Is Twitter, a social media dinosaur, about to become extinct or is there life in the old dog yet?

Twitter is one of the oldest and most well-established social media platforms, having been created in 2006 (two years after the advent of Facebook.) While the site is still a firm favourite with original users, who remain loyal to its relative simplicity and restricted character limit, new sites like Tumblr and Instagram are snapping at Twitter’s heels with a younger and increasingly more influential set of users.

So, is this social media dinosaur about to become extinct or is there life in the old dog yet?

Twitter has remained pretty constant since its conception, sticking to its restricted word limit concept as a USP (though this has now increased from 140 to 280.) Twitter still forces its users to focus on what they want to say, cutting out waffle and conjecture. Many users enjoy this restriction, but as sites like Reddit and word limit as its defining factor, limiting posters to a set number of characters (now increased from 140 to 280) in order to make them focus on what they really want to say. But as blog-based sites like Reddit and Tumblr rise in popularity, it seems we may increasingly require more space to air our views.

While Facebook has moved through various changes (adding a buy/sell marketplace, pay per click advertising and suggesting content to users, for instance) Twitter remains relatively and comfortingly unchanged, a fact which ensured many original users remain loyal to the platform. As more and more social media sites come to market, however, the younger generation is starting to expect more variety from sites. Twitters lack of innovation may soon become a drawback rather than a USP.

Like Facebook, Twitter does now offer a range of paid advertising options which help to attract new users and bring in revenue. For some time now, large and small brands have taken to Twitter in order to directly communicate with customers, using the site as a free platform both to advertise and interact. It’s also very easy for customers to get in touch with companies, accessing the Twitter app via their phone or tablet in order to fire questions, concerns, suggestions and comments at their favourite big brands. And they have a great chance of receiving a reply too – making it easier than ever before to truly engage with your favourite brands.

Another unique feature of Twitter is the fact that the site makes it perfectly acceptable to interact with a total stranger, something that is frowned upon and problematic to Facebook users. Our Facebook ‘friends’ tend to be people we spend time with in real life, with an added layer of colleagues and acquaintances that surrounds our inner circle. The site offers the chance to build networks of shared connection and, to a large degree, our Facebook ‘friends’ will share many common interests and preoccupations with us. Twitter allows us to form less lasting and meaningful but, perhaps, more interesting and challenging connections with strangers, whether on a personal or business level. Our conversations are often fleeting and shallow, but many of us prefer this to Facebook’s requirement to stay constantly involved and connected.

Unexpectedly, Twitter has become a great platform for social change. The campaign (hashtag) blacklivesmatter, for instance, wouldn’t have gained so much publicity and momentum without trending on the site. Whenever a big event, positive or negative, occurs – Twitter is amongst the first to see it trending as users begin to engage with what’s happening in real time. Twitter has the capacity to bring people together and make a big difference to what’s going on in the world.

From the early days, however, Twitter has suffered from the publication of fake news stories, spam and various types of abuse. It’s also become a platform for individuals and organizations to hammer home political agendas, which some people find off-putting, preferring their social media sites to be places of pure fantasy and fun. Some African governments have gone as far as to cut off all in internet provision in their countries around election times, claiming that the sharing of fake news stories on sites like Twitter has the capacity to alter results.

GIF via Techcrunch

Many people also worry about Twitter’s safety. The site makes it shockingly easy for an individual to create a multitude of fake profiles, making the potential for cyber-crime and bullying a real concern. As an organization, Twitter seems to have done little, so far, to address this issue. With this ease of anonymity, it’s not difficult to see why the platform attracts more than its fair share of trolls – individuals whose presence on Twitter only serves to disrupt and denigrate the content posted by others.

One of Twitter’s most appealing qualities was its ability to allow everyday people to engage with famous faces on an equal platform. These days, many once-prominent celebrities like Kanye West and Emma Stone have stopped using the site altogether, finding it irrelevant in comparison to other rising social media platforms. If this trend continues, Twitter may lose some of its core followers who access the site to follow and interact with their most loved celebrity or political figure.

