Comments on: If you’re a local business, Monitter might be your best social media friend!

By: Jaylyn Bergner

Jaylyn Bergner — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:55:52 +0000

Mack,
Thanks for the heads up on Monitter. Because I’m in PR, it’s crucial to know not only what everyone is talking about, on a large scale, but on the local side, especially with the smaller businesses that come to me! Have you used this program much yet? Does it have any aps to it or additional sites that pair up well? Thanks again! I’ll be sure to get to your survey sometime tonight/tomorrow.

By: Mack Collier

Mack Collier — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:34:51 +0000

Hey Yotam, it sounds like you’re asking how could a bar or restaurant utilize social media to reach customers?

First, start out with your customers. What social media sites/tools are they already active on? Twentysomething patrons might be active on a different site than their parents are.

Second, as an experiment, create a Facebook and Twitter account and promote both at your bar/restaurant. By the registers, and the door as people leave. Watch and see which site your customers connect with you on, if you promote your Twitter and Facebook sites at your restaurant today and over the next week new Twitter followers outnumber Facebook fans by 10 to 1, that’s a good indicator that your customers are probably more active on Twitter, than Facebook.

Let’s assume that’s the case. Then next you could continue the experiment by tweeting out a few ‘Twitter-only’ specials. Like say from 12pm-2pm on Thursday, mention code ‘Twitter’ at checkout, and you’ll get 20% off your order. But ONLY publicize that special on Twitter. Then do the experiment again for Friday nite from 6pm-8pm, but this time only give the code out on your Facebook Fan page.

After you’ve done both, look at how many people used each code, but ALSO look at how many people cashed in on the code relative to how many followers/fans you have. For example, if 25 people cashed in the Twitter code compared to only 15 for Facebook, that sounds better for Twitter, unless you have 200 followers on Twitter, and only 35 fans. In that case, the numbers suggest that your fans on Facebook are more engaged with you than perhaps your Twitter followers are.

As with anything in social media, a great way to figure this stuff out is to jump in, experiment, evaluate the results, tweak if necessary, and try again.

By: Yotam Shochat

Yotam Shochat — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:15:35 +0000

hey mack,
great post,
what are your basic suggestions for social media platform creating for a bar or a restaurant?
how do you advise to attract the first mass of followers and fans?
just clicking on profiles or some other more advance technics?

thanks,
Yotam

By: Mack Collier

Mack Collier — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:43:04 +0000

Eric, there’s no fee for Monitter. Second Monitter does the same thing you can do with Tweetdeck BUT, it’s location-based. Meaning that you can search for the same terms PLUS search for them in a particular geographic area.

For example, if you wanted to search for ‘looking for an apartment’ AND for only tweets coming from the zip code where your apartments are, you can do that with Monitter.

Pretty sweet, eh?

By: Eric Brown

Eric Brown — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:38:44 +0000

Mack, Good Evening,
While In can’t speak for a larger business, I can for a small business, why would they just set up tweetdeck with select key searches and do what you are suggesting for free. I assume that this service is a monthly fee?

Point too is, If you are not already practicing in the Social Media Space, this all sounds foreign, but it is really pretty simple, as is most everything about twitter.