Drew Starr is a guy who likes food and things — NOT to be confused with a foodie (don’t call him that, per his request). While his main focus is on food, he tweets a lot about Boston as a whole. Look forward to his snarky, yet informative tweets on food, Boston, and more. Find more Food & Drink Twitter accounts at our list of Who to Follow in Boston!
1. Psst, restaurants: try not to retweet every damn compliment. Did a celebrity say they loved your burger, or did someone take a better picture than you could of your special? Go ahead and hit RT. Someone with 16 followers took a bad picture of your menu? Not so much. Reply and thank them for the compliment, but don’t fill our feeds with it.
2. As for diners, there is little more off-putting than seeing people tweeting petty complaints about fixable things while in the damn restaurant. These aren’t airlines. The people most empowered to help make your life better are unlikely to be manning the restaurant’s Twitter account. Talk to your server, or ask to talk to a manager. If they don’t make it right, fire away, but you should probably sleep on it first anyway. If it still feels necessary in the morning, you’d have had the night to come up with some really good lines, anyhow.
3. Food bloggers / writers / people-about-town / anyone else who manages to get themselves invited to PR events. go and have fun, I certainly go to my share – it’s often the only chance I have to get a feel for a place that I’d be unlikely to get to on my own. But when you’re tweeting about them, make it clear to your followers that it is a PR event. Not disclosing it strikes me as unethical: but worse, it doesn’t clue your followers into the fact that your experience was tightly curated (and free!) and they should not necessarily expect the same.
4. If your tweet starts with an “@,” the only people who will see it are those following you and the account you’re mentioning. So a tweet that says “@NewRestaurant is now on Twitter, go follow them!” is absolutely useless, since it will only be seen by those who are already following @NewRestaurant. Ever wonder why you’ll often see tweets start with a period, or a meaningless “Hey, @soandso …. ?” Those people know this rule. Worth noting: Starting a tweet with an @ when your desired goal is only to reach that person and common followers is a-okay.
5. Twitter works best if you engage with people. That doesn’t mean beg them to promote you. That means respond to the things they’re saying — not only if it’s about you. If you check your Twitter analytics (you DO do that, right? They’re now available for free to all users, even if you don’t advertise), you’ll see most tweets reach a very small percentage of your audience. Most Twitter users are only checking their feeds a few times a day, and rarely scroll back more than an hour or so. The more you engage with individuals, the more likely they’re going to mention you to their audience at different hours.