The Twitter hashtag remains one of the sites’ most valuable and most used features. It seems that many millions of us fell in love with Twitter’s instantly recognisable symbol and won’t be giving it up anytime soon. For millennials, the word ‘hashtag’ has become part of their vocabulary, used in daily life rather than solely through the site. Though Twitter does have some issues, the statistics speak for themselves. Twitter has over 30 million active monthly users and remains the third most popular social network worldwide. With this in mind, the site’s creators probably aren’t too worried just yet. As social media sites morph into hybrids (gaming apps, online dating platforms etc) the ultra- simple yet highly effective premise of Twitter may be what keeps users hooked for generations to come.

Read more:
Is Twitter slowly dying?

Each year on Twitter, 200 million posts receive the hashtag ‘food.’

88% of people turn to online reviews when choosing a new restaurant or café

Food and drink is one of the top five most popular subjects shared on Instagram.

If you’re not currently promoting your café, bar or restaurant on social media, you should be! Here’s a new menu for you to try – ten top tips for social media engagement within the catering industry. All can be done on a shoestring budget, with no expensive agencies or prior marketing knowledge required.

Create a consistent voice for your brand

As suggested by a social media marketing expert, Mattia Sangianini, “remember social media posts represent your business, not your personal views”. “Developing a unique professional voice when using social media will allow you to build trust and loyalty with followers”, so be sure to some time perfecting the language and tone of voice you use.

Promote online reviews and respond to them, whether good or bad

Encouraging customers to write online reviews through social media is a great way to generate free publicity. Responding to these reviews is also part of the deal – whether good or bad, customers will appreciate you taking the time to thank them or apologise for a poor experience. If a review is less than favourable, suggesting how you’ll make improvements for the future goes a long way.

Special discounts and events

Offering special discount vouchers or exclusive events to social media customers is a great way of growing your following, letting people know that they’re valued and appreciated. You can tailor these to suit the season or cross promote a new menu or event.

Be responsive

Research has shown that the vast majority of people expect a reply to social media messages within twenty-four hours. Become a regular presence on your social media platforms, joining in conversations and debates and responding to queries as quickly as you can.

Enter competitions and ask for votes

If visitors to your restaurant have enjoyed a good experience, they’ll have no problem with becoming evangelists for your brand. Asking people to nominate you for awards of vote for you in competitions is a great way of engaging on social media, and it’s completely free!

Seek customer input and opinion

Developing a new menu? Pizza topping not selling well? Ask customers what they think, and they’ll enjoy the opportunity to shape the decisions that are made. Asking for customer feedback and advice also creates free, original content that you can share easily.

Don’t forget video

Along with sharing written content and images, don’t forget to video share too. Whether it’s a film of your chef creating an exciting new dish or a video that takes customers for a spin around the new décor in your restaurant, video content is cheap, engaging and easy to share. With high quality video now available on most mobile phones, no professional marketing team should be required.

Let your customers do the hard work

If your social media followers are creating content for you, share it! Comments, great reviews, images of people enjoying your cuisine are all fantastic to share between different social media sites and cost absolutely nothing in time, money or effort.

Invest where it counts

Investing in a professional food photographer is a fantastic way to showcase your range of dishes in their best light.  Pay per click advertising, on the other hand, may not work well for your business. Think carefully where you invest your social media budget. The obvious choice may not be right for everyone.

Post at the right time

If your restaurant or bar is only open from 8pm, posting at 9am may not be the best strategy (even if that’s when you have the most time to create content.) Try generating a buzz during opening hours – asking customers to be spontaneous and pop down for an impromptu happy hour with half priced drinks. Many social media platforms allow users to schedule content, so you can keep to your schedule with a little advance planning.

Read more:
Promote your restaurant on social media, on a shoestring budget

Instagram has become the favoured social media platform for brand marketing – and with 700,000,000 users, most of whom are under thirty, it’s easy to understand the appeal.

