Should restaurants outsource twitter?

In a restaurant, the activity levels ebb and flow with the time of day and at peak, there’s barely enough time to look after the customers, let alone something as abstract and irrelevant to food as twitter. The obvious choice is to outsource, right?

Well, maybe.

If the alternative to outsourcing is that you couldn’t run the account properly in house, outsourcing is probably a reasonable solution. If you would miss tweets and not reply or just not get round to doing anything great.

If you do outsource though, here’s a few things to think about:

• People on twitter expect to be talking to a “real” person within the business, not an agency
• Many people like twitter because they get to see the real personality of the business
• How is your agency managing the activity? Are they automating?
• What sort of frequency of tweets are they using? Too much? Too little?
• What happens when somebody asks a question? Is it answered? Well?
• Is the tone of voice appropriate?

Ideally, any customers or potential customers should always feel like they’re talking to the owner, chef or senior front of house staff. They want you (the twitter account) to know the menu intimately, care about it and talk to them about it and if there’s a chance to (maybe) win the odd freebie or discount, great.

Practically, you may end up using agency support to drive promotions and following, but in parallel, use your mobile or restaurant computer to tweet using the same tone of voice. 

So long as you (‘re twitter account) make them feel like the special darlings they are and that they’re dealing with a knowledgeable caring fun human being, you wont go far wrong. 

If you decide you do want to outsource, make sure you choose an agency which is strong on strategy and training.