The Best Ways Restaurants Can Begin to Use Twitter

 This post is a guest post by Mark Berger with Swat Recruiting.

Ok…every restaurant manager has at least heard of Twitter by now. Maybe you even have a personal profile or one for your restaurant on there. If you do you are undoubtedly subjected to a continuous stream of messages, or Tweets, that inform you of what one had for lunch, their stop at the gym, info on a sick child, or maybe some late-breaking news story that you already knew about, or even other mundane, uninteresting, needless information. Sadly, that is all part of the Twitter experience.

Please believe me, there are better ways to use this wonderful free service. For the subscribers of this newsletter, and many others, it is one of communication…interactive communication. Twitter is part of what we call Web 2.0. This is not a new concept but to this day, many have not heard of it and those that have still wonder exactly what it means. I call Web 2.0 the socialization of the Internet. It is users of the Internet reaching out to those we are trying to communicate with, but more than that, it is making it easier for those who want to communicate with us easier to do so. More streamlined, more efficient. That is what Web 2.0 is all about.

Using Twitter, the key to success is having “followers”. Followers are those that will actually receive your messages, or tweets, when you send them. But before you even start the process to gather your followers…you have to have something for them to follow. Your Twitter profile. This is easy, and like I said before…free. I imagine most of you reading this article today will want to go ahead and at least take the step to set up a page for you and your restaurant. Yes, a profile can be for an individual, a group, a company, or almost anything. You just need to think for a moment on the group you are trying to reach. In your case…just about anyone. Go to www.twitter.com and sign up. The most important part of your profile is you one-line bio. Make sure this has the name of your restaurant in it.

So, now you have your profile set up. This is the easy part. Now what? You begin the process to build your base of followers. This will be a campaign of sorts. One decent starting point would be to visit a website called Twellow.com. This site has many features but one that I like is a geographical breakdown of Twitter users in a given area. Called TwellowHood (I am not sure I would have called it that), you can click into a country, state, and/or city and see how many users are in that area. Take Massachusetts for example. I see that there are over 51,000 users in 416 cities including 32,000+ in Boston alone. That is a lot of potential customers. No, this is not every Twitter user, but like I said, it is a starting point. You would find your locale then click into the lists of users and simply invite them to follow you. Some will, some won’t. Some other ways to gain followers is to post your Twitter address inviting followers on your website, in your mailers, on all your outgoing emails. This is how it is done. It doesn’t happen overnight. This is more of a strategy than a technique. But over time, you will notice the number of followers grow and grow. You will also want to use another service, TweetLater.com, to automatically follow people who follow you, making it easier for them to message you back if needed.

Now that you have begun the process to get people to follow you…what are you going to say to them? This is where many people I speak with about this look up and kind of roll their eyeballs a bit. The information you will Tweet out is basically the same as would be for your newsletters, advertisements for your restaurant, and other forms of communication. Some examples of how the restaurant leadership readers today may want to use Twitter are as follows:

Offer a free appetizer of side dish for all your new followers.
About 10:30 AM, tweet out your lunch specials.
About 4 PM…2 for 1 Happy Hour coupons.
Daily Specials for dinner.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Don’t think that I propose doing away with other forms of communication. Not at all. Frankly, not everyone has a computer, much less is on Twitter, but I do propose to add one more prong to your strategy to reach out to your customers and potential customers. The easier you make it for them to hear you, the more they will react to what they hear. But in implementing an online social strategy for your restaurant, you might very well find that a certain portion of the population is better suited to getting your information pushed out to them in a Tweet, than they are suited to have to go to your website, or wait for an ad to come out.

One area we didn’t discuss today, and don’t really have the space for, is how Twitter fits into a larger strategy to use social media to reach out to your restaurant customers. Twitter is usually just one piece to the pie. FaceBook is often involved, and often LinkedIn as well. Blogging can also be a cornerstone of an effective social media strategy, and should be, but this is another area where I often get a lot of eyeball rolling going on.

In closing, know that using Twitter is very simple, and as I have said multiple times already, it is free to use. In this day and age of increasing advertising costs and effective competition, a free resource to enhance communication is not a bad thing. Sometimes it would be advantageous to get a jump-start on a project like this from a professional, but is not always necessary. Follow the simple steps I have outlined and take your best shot.

Mark E. Berger
Swat Recruiting
12/2/09

Mark E. Berger, via his Swat Recruiting organization, has been helping individuals and companies make better use of the Internet almost since there was such a thing. He is well versed in the best practices necessary to design and implement successful social media strategies that are used for branding, marketing, recruiting, and enhanced communication. He can be reached via email at mark@swatrecruiting.com.

For more on restaurant industry trends, go here.

Comments

[RESTAURANT MANAGER]

Hi, its really nice having a blog like yours on the net. I am a restaurant manager from Nigeria, infact right now I am into training and consultancy, it will be nice to link up with you, this is my blog add(restaurantng.blogspot.com

[Michael]

"Using Twitter, the key to success is having “followers”."

Actually, there is are many more options for success vs. having followers. So having followers does not need to be a barrier to having success with Twitter as a tool.

There is an advantage to having a follower since there is the opportunity to Direct Message (DM) someone if they follow and if the DM is set up to go to their email, better yet.

The real power for some might be listening and R&D / market research. The trends and chatter, what people love, are complaining about, what they love and hate.

Doing this via alert tools such as socialoomph (which used to be called tweetlater) (and others) gets the info to the restaurateur vs. searching and scanning.

When a relevant tweet shows up or from someone who is searching for something a restaurant provides, then the unique personal invitation (UPI) can come into play. (I call it oopy) :)

The best part may be that a restaurant can have several twitter accounts with different names / keyword focus. One could be "private feed" only where only those invited (VIP Members) would receive the message.

Content: Offering all tweets to be advertising may not work. Valuable and helpful needs to mixed with ads probably a better bet. @Fitmenu does this very well.

You are right. It is simple, fast and easier than most people think. Good that you are on the bandwagon to motivate restaurants to give it a shot. (15 minutes a day could even do the trick)

Good Topic. I like the "jump in". The risk is low and offline businesses have benefited from including Twitter in their strategy.

Mike

[Jim Washok]

Great advice, Mark...in 2009, and still rings true today. It's all about conversation. I think Twitter is especially great for restaurants to create "events"...buzz that resonates with a number of locals to show up and fill seats at times when business is normally low.

I'll add to your comment about using Twitter alongside other media, that when 140 chars is not enough, or you really need your audience to read and respond to your message NOW instead of hoping they catch your tweet in their feed at the right moment, you can augment your tweets with text messaging that allows for 160 chars and gets in customers' pockets within secs/mins. We playfully address this issue here: http://i.otair.com/misn20