Top 5 Ways Your Restaurant Should be Tweeting
I get so pumped when local restaurants join Twitter. Their first tweet is usually irrelevant nonsense. Then the second spouts off a happy hour special, which is fine. Then the third, fourth, fifth…until their entire feed is nothing but promotions!
You’re a restaurant, I get it. You have daily food specials, happy hours, and live bands. How many times have you seen a newbie restaurant join Twitter and immediately start spamming?
STOP….PLEASE!
Below are the top 5 ways your restaurant should be tweeting:
1. Twitter is a conversation, not a billboard
When your restaurant first joins Twitter, it only makes sense to tweet every special, every time, right? This faulty thinking comes from a traditional advertising sense.
More ads = more customers = keeping the lights on
In the digital world, we call this spam. Your followers hate spam. Well, sort of…they will accept your spam in the right context. Even look forward to it if they like you.
Just like anything you want to be successful at, you must get involved. Initiate conversation. Shake some hands and talk to people. Develop relationships, and than feel free to slide in a couple ninja specials. Your followers will actually get pumped when you’re offering good deals.
Treat Twitter like your dining room, and not the local newspaper.
2. Be a Lurker
Since the beginning of the Internet there have been lurkers. No it’s not some scary term you can look up in a government database. Wikipedia defines a lurker as:
“In Internet culture, a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates actively.”
Start by following other restaurants in your city. Here is a list of some great Chicago Restaurants on Twitter. Follow any restaurant with 500+ followers.
What do you do next? Here is the ground breaking secret:
LISTEN.
Do not tweet anything. Watch how they tweet, how they respond. How often are they posting specials? Learn and mimic what is working for them. Being a lurker is not about being creepy. It’s about doing your homework and getting a feel for the culture.
3. Real Time Customer Satisfaction
Let’s be honest, you’re still relying on customer satisfaction cards. “Tell us how we did, fill out your customer satisfaction cards and drop them in the box.” Maybe that’s a bit extreme, but you get the picture. Tons of restaurants, including fast food, have adopted this strategy.
One problem: How do you follow up complaints before the damage is done? Treat Twitter like a customer service platform. It’s virtual damage control at your fingertips. Can you imagine how powerful it becomes when you respond directly to a pissed off customer?
Zappo’s has adopted this strategy, and they are killing it!
Go to Twitter search, type in the name of your restaurant, and start responding to people. Respond to every person who has @mentioned you, whether good or bad. That’s how you build lasting customers and relationships.
4. Tell Your Story with Twitpic
I am a HUGE advocate of using video or pictures to tell your story. A restaurant is a very visual experience. That’s why so much effort goes into presentation and ambiance. You need to constantly upload pictures of patrons, bar, entrees, dining room, wait staff, and especially nights you are slammed.
People want to hear your story. They want to know others are visiting your restaurant. This creates “social proof” among customers. If people think others love your restaurant, that’s enough proof for them to give it a try.
Don’t let technology leave your restaurant in the dust, invest in a smart phone. You can write off the data package when you use Twitter for business. These phones make uploading mobile pictures simple. You need to make a conscious effort to do it.
5. You are not an elitist, neither is your chef
One major problem I see with a handful of restaurants is an elitist attitude. They join Twitter, rarely tweet, follow nobody, and never respond. This elitist attitude is a sure fire way to piss customers off.
Twitter is a HIGHLY social network. People are on there all day chatting away. They want you to speak up. They want you to join them.
Many will argue that they don’t have the time. If you cannot devote the time to social media, then it’s best to not use it. Social media is like a seed, you have to nurture it to health. By leaving it unattended, you come off as not caring, and that’s probably not the case.
Chefs may be the worst at portraying this image. BOH rarely has to engage customers on the same social level as FOH. This is understandable and natural. Everyone has their skills, and a chef belongs in the kitchen.
If they are going to be on Twitter, then encourage your chef to be engaging and responsive. Have them post pics of entrées, tell them it’s OK to share recipes. Do whatever it takes to get them pumped about sharing their talents with the world.
What do you guys think? Do you have any more suggestions for restaurants on Twitter? What works and what doesn’t? Comment Below!
Tags: building relationships, marketing, online marketing, restaurants, twitter for restaurants
Know @EvanBenn already pointed you to this article on tweeting chefs by the NYTimes, but wanted to call out one tweeting technique that’s not included in your (very robust) post. Tweeting to fill no-shows. It’s an interesting strategy, I hadn’t thought of before!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/dining/17angry.html?pagewanted=2&ref=dining
Marissa,
That’s thinking outside of the box:) I just wonder if the time constraints would work. For instance:
No show @ 7:00pm, Tweet no-show @ 7:15, can you get someone in by 7:30pm? 8pm?
Who knows, it’s definitely a strategy worth noting. Apparently it works for Ms. Lefebvre!
[...] If you are a restaurant on Twitter, than you probably have a follower who works in an office. Send them a DM that morning saying “Hey, get 10 orders together and we will give you 25% off for lunch today.” That sets a spark within the office early. That person will start asking around if anyone is interested in ordering. DM ten followers daily and you’re likely to get at least one large lunch order. Make sure you have good relations with these people so they don’t see the offer as spam. This goes back to basic principles of how your restaurant should be tweeting. [...]
Great blog.Thanks for the info