When it comes to promoting your gaming location, there are a lot of options online. Some can seem like a straightforward, obvious choice for reaching new customers and keeping current customers coming back. The return for engaging on other social media platforms might be less clear. For example, Twitter is a great resource for information, but will it really promote your business?
What is Twitter?
First thing’s first – Twitter is a social media network where users can post short updates (up to 140 characters) about anything they want. As a user, you can choose which accounts you want to ‘follow’, and those individual’s or company’s updates will show up in your home page or ‘feed’ for you to scroll through and read. Twitter is a great source for news, entertainment, sports, politics and more.
Is it right for your business?
To determine whether Twitter is right for your business, there are some questions you can ask yourself:
1. What happens when you Google your establishment’s name?
If you come up with nothing, or close to nothing, you may want to consider starting a Twitter account for your business. Having an account will make it more likely that your business can be found when someone searches for it online. Navigate to Twitter and hit sign up in the upper right corner. Create a username or ‘handle’ that somehow includes your business name – be creative! You’ll then be able to include your full business name and your address in your description.
2. How much time do you have to promote your business every day?
One important aspect of Twitter is that to have a successful account you should be updating regularly. Ideally, you’d want to post multiple times each day and spend time paying attention to and getting involved in conversations happening on Twitter. If that doesn’t sound feasible, it may still be worth creating an account if you can take the time to post once every day, or at least 4 or 5 times each week. This keeps your users engaged and aware of you. One time saver - you only have to post up to 140 characters at a time!
3. What do you have to tweet about?
Knowing that you want to post often, think about what you could post about your location. Maybe you have a different special or sales every day, maybe a different band in every weekend, or maybe one of your bartenders is really funny and you think your patrons might like to read their tweets. It’s OK to repeat posts as ‘reminders’ to your followers, as long as you try different wording and don’t just copy/paste the same thing every day.
Want more ideas? Check out our blog on what to post to promote your bar or restaurant on social media.
4. Is there someone, or more than one person, you could trust to post to your Twitter feed?
Since you should be posting often, it may be helpful to delegate posts to your employees. Some businesses find it beneficial to add posting to social media to an employee’s to do list as a task they have to check off every day. If you’re nervous about handing over the password, you could require them to submit their ideas for posts to you – maybe via text or email – so that you can review ahead of time and post them yourself. You could also consider giving them the password with the stipulation that they must first get approval from you – again by text or email – before they actually post.
Consider: Developing a quick social media policy for your staff may help guide them and provide ideas of what to post. If you're having a hard time keeping your social media accounts organized, you may also want to consider using a social media management tool.
5. Can you take photos or videos at your location?
Enriching your Twitter feed with images and video will make it MUCH more successful and interesting. Think about what would entice you to want to go to a bar or restaurant more: A post describing a fun atmosphere at an establishment or a picture of patrons having fun? A post describing a delicious, juicy cheeseburger or a picture of that amazing burger?
Consider: You may want to develop a policy to have your staff get a release signed from the patrons whose pictures you post. Do your research to determine if you want to take this step. At Accel, we get a release signed by every person in each photo we use on our social media.
As a business, Twitter may or may not be right for you. If you think starting a Twitter account could be a good move for your business, try it out! Remember, you can always cancel your account if it doesn’t work out.
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