Exploring Twitter for Restaurants – Idea No. 2
by Jenny Brooks
In a post on April 23, I provided five ideas for restaurants to use Twitter. I promised to explore each of these a little deeper, so I’m going to expand on each of these over the course of the next week. This post will focus on idea No. 2 below. As a bonus, I’ll add a few more ideas to the final post, so keep coming back.
The five ideas were:
1. List the daily specials for all the day parts you serve.
2. Tweet about any daily offers, such as discounts, promotions, events.
3. Create special Twitter promotions and tweet about them.
4. Host a Tweetup in your restaurant – a social gathering formed through posts/invitations on Twitter.
5. Tweet from your restaurant throughout the day, keeping people up to speed on what happens in your restaurant throughout the day.
Twitter for Restaurants, Idea No. 2:
What’s happening in your restaurant? Are Tuesdays taco night? Do you offer drink specials on Wednesdays? Wings? How about happy hour? Live music? Special fundraiser? What big games will you be showing on your big screens?
Whatever goes on in your restaurant Make you’re telling everyone about what goes on?
And the thing with Twitter is this: it’s fast moving. If you don’t log on for a couple hours, or even a day, you will miss a lot of tweets (except for the people who use desktop applications that allow sorting tweets into groups).
So don’t be shy about sending your announcements out a couple times per day. If you’re offering worthwhile information, no one will mind if they see it a couple of times. It’s for those who didn’t see it the first or second time.
Remember to plan ahead for these kinds of tweets as well. If you know it’s coming, send teaser tweets that allow people to plan for it. This is especially important for events. Give people time to plan to come. It also gives you time to build a following for the event and get it retweeted – or sent by your followers to their followers.
Your specials don’t have to be Twitter-follower specific (that’s idea No. 3), but they should be clear enough to explain in the 140 characters you have (120 characters if you want your info retweeted).
Another reason I like this idea is it tells people that there is stuff going on in your restaurant. They know your place is where they want to take their friends, visitors, family, etc. It also gets them used to looking for your tweets to see what’s happening and if it’s something they want to plan around.
Check back for in-depth information for Idea No. 3.
Jenny Brooks is a public relations professional providing expert and strategic tactics for businesses trying to increase awareness about themselves and their products. She is also the editor of SMART Systems Insider, a monthly newsletter from Restaurant Expert David Scott Peters. Questions about PR and how she can help your restaurant? Email her.
