Marketing Restaurant Online

Though I had seen Twitter long time ago when Rick Sanchez was using it on CNN for instant feedback from his viewers I had never thought of using it. Little did I know then how effective it was to multi communicate with like minded people that you have never seen and known. But similar thinking and viewpoints of common people bring them  closer in a virtual world thought they are physically distance  apart. The tool that is this dynamic and versatile is Twitter. I believe after using for couple of months and seeing it’s effectiveness with my own eyes, I believe it is one of the best invention in communication  that we have seen so far. It is far better than  telephones the greatest invention of our times. I say this because telephone is confined to a limited number of people at a time  that allows limited communication. The biggest hurdle in sharing ideas with this communication channel is the cost. The cost is so high not only in terms of money but the time that few people would dare using this channel to share their ideas with common people. On the contrary, with Twitter it is open communication platform where unlimited number of people can communicate at once  and the cost of communication is virtually zero when one has internet connection. This opens a door to even a regular common people who doesn’t have money but has ideas in their head that they want to discuss with the like minded people and collaborate with them and have a joint venture partnership or form a company to build a company based on their common ideas.

Twitter doesn’t care if some one,be it a person or a company have money or not. All it cares is whether they have ideas that is worth spreading. So as a restaurant business Twitter has levelled the plain field for marketing. It means that you as a small restaurant have a chance to battle even a big chain restaurant with big marketing budgets. It is not about how much money you can spend on mass media marketing now but it is how effective you can be using social media like Twitter and that is available for FREE.

Over a period of few months I have experienced myself how to engage in a conversation in Twitter and also tried to follow some of the top 7 restaurant brands on Twitter to get an idea how they are using Twitter. Combining both my experience and traits of 7 successful restaurant brands on Twitter I have found seven rules that is effective on Twitter to be successful in creating tons of followers. They are as follows:

1. Start a conversation. Be an authentic voice of your restaurant
2. Be Polite with Reply and thankful for Retweet.
3. Follow who followed you
4. Don’t block any one with Direct Message
5. Try to blend humour with the message
6. Don’t over do it. Go with a natural flow when it  is relevant.
7. Twitter is not magic but when used correctly you can make it appear like a magic to your competitor.

Start a conversation. Be an authentic voice of your restaurant.Twitter is full of human but robots. Human beings like to communicate with humans and not with computers. So try to create your own authentic voice of the restaurant you represent. And most importantly start conversation not with plain statements but ending with question type statement like ” Today is cold outside. We have tomato basil or Chicken Noodle soup. Which one would make you feel warmer? ” See you are trying to engage your customer with some thing to say. In the contrary if you said only ” Today is cold outside. We have tomato basil or Chicken Noodlesoup”. You are not engaing people. You are just plain talking to your self. It is like a boring lecturer lecturing his classroom full of intellectual students who don’t want to listen to him.

Be Polite with Reply and thankfulfor Retweet. Try to reply any questions that your potential customers might have even if they have never visited your restaurant. You never know when that customer is going to come and visit your restaurant even if he leaves in different state. He or she might visit your town and come looking for your restaurant. Even when you get some stones thrown at you, be diplomatic when answering those replies. Always thank for the person that retweet your message. It is a courtesy. They  liked your message and took a time to share with their followers so you owe a thank. They will be pleased and will remember that you are a courteous person who is polite and thankful.

Follow who follow you . Well some people might not agree with this point to follow every one who follows you. That is ok as every individual has different priorities and goals. But as a restaurant business our goal is to attract as many potential customers as possible. So when some one is following you that means they liked your message or what your restaurant has to offer. Following them back is like saying that yes we are open to talking with you too. It is like cyber handshake in a digital world. If you don’t want to open your closed fist for cyber handshake how can you expect to build a relationship with a strangers you just met on Twitter. Without a relationship there is no business too. After all business is built around relationship based on mutual trust. The perfect example of a company who follows this principle is Zappos. It is one of the most customer centric company online. They understand the value of potential customers who could be a customer of life time.There fore they leave their door open to even a stranger that they meet on Twitter and follow them back as a gesture of cyber handshake. If you want to check out with your own eyes you can see then at www.twitter.com/zappos

Don’t Block any one with direct message. Again this is another area where people have different views. But as a restaurant you want to open your direct message to every one that follows you. I have seen so many people block this. With due respect to their own priorities, I feel opening this lets a chance to communicate their perspective on any issues. After all  we decided to communicate via twitter to know the unknown. So if we close the door then we are always unknown. Especially to the restaurant business this applies. Because there might be some customers desperately wanting to connect with you or simply trying  to tell about a service problem to you and if this is blocked then how on earth would you know about it. You miss a chance to build a strong relationship with this customer who could have helped your restaurant in correcting all the weakness and make improvement upon them.

Try to blend the humour with your tweets. People come to twitter not only to communicate. They come there because it is a fun place to hang out. If you are talking about the same boring stuff that they are used to in the physical world then they might not follow you. In fact they would unfollow you even if they had followed you to begin with. So make your effort to be little more interesting than regular folks out there in the bushes with some jokes or humorous comments that gives your twitter message a style with a difference when it appears in Twitter. Popeyes Chicken does this best with their tweets. If you want to have a taste of humour tweets you can do it by following them at www.twitter.com/PopeyesChicken

Don’t over do it. Go with a natural flow when it  is relevant. Some time it can get tempted to tweet many times a day especially when you are starting new. You might have nothing to say and this might cause you pressure to say something when your twitter has only few updates. That’s ok in the beginning. But don’t push your self to be what you are not. It has to come natural from you and do it only when you feel it is appropriate and right time for tweet.  Don’t try to bombard with useless information to your followers. Try to add value to your followers with rich information that is useful to them.

Twitter is not magic but when used correctly you can make it appear like a magic to your competitor. Restaurants should look Twitter as another powerful communication tool. If you use this tool effectively and correctly then you will gain tons of benefit that your restaurant might not be able to handle. Well that is a good problem to have that any restaurant would gladly accept. But if you use it incorrectly then you will hit the axe on your own foot. It is like a loaded gun. If you use it correctly you will kill lots of birds at one shot and if you aim incorrectly there is a chance that you might shoot at your self. So I caution you to use it with proper guidance. You will be amazed how this simple free tool called Twitter can be so effective in attracting so many customers to your restaurants that it will lead your competitor scratch his head thinking it is a magic.