanders to customers.

Interestingly, in looking over the analytics of where my various website visitors come from it proves that it is not the hard sell via social media means that will secure you your lead. Announcements about my company’s performance in business garnered the most attention and subsequently the highest exposure.

The next best thing to post about to see a leap in reach was restaurant reviews from bloggers, showing that people enjoy information they can actually benefit from, such as the steak at one restaurant proving to be time and again more popular than steak at a different restaurant.

The third best route to take was to post entertaining things. These were not necessarily related to my company, but in posting a funny video or a cartoon, I had huge amount of people retweeting or sharing that post, effectively spreading my website URL and company profile further than I could ever hope to get it.

Lastly, to experiment, I posted a tweet advertising a popular product my company sells along with a link direct to the website product page. This hard sell post generated zero interest. Nobody so much as clicked on the post to read the full version and certainly no-one shared it.

At the end of the day, social media marketing is about the customer and how you can improve their life. It is a give and take, unlike traditional marketing where you output a message and hope that anyone interested comes forth to take advantage of it. Start a conversation, value your clients.