Love it or hate it, Social Media is here to stay. Speaking with various restaurateurs I often hear, “I don’t need to be on Twitter. I don’t tweet.” Just because you don’t enjoy the twittersphere, doesn’t mean your guests don’t either. Another phrase I hear is this one, “Only teenagers tweet.” This is also a statement of a misinformed restaurateur. I’m 22 with 20 years of experience and I love Twitter! Most of the folks I tweet to are in a similar age bracket with 20 years experience or better. Have you heard of Donald Trump, he really likes Twitter!

Many small business owners think if they don’t have an account consumers can’t say anything bad about their business. This is not true, not only can they say something bad and you won’t know about it, but they also can say something good and you won’t know about that either. Many Twitter enthusiasts will simply hashtag (#) or, as we used to say back in the day, pound sign your business to ensure folks know about their opinions.

Let’s say you are the owner of small sports bar and had set up a Twitter account, but decided within the first week it wasn’t for you, so now you never look at it, nor do you monitor it.

Scenario #1: a group of guys that are ready to see their Cowboys or Patriots play, decide to tweet to your sports bar and ask if you have any bucket specials and how about those hot wings! They don’t get an answer. I know what you’re thinking, “ Why don’t they call or go to my website?” I’ll tell you why.

• We consumers have become lazy. We don’t want to have to wait for the phone to ring and hope you answer.
• These are a bunch of loud guys that are pumped to watch their team – they wouldn’t be able to hear you anyway.
• How often does the average restaurant update their specials on their website????
• How many websites have you seen lately that are either mobile friendly or have updated specials so you can easily view them on your smartphone?

Now you missed out on some record sales for not only your buckets of beer, but hot wings too!

Scenario #2: You have a great restaurant that serves all the American Favorites and in walks a family of four that knows how to tweet. They see you are not on Twitter so they decide to give you a hashtag (#) and let you know they didn’t think your food was so great. Don’t forget they used a very popular hashtag, #notsogoodfood, so even folks that don’t follow them will see this review. You could have responded if you had known it was there. I bet they posted it to Trip Advisor, Yelp, Instagram, zomato, Google and the list goes on and on. Yes, they should have said something to you while there, but folks love to rant online these days.

I could give a ton of scenarios all day long, but I think you get the point. Don’t sit by and let folks “talk behind your back,” or miss out on opportunities to get those butts in seats! Give Twitter a Chance. Start tweeting like your restaurant depends on it!