Learning about Twitter for School Assignment

NICHOLAS RUTHARDT

Personal Learning Deliverable

GENERAL USE/KNOWLEDGE

Twitter

My Goals

To learn to use Twitter as an advertising tool.

To be able to effectively advertise for a future restaurant or business endeavour

Plan of Action

To gain further information on using Twitter as an advertising tool, I: Followed Restaurants and Food Services that use

twitter Studied their tweets and other posts Watched feedback from their followers to see how

effective their posts were

The First Steps

I needed to increase my knowledge of the site as a whole.

I have not had Twitter long, and am not familiar with all of its various functions, other than simply posting a tweet and reading.

Learning the Basics

To learn the basics of twitter I went to their site that teaches users all about Twitter:

All the general information I’ll be listing comes from: https://discover.twitter.com/learn-more

Basics

“What’s in a Tweet?Inside a Tweet you’ll see photos and videos from people you know or behind-the-scenes moments from the biggest stars. You can link to news stories, blogs, websites and apps” (Discover.twitter, 2014).

Examples

Basics cont.

A tweet has only 140 characters because it was designed to act like a text message. By using only 140 characters the user is able to get their message across in a brief but affective manner (Discover.twitter, 2014).

Basics cont.

Using Twitter you have to learn about following others and others following you.

“people can follow your stream of Tweets called a timeline so that they automatically appear in their own timelines” (Discover.twitter, 2014).

What is Following?

Following on twitter is “subscribing to someone’s stream of tweets” (Discover.twitter, 2014).

When you follow someone you will see their new tweets as soon as they are posted.

You can also follow anybody you want, from friends to celebrities and anyone or everything in-between.

Private Messaging

This is one part of twitter I knew existed but I had no idea how to even begin using it.

A private message is also sometimes referred to as a direct message.

It is sent between two people only, so that no one else can read it.

Profile

“Your profile is where you show people what they can expect from your Tweets and why they should follow you” (Discover.twitter, 2014).

The next slide will offer examples of different profiles.

This is my own Twitter profile, this is what I would call a bland and bad Twitter profile.

This is what I would consider a good Twitter profile. Its descriptive and helpful with learning about who you are following.

Twitter Statistics

It is good to know the basics of a site before using it, but I think to make the most of the site you should look further into it.

That’s why I went looking for statistics about Twitter.

All the statistics listed next are from:www.statisticbrain.com/twitter-statistics/

Twitter Statistics

Twitter Company Statistics DataTotal number of active registered Twitter users 645,750,000

Number of new Twitter users signing up everyday 135,000

Number of unique Twitter site visitors every month 190 million

Average number of tweets per day 58 millionNumber of Twitter search engine queries every day 2.1 billion

Percent of Twitter users who use their phone to tweet 43 %

Percent of tweets that come from third party applicants 60%

Number of people that are employed by Twitter 2,500

Number of active Twitter users every month 115 million

Percent of Twitters who don’t tweet but watch other people tweet

40%

Number of days it takes for 1 billion tweets 5 days

Number of tweets that happen every second 9,100

More Stats

In 2013 Twitter did a study on mobile Twitter users.

It said that “60 per cent of its 200 million users log on using a mobile device” (Mobile Marketing, 2013).

Stats cont.

The study also gave more information on mobile users including: 96 per cent of users are more likely to follow 11

or more brands 58 per cent are more likely to recall seeing an

ad 63 per cent are more likely to click on links 78 per cent are more likely to retweet 32 per cent are more likely to use the Twitter

platform on their mobile device while in front of the TV

All stats provided by: http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/twitter-releases-new-stats-aimed-increasing-mobile-advertising/

To Summarize

Twitter is a vast social media network which is growing everyday.

It is a great place for any business to advertise themselves or promote a new product or upcoming specials.

Back to my Goal

To recap:My goal was to learn how to use Twitter as an

advertising tool for a restaurant or food service company.

I think what I learned about Twitter in a general sense is a good stepping stone, but now it’s time to take it one step further.

Advertising

I wanted to learn how to learn how a restaurant can effectively use Twitter, so I set out to learn

An article by American Express outline 5 ways restaurants can use Twitter effectively

Their 5 suggestions for restaurants are as follows:

Tweeting Daily Specials

If your restaurant has a special soup or sandwich of the day, tweet it.

Instead of only having a chalkboard with the special or your waiters telling the customers (American Express, 2010).

Tweeting your specials before hand will draw more people in for the day, simply because they knew about the special and that drew them in.

Location

In the article this topic focuses mainly on food trucks.

Many food trucks rely on twitter to tell their fans and customers where they are going to be parked for lunch time (American Express, 2010).

Food trucks also use Twitter to advertise their daily specials.

Contests and Giveaways

This is a great way to get new customers to follow you on Twitter.

“An easy way to promote yourself is with contests and giveaways. Offer a free lunch or dinner to a random follower who retweets your message” (American Express, 2010).

By having contests and giveaways, the winners will typically tweet about winning a prize, further promoting the restaurant or food truck.

Humanize

People don’t always want to hear about specials and promotions, they also want to hear about what happens on a daily basis in the kitchen (American Express, 2010).

“The public's interest in chefs, food and restaurants is only growing. Post about the ephemera of daily behind-the-scenes restaurant life.” (American Express, 2010).

Post Photos

The articles final piece of advice is to post photos.

It could be pictures of your food, the restaurant itself or staff hard at work.

Any kind of photo will draw the customers attention and make them want to look at other tweets and photos from the restaurant

Recap

To recap the 5 ways American Express says to use Twitter effectively to promote your restaurant are: Tweet daily specials Location Contests and Giveaways Humanize Post photos

Twitter Examples

Finally I wanted to look at a few restaurants or food service operations that already use Twitter.

I thought this would be the best way to learn how I could use Twitter to advertise my own business in the future.

Examples cont.

The 3 restaurants I am choosing to discuss are: KogiBBQ: a food truck Flat Iron Café Wildcraft

KogiBBQ

https://twitter.com/kogibbqI think this is a good example of a food truck

using Twitter effectively.They constantly update where they will be

and when they are open.They upload great pictures of their food.Finally they interact with their customers,

which is a great way to keep them interested and invested in the company.

Flat Iron Cafe

https://twitter.com/FlatIronCafeThis is another good example of a restaurant

using twitter.This restaurant does not post pictures from

what I have seen, which I think hurts them.But on the positive side they constantly post,

reply to customers and advertise their specials.

Wildcraft

https://twitter.com/WildcraftGrillI choose to discuss this restaurant simply

because this is where I worked this past summer. On their Twitter feed they constantly post

pictures of not only specials, but their regular menu items to draw new customers to what they already serve.

They also post daily pictures of cooks plating or preparing dishes or cooking food. I think that this is great because it provides a look into what happens in the kitchen.

Wildcraft Cont…

They also continuously interact with their customers, and reply to tweets, which is a great way to maintain customers.

Of the 3 reviewed, I believe that Wildcraft uses Twitter the most effectively.

They use a good combination of photos, meaningful posts and day to day posts as well.

In Conclusion

After studying this topic I can say that I have learned many things.

The first is that Twitter can be used effectively to promote a restaurant, because clearly it works for the 3 I have discussed.

I also learned that you need to not only post pictures of your food in order to promote your restaurant effectively.

In Conclusion cont.

You also need to talk with your customers, respond to their feedback and make them feel valued.

Overall I think I learned what I set out to learn regarding Twitter and how to use it as an advertising tool.

I hope that you learned something to.