Twitter Guide for Pubs – Part 1

Published: Oct 27th, 2010 | Author: The Beeralist

Good Beer, Good Pubs has been using Twitter for over a year now. I tweet when I’ve found a good pub or pint or when I’ve posted a new review. I can see that some of you respond to these so thanks for that.

I also find it a great way to glean information about the things I’m interested in – including beer and pubs. Many breweries and pubs are using Twitter now – some CAMRA groups too. Pubs are advertising events and guest beers and I believe that Twitter can be another good way for pubs to connect with their customers or potential customers – important when times are tough.

As part of my day job I’ve been helping some businesses get the most out of Twitter so I though I’d share some ideas as to how pubs who do Twitter can get their tweets to get noticed (for the right reasons). I hope it helps. If it doesn’t, please tell me how it could be better.

Hashtags are Your Friends

Twitter is a storm. A storm of sh*t some might say, but people do use it successfully to find information and organise their lives and businesses. A way is needed to filter out all the bits you don’t want, and hashtags can do just that.

Think of hashtags as a way of categorising tweets but with useful extra functionality. If you’re interested in football you can search on Twitter for football and you’ll get back all the tweets that mention football. That’s fine, but if you include a hashtag in your tweet (#football) then that word becomes a link to a search on that hashtag. This makes life easier for people reading the tweets – they can just click through to get related tweets. People also set up real-time searches on hashtags they are interested in.

My top tip for tweets is to use appropriate hashtag (or two) where appropriate. Remember to put your location as a hashtag too – people may be searching by area. Examples:

• Today’s beers: Dark Star Hophead + Harveys Best. Doom Bar on later #realale
• As well as #beer we stock 3 varieties of real #cider
• Thursday special: #curry £5 and a #quiz afterwards
• Our #pub is less than 5 minutes from the centre of #Winchester

It pays to do a bit of research to see what hashtags other pubs are using.

Hashtag Syntax

• Must be one word – #realale not #real ale
• Not case sensitive – #realale = #Realale = #RealAle
• Leave space both sides or meaning lost
• Can be used anywhere in #tweet
• #Use #hashtags #sparingly #or #people #won’t #like #it

Twitter Software

Twitter is of course accessible via the web at twitter.com but to get the most out of it you may need some other ways in. I use Tweetdeck which is free to download and is so useful if you run more than one account or want real-time results on many searches. Tweetdeck allows you any number of vertical columns containing whatever you want – you can scroll horizontally with a slider or click blocks.

There are many other applications as well as Tweetdeck – Hootsuite is one I’m hearing good things about. However, when you want to see who someone else is following I find the Twitter.com site is best.

What to Tweet About?

For pubs with a rapidly changing selection of beers or ciders then that is an obvious step. Even if your selection doesn’t change much or at all it’s still worth reminding people what you have got from time to time.

Obviously tweet about any events that are happening or coming up – beer festivals, quizzes, music etc. And if you do food then of course tweet about any specials, or just random selections from the menu.

How often

It’s good to tweet something at least once a day but more often will attract more attention. Things will start slowly so you need to keep the faith here and hopefully before too long you’ll have a good list of followers. Vary your hashtags from time to time to bring in newer followers.

Pubs on Twitter

The following pubs are on Twitter and use it well. Of course there are others…

• The Gunmakers, Clerkenwell
• The Castle Inn, West Lulworth
• The White Hart, Barnes
• Old Fountain, Old Street
• The Bell, Fetcham

If I’ve missed your pub or your favourite pub please let me know and I’ll try and list them.

Any Questions?

If you’re not sure about anything in this article or Twitter in general please leave a comment and I’ll attempt to answer it.

Part 2 of the post will look at mentions and direct messages in Twitter – 2 ways to further communicate with people on Twitter.

Filed in: Pubs | Tags: Hashtag, Twitter | 4 Comments