Promoting your business on Instagram isn’t as simple as uploading a great photo and waiting for the comments and likes to roll in, however. Your brand needs to send a consistent message, with stunning images and regular content that’s interesting and useful to followers.

My top five tips to promote your business on Instagram will help kickstart your presence on the platform.

Get professional

Create a dedicated business account for your brand and carefully plan a schedule of content, rather than posting when the mood takes you (as you would with a personal account.) When promoting your brand, focus on the needs of your target audience, rather than thinking about what you might like to share with friends. Your business account should be packed with personality, but content shouldn’t be personal – keep your private life private and stick to your brand message.

Hashtag for your life

Hashtagging your posts is a great way to highlight your niche and create a vacuum for potential followers, that will funnel them towards your page (in fact, it’s so effective for business use that 7 out of 10 Instagram hashtags are now branded.) Crafting your own branded hashtags will help people find your content (if it’s relevant to them) and can also be used to track engagement with your posts, so you can learn what works and what doesn’t.

Be subtle

Instagram isn’t a place to hard sell. People do buy from brands they follow, but the challenge is to influence and suggest, rather than actively pushing a product. Be subtle in the way you engage with followers and they’re more likely to enjoy your content, rather than feeling hassled.

Often, it’s a good idea to let your images do the talking, keeping copy to a minimum in order to avoid appearing too sales focussed. The most successful brands on Instagram use their posts to drive traffic to specific product pages on their websites, where they can share product details and make a strong calls to action that prompts a visitor to make a purchase.

Picture perfect

It wouldn’t feel right to post about Instagram without discussing images – after all, this is a visual platform. Getting snap happy with an average quality camera is fine for a personal account, but your brand deserves better, so consider investing in a professional photographer or a great camera to produce pictures that stand out from the crowd.

Competition for amazing images on Instagram is fierce, so make sure that every image you share is carefully planned and well executed. Be inventive too – coming up with creative ways to capture content – you’ll find tonnes of inspiration simply by browsing the site for a couple of hours.

Most cameras and smart phones now feature the option to shoot in squares, which means you can save time on cropping images before uploading, along with ensuring essential elements in your images aren’t lost. You can also take advantage of Apps like PicStitch and Snapseed to help bring your images to life, and to create great layouts for your page.

Promote your page

Finally, don’t forget to promote your Instagram account via other social media channels, like Twitter and Facebook – and include your feed on your website and blog too. There’s no point having a great Instagram account if nobody knows about it, so use your social media profiles to cross promote.

Read more:
How to promote your business on Instagram in 2019

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are fantastic free business tools.

They allow us to promote what we do, share relevant information and engage with customers quickly and effectively, on a more personal level than ever before. Social media marketing, along with the right social media growth tools, is actually one of the most widely adopted business trends for 2019 and businesses becoming more creative on how they can create distinct yet effective social media marketing campaigns.

When we get social media interaction right, the results can be instant and astounding. But used badly, social media may spell disaster for a company’s reputation and future prospects.

The social media content that we post via our business accounts says a huge amount about our brand and its values. But I’m not so much concerned about what we say. More how we say it. Our brand voice, the language that use when posting on social media, directly affects how our business is perceived, shaping customer opinion and interaction (with the potential to turn people on or drive them away.)

So how strong is your brand voice and why does it matter so much?

We’re much more likely to consider brand voice when writing online or printed copy, but we often overlook it when posting on social media. Perhaps these mediums feel more permanent in comparison to the fast-paced environment of sites like Twitter and Instagram, where content turns over at break-neck speed.

Uploading a social media post is quick and simple, so we often dash off these interactions when we have ten seconds to spare, or while we’re juggling other tasks.

How we talk about our brands on social media matters. We spend endless time and money developing a fantastic logo or great looking website for our brand, because we understand the value of a marketing resource that’s instantly recognizable and allows potential customers to instantly understand the values we represent.

A brand voice does the same thing.

