We can learn a lot from the example of SEOmoz, an internet marketing company that tripled its Twitter community in a year. SEOmoz is one of the industry leaders in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), another way of saying the improvement of a website’s organic (meaning not advertisements) ranking on search engines. Originally, SEOmoz worked as consultants to companies that wanted to increase their visibility on search engines. Now though, they have moved over to developing software to help companies with SEO. What interests us most about SEOmoz is not their services, but the community they have created. As a result, SEOmoz is a great resource to see the latest in SEO techniques.
Like many other companies, SEOmoz saw the potential of Twitter. Although it does not have the reach of Facebook, Twitter users are much more engaged. Accordingly, they created a clear strategy to build their community. One of the big innovations was making Twitter more than just a marketing platform, but using it as a customer service platform, which extended the SEOmoz’s reach . To do this, it involved giving feedback. Essentially, through Twitter, SEOmoz endeavored to make their followers/users happy. For a restaurant, it is important to respond to the compliments as much as the criticisms. Obviously, for the compliments, you need to thank them, and with the criticims, you must try to remedy their complaint.
Another thing SEOmoz did was to make sharing easy. Facebook and Twitter were integrated into the site so that users found it quick and easy to spread the word. Nowadays, online marketing should have Facebook and Twitter in mind, encouraging your customers to promote (through sharing) your site. Your website therefore should be hooked up to your Facebook Page so both your customers can LIKE and SHARE content from your site.
SEOmoz also delegated the sifting through all the Twitter posts. In a restaurant, this may be applied by having the chef answer questions surrounding food. This is a great place to expand customer access. Using each step in your restaurant will enable you to participate in more conversations and build more relationships.
So you see, Twitter is more than putting some promotions up and announcing blog posts (though you should of course do that). Twitter is about engaging in a larger conversation around your restaurant.
For more details, check out SEOmoz’s video.