5 Reasons Why Bars Need a Twitter Strategy – Twitter for Bars
- PR – Let’s face it, PR as you may know it, or PR of the 80’s and 90’s is dead. Twitter for bars is the fastest method now to take on a PR campaign for your business. It is beyond the scope of this article to explain how to use Twitter to get free PR exposure but the short version is to follow prominent PR professionals in your area, and add them to a list. Interact regularly with them. Then when you do something PR worthy, reach out and ask for assistance. You can still use conventional PR methods, but you can still drive an Yugo as well, but twitter is the 2017 Ferrari. Don’t get me wrong conventional PR as it used to exist is very valuable. However, getting access to that type of PR is either very difficult or very expensive. Twitter for PR, is not expensive or difficult but it is time consuming. You must put in consistent effort over the long haul. This isn’t something you can outsource either. Getting followers, retweet and so forth, that type of stuff can be outsourced, I guess, but starting meaningful conversations with PR people and interacting effectively with them is not something that can be done by anyone else but you.
twitter for bars - Longevity – Twitter is here to stay, and Twitter for Bars is here to stay. Even though other Social Media channels have become more popular or have more users, Twitter will still be around. It is the easiest way for celebrities, politicians, and social media influencers to reach their fans and the public with quick reliable uncensored speed and efficiency. Even my 78 year old grandfather knows what Twitter is, because it is constantly on the news and TV shows. No other social media channel does what Twitter does and it has a time and place for everyone. When you place an ad in a newspaper, that is pretty much done in a couple days. That ad is gone forever, and so is the money you spent on it. But if you make an interesting Twitter post, that can last forever. You post it to your Twitter feed and it will be there forever. You can re-share it as well with a click of a mouse and it is doing its magic all over again. But the reason I say longevity for Twitter is that there is some sort of idea floating around out there that Twitter isn’t going to be around much longer, sort of like Yahoo. People talk about how fast Instagram and Snapchat grew to more monthly users than twitter and so forth. But that really has nothing to do with anything. How important are the things someone does on Instagram vs. Twitter? No one can really say for sure which is more important, but seeing a picture my friends posted on Instagram and interacting with the journalist at the local paper are two totally different things.
- Access – Your customers will feel like they have a level of access to you that they normally wouldn’t be able to have. Knowing that I can reach out to a business and have a discussion there, visible for the entire world to see is very empowering to the customer. I once complained about the customer service I received from a specific Wells Fargo branch bank in a tweet. I was immediately contacted by a rep from Wells Fargo with a solution to my problem and 3 other branches within 5 miles of my location, that had a customer service employee who had been briefed on my situation and was willing to assist in taking care of the service that I needed that the first branch messed up. Pretty powerful. Even more powerful when you consider Twitter for bars. But, for this to work, the main thing is you need to actually engage and interact with the people trying to reach out to you, otherwise it could have an opposite effect. Disgruntled customers could be having an entire conversation about your business, on your business page, tagging you in all the discussions and unless you use your Twitter account, this will all go on, for everyone to see without you knowing about it. The worst part is they will be on your page encouraging you to respond, and if you don’t respond it shows indifference on your part and that’s what really drives customers away. .
- Trends and Conversations – Twitter is the easiest way to stay on top of trends and conversations that are going on in your industry. Do you want to be a “cool” bar? Just follow the “cool” bars and see what they are talking about and tweeting about and you are right there with them. The trend for early 2017 is Mescal in mixed drinks and craft cocktails. Most bars don’t even carry Mescal. Never before have you been able to easily spy on what the trendy bars in New York and LA are doing like now. You would have had to send secret shoppers all over the world to be able to get the information you can get from 6 or 7 minutes browsing lists that you have made in Twitter. Injecting yourself into conversations that are already happening is also very powerful.
Its an old copy-writing tactic that you should inject yourself into the conversations going on in someone’s head already. If you have a target market say “mothers of grade school age children” you can easily craft your message to the conversations going on in their head. For example, for the entire month of August, the conversation going on in the Mom’s head is getting the kids ready for back to school. Crafting your messages for this is very powerful. But with Twitter for bars, you don’t have to guess, you can inject yourself into the REAL CONVERSATION, that is actually happening, right in front of you. If there is a local event that is going on in your area and people are talking about it, you can take advantage of that in ways that use to cost a fortune can now be done for free. For example, say your local sports team has made it to the finals series and you want people to come by after the game. You can tweet to the people interested in and talking about the game, that you have 2 free beers for every person that brings in a ticket stub. To do this before, you would have had to pay for a radio commercial or advertise in the stadium, but now, a couple smartly placed tweets, with the right hashtags and you’re in business.
- Marketing? – Oh yeah, you can actually get customers from Twitter. Every marketing program you undertake can be enhanced by using Twitter. There are a million ways to market on Twitter but the best part is it is very hard to overdo it on Twitter. You can post 20 to 30 times a day and no one is going to care. That’s what people expect you to do. If you post more than a couple times a day on Facebook or Instagram, you are going to irritate and agitate your customers. Those who were happily following you before will start to unfollow and block you if you fill up their feed too much. But with Twitter, no worries, it will be very difficult to do that. Especially because Twitter moves really fast. Anyone who really uses Twitter a lot and follows a lot of people probably doesn’t look at the actual feed, because it moves too fast. They have interesting accounts separated into lists, that they can review as they are interested in that list. For example you may find yourself on a list called happy hour or nightlife. Then when that particular person is looking for somewhere to go to happy hour or a cool place to have a drink with a friend after a movie, they will scroll through that list to see if there is anything interesting going on. If you are using your Twitter account effectively, chances are, they are going to come by your place. Twitter is great for so many other things as well when it comes to Marketing. You can test ideas, you can post live videos of what’s going on at the bar, there are just so many things you can do its endless. The best thing you can do is use Twitter to cheaply test out ideas before you take them to more expensive Social media channels like Facebook and YouTube. This article isn’t to teach you how to use Twitter for Marketing but rather to explain why you need a Twitter strategy, and the main reason is to get customers in the door.
Here are a couple awesome Twitter accounts to follow to get you started. If nothing else, just emulate these accounts and that will be a good start for you and your bar or tavern.