When used via social media, a strong and consistently applied brand voice will build enduring relationships with existing followers along with attracting a new audience. People feel comfortable when they know what to expect and can relate to content that’s consistent in its delivery.

A well-developed brand voice does other things too;

• It allows you to streamline your responses and reactions.
• It helps to make your business recognisable and identifiable.
• It helps you to build trust and loyalty by delivering a consistent message.
• It allows your target audience to relate more easily to your brand.
• It allows you to stay in control and shape opinion.
• It helps you to develop a style and personality that’s exclusively yours.
• It helps you to cut out jargon and sale speak, authentically engaging with customers and building relationships that last.
• It provides reassurance to customers but letting them know what they can expect from an interaction with your brand.
• It builds a community around your brand.

If you’re sold on the importance of a strong, unique brand voice, how do you go about developing yours? And how can you apply it to social media once you do?

Developing a brand voice isn’t as difficult as it sound. Follow these tips to locate yours and use it consistently across all social media channels.

Find your voice

A strong brand voice is one based on the core values of a business, so begin by

making a list of the qualities you believe your brand possesses, the values that shape your business decisions and the ethos behind your brand. Are you quirky? Professional? Honest? Fun? Authoritative? Ethical?

Once you have a list of values, you can match your tone to these.

A quirky brand, for instance, might use a humorous, funky, remarkable, surprising or even shocking tone to communicate with customers (avoiding a tone that’s too serious, business like, formal or detached.)

A professional brand may wish to communicate in a tone that’s credible, honest, trustworthy and genuine (and, conversely, shies away from being flippant, hasty, funny or shocking.)

Knowing the tone you need to use in order to convey your message will allow you to select language that positively represents the values of your company and gets to the heart of what make you special.

Decide how you’ll use this voice.

Once you know what tone to take when posting on social media, you can hone your brand voice further, asking questions like;

• Do we use jargon or colloquialism?
• Do we swear?
• Do we speak frankly or take a diplomatic stance?
• Do we wade into debates or stay out of heated conversation?

Even down to the use of emoticons or whether you address customers by name when replying to comment, the more attention you can give to consistency, the more trust and credibility you will build with your following.

If a customer knows that they can expect replies that are honest, professional, timely and with your brand. They may also share this message with others (which is a very good thing.)

Be as one voice.

For many businesses, it’s necessary for a range of users to keep on top of social media updates. If posts don’t come from once source, everyone involved in providing social media updates needs to be familiar with your brand voice and how to use it.

This may involve some training, but a consistent message is vital in ensuring that customers know what to expect from your social media interactions.

Remember, your brand voice isn’t your own voice. When posting on behalf of your business, you should be using a different voice than the one you’d use in your own, personal updates. Every word that you share reflects your business and alters the way in which your audience views you.

A casual comment or joke that might work on your personal account may cause irreparable damage to your business following. Adopting your brand voice before business posting will go a long way to protecting your company’s image and reputation.

At first, it might feel awkward or strange to start using a new voice on social media. Stick with it as the more you use your brand voice, the stronger and more consistent it will become. Writing down some guidelines to refer to when posting is useful, as is reading each post aloud before it goes live. Ask yourself, is this brand trustworthy? Would I do business with these guys? It will soon become second nature to use your brand voice for all social media interaction, it just takes practise.

Tips and hacks

• You may wish to make a list of key words and phrases that summarise your business and insert these into communications in order to strengthen your message (don’t overuse these or you’ll end up sounding like a robot instead of a real person.
• Making a list of language you want to avoid using is also a great idea. How many of us instantly feel angered when we make a complaint, only to have a company parrot phrases like;

‘we value your custom.’

back at us?

Find your own, unique way of saying the things that needs to be said and stick to it.

• Your brand voice on social media might also encompass the fonts, colours and images you choose to use. When practised consistently, all of these different elements work together to make your brand instantly recognizable.

Read more:
The importance of a strong brand voice on social media (and how to develop one)