Fancy restaurants, corner diners, coffee shops, bakeries, take-aways, delis, buffet restaurants, bistros, pizzerias, ice cream parlours, fast food joints... All kinds of eateries can benefit from effective use of Twitter as a part of their social media marketing strategy.
Why Should a Restaurant Use Twitter?
Many kinds of companies are using Twitter, but it may be even more important for food-related businesses than other ventures. People only seek out a car mechanic when their car needs repairs, but food is a highly emotional topic and it's easy to create temptations and cravings, even in just 140 characters.
Who wouldn't be tempted to change their lunch plans upon seeing a local restaurant tweet that they just added a lovely wild mushroom and fresh rosemary risotto to the menu?
How Can a Restaurant Get Twitter Followers?
The best way to develop a Twitter following is to follow others, preferably local people. Many companies use keyword searches (e.g. "vegetarian", "pizza" or "gourmet") to locate potential customers in their area. This is easy to do using the Twitter advanced search.
Most people want to concretely benefit from following a business. Some restaurants and coffee shops take orders on Twitter, but doing this successfully requires a significant dedication of time. Concrete benefits could include contests (with prizes, of course) or special discounts for Twitter followers.
Tip: A good way to create buzz on Twitter is hosting a local tweetup (live Twitter meeting), perhaps with discounts or even a special menu. Not only will this bring in customers, they will also tweet about it. Tweetup attenders tend to be active and influential Twitter users.
What Should a Restaurant or Café Tweet About?
Some restaurants tweet their daily lunch menu on Twitter every day, but there are other ways to create value. Here are some ideas for possible topics to tweet about:
The contents of a restaurant's Twitter stream depend on the type of place and its brand (fancy or trendy), of course. A raw food café can tweet links or quotes about the benefits of raw food while an Indian restaurant could post links to Indian recipes or cooking videos.
People love anecdotes and stories. Did the chef´s hair catch fire? Maybe a waiter gave birth to twins? Local celebrity visited the restaurant? Share it!
When used in moderation, retweeting (forwarding other people's interesting tweets to followers, attributed to their source) is a good way to create interesting content. It also encourages other people to retweet the tweets.
Listen
Twitter is not a blog or a broadcast, it's a venue for two-sided conversation. It makes the threshold of initiating contact very low. It's important to listen to feedback from customers and answer their questions.
If the restaurant or chain has a unique or at least unusual name, tweets mentioning it can be monitored via a Twitter search or a service such as TweetBeep.
- food related news, links, anecdotes and tips
- pictures, perhaps videos
- links to reviews of the place
- local news and gossip
- special events
- new menu additions
- changes to opening hours
- job openings
Tip: Positive comments from Twitter can be included to the restaurant's website as testimonials. If it is a direct (private) message, always ask before posting it to respect privacy.
Things to Avoid on Twitter
People are quick to unfollow and some things should be avoided:
- bashing competitors or clients
- tweeting too much (more than a few times a day)
- repeating the same posts too often
- only advertising, not creating value
- not replying to messages
- tweeting a ready-made list of quotes or jokes
- too much automation in general
Remember: it's called social media for a reason! Be a person, not a salesman.
Twitter Creates Website Traffic
To get the most out of Twitter, the restaurant or café needs a functional, up-to-date website. It should include at least the address, other contact information and opening hours, preferably on the front page, and a current menu. Most people prefer the menu as a normal page, not a PDF. Pictures and videos are good, but Flash-based sites should be avoided.
Latest tweets from the restaurant's Twitter account can be embedded on the page. At least a link to the Twitter page should be well visible!
See Also
Best Web Interfaces for Twitter
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