Twitter: What’s the Verdict?

Twitter: Powerful or Pointless?

We know just how important a restaurant’s social media presence is for boosting brand awareness and ultimately driving covers. Social media platforms are used to promote a restaurant and connect with potential customers, both visually and through community management. Restaurants today need to do more than just bring good food to the table. 

Instagram allows restaurants to showcase snapshots of the dishes available on their menu. Although a picture speaks a thousand words, the formatting of Instagram doesn’t leave much room for conversation, which is where Twitter comes into its own. 

Express Yourself

Twitter was designed to generate conversation and form community relationships. As a restaurant social media platform, it allows customers to comment on experiences and engage in direct conversation with the restaurant. They can find trending restaurants and the low down of the places to see and be seen. Restaurants use Twitter as a virtual community, engaging with customers, forming relationships and promoting all they have on offer to the local area and beyond.

The Power of the Retweet

One of Twitter’s iconic features is the retweet and the ability to comment with your views and opinions. However, the Twitter design teamhave taken this well-known feature a step further. In response to user feedback, you can now retweet a tweet with a photo or gif as your response, as the team wanted to give users “more ways to express themselves”. Now when you want to express yourself but you can’t find the words, just use a gif.

This is just the start for Twitter. In June 2019, they will be ‘testing another new feature, one that lets users hide replies to tweets’, which could transform Twitter as a platform entirely. 

For restaurant social media, both features add a new way of using Twitter to engage with their customers. But isn’t the point of restaurant social media to engage with the organic and real customer experiences, rather than filter them out? Twitter is a platform to share thoughts and feelings, giving restaurants the opportunity to interact with their customers. TripAdvisor is the go to for a restaurant review and as they have shown, a successful restaurant highlights its true character when engaging with the negative reviewsas well as the positive. 

We will just have to wait and see what the digital trendsetters Twitter will add to the platform next!