7 Rules to Follow to Write the Perfect Tweet

New to Twitter? If you’re a restaurant owner who is about to start promoting your business on Twitter you’ve come to the right place. With little to no experience on Twitter, you might be baffled by character limits, and downright confused by the Tweeting etiquette. Here are the do’s and don’ts when it comes to crafting the perfect tweet.

The number one question to ask yourself before you post any type of content on social media is this: “Is this going to add value for my followers?” There should be a purpose behind every tweet. You definitely should not tweet out content for the sake of ‘being present’ on Twitter. Being present does not mean tweeting out any old thing each day, but rather it’s about constructing relevant tweets that will have some form of impact.

This graph was shared by Buffer and it clearly shows what users want from brands and the reason they choose to follow them on Twitter.

Amazingly 94% of people will follow your brand in the hope of finding discounts and special promotions. Not far behind this, 87% of people also want to see the fun and entertaining content.

Tweeting Do’s

Do Use Images

Always include a captivating photo or graphic. Including an image helps your tweet to stand out amongst the overwhelming noise. According to HubSpot, Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than those without. Retweets = more exposure and potentially new customers. When crafting a tweet aimed to entertain, consider if you yourself would retweet it?

(Restaurant Zing Zing Chinese tweeting about rainfall after days of extreme heat here in the UK)

Do Creatively Recycle

Recycle tweets, but change the content slightly each time. Twitter is one of those platforms that’s so fast-moving, the life of a tweet is very short-lived. If you’re running a special offer at your restaurant, tweeting about it just once is almost a waste. You must create multiple ways to share the same offer using slightly different wording. Prior to 2018 you could simply copy the same tweet and share it multiple times. Twitter changed this rule to reduce spam, so now you need to get creative when it comes to recycling content.

Do Ask Questions & Engage

Talk to people, not at them. Ask them if they enjoyed your food and service, thank them for sharing a photo or mentioning you in a post. Twitter was made to be more conversational than any other social media platform. As a restaurant, you’ve got an ideal opportunity to converse directly with customers about their experience or answer their questions somewhere convenient for them.

Tweeting Don’ts

Don’t Be Sloppy

In 2017, Twitter extended their character limit from 140 characters to 280. This was a welcomed change allowing users to share a little more with every tweet. However, the 280 limit is still just that… a limit! This means some users abbreviate words or take out punctuation in order to say what they need to say whilst keeping within the limit. This looks sloppy. It’s bad grammar, hard to read and hard to follow. You wouldn’t abbreviate or change spellings on a menu or flyer, so Twitter is no different.

Don’t Sell

Don’t worry about trying to sell. Focus on being fun and entertaining, share promos when you have them but don’t try and push your service or food onto people. There are so many businesses using their online presence to sell sell sell. People become numb to all the advertising and all the selling, thus resulting in little to no impact.

Don’t Go Off Track

Try not to start sharing content about irrelevant things. You might absolutely love Game of Thrones, but it doesn’t mean all your followers will. (I know that’s hard to believe). Don’t alienate your followers or you will start to see that unfollow count shoot up.