The only piece missing in the Twitter for Small Business series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) is a case study of small businesses with current Twitter accounts.
It is not easy to find small business accounts on Twitter thru the native Search function. Those at the top have thousands of followers or someone famous in the thumbnail photo. But Quartino Chicago has incredible potential to blow the competition away if they utilize what is working and dispose of what is not.
Who are they?
A restaurant in Chicago, IL where “Where wine is cheaper than water and the pizza is the finest!”
Set up:
- The bio is excellent: “Where wine is cheaper than water and the pizza is the finest!” Short, interesting and to-the-point. They also included a full business address, phone number and website link. They made sure every follower or peruse-r shouting out the page would immediately get everything they need to contact them. Very wise
- The profile picture is the restaurant logo and looks pretty good. But it fades into the white timeline and is difficult to read. The logo should be blown up or added to a black background to make it stand out.
- The background is great. It’s a quality picture of food and is large enough to cover the landscape of big monitors – smart thinking! But the logo looks out of place and ratty against it. The best decision would be to remove it or put it on a background in the top left corner. Thanks to the full bio, any tweeter will know who Quartino is.
Timeline Action – One day:
- Started off with a good morning tweet around 9:30 am with a link to their Facebook fan page. Awesome way to start the day!
- On this particular day, they had a wine bash. Throughout the day they made an announcement, RT’ed 3 tweets about the event and asked followers who was coming.
- All in all – 2 tweets, 1 question and 3 RT’s. Although these are decent numbers, they should have made a better attempt to interact. Asking individual followers makes it personal and special. Or reached out to local businesses ad invited them to come. How many people are going to turn down a wine bash?
Timeline Action – One week:
- Daily morning tweets with a Facebook fan page link. This is great, but would be even better and more effective if they included a call to action such as, Find us, Follow us, Check us out at.. and then the Facebook link. Another way would be to ask followers if they knew about the page – “Good morning, Chicago! Do you know we have a Facebook page? Come check us out!” Solely placing a link is not as effective as pointing directly to it. Don’t be shy.
- It was surprising to see the amount of total daily tweets dwindle the closer it came to the date of the wine bash. It should be the other way around. If a business has an important event in the future, ramp up the tweets. Ask lots of questions, interact even more with followers, send out links, pictures, videos, everything possible to generate discussion about the event. It’s the perfect time to promote and the best time to not be considered obnoxious – take advantage and get new customers in the door.
- Throughout the week there were few RT’s (8) and zero tweets about other businesses (0). Do not hesitate to RT every tweet about the business – it builds relationships. And do not be too stingy to tweet about other businesses. Come on, build a social network and support other businesses, shout out to local places and create an environment for sharing. Giving always comes back around – do not be afraid of it.
- They did a fantastic job of adding in pictures and videos, but were unable to grab the attention of followers. Sharing multimedia is highly recommended, but include a call to action, Check out this awesome video of the Chef cooking ___, or Know what our specials are tonight? Come look! Intrigue the followers; give them a reason to click.
- The week’s total numbers were 8 RT’s, 7 Questions, 22 regular tweets, and 21 interactions.
Overall:
All in all, Quartino is doing a terrific job! I chose Quartino because they tweeted at me when I was in Chicago for a networking trip. I thought it was awesome to see a business paying so much attention.
The profile and background logo should be revisited. These may be nit-picky points, but as a designer aesthetics are what I see first.
The weekly summary shows Quartino is involved and doing a respectable job, but if they amped up the action it would make a serious difference in the interaction and essentially, customer traffic, for the restaurant. The average number of daily tweets hovered around 7. Quartino should be sharing 20-30 tweets a day including more multimedia tweets, RT’s and questions. Tweets ending in question marks are answered and shared the most – so ask, ask, ask. Tweet directly at your customers, share nightly specials (didn’t see any) and add more of a personal touch. Although the account is friendly, it does not give its followers an inside look at what the restaurant culture is. Showcase an employee, talk about where the Chef went to school – there is plenty to share.
And my biggest beef with Quartino is I didn’t see any local or community action. There is a reason this account hasn’t grown like it should since I was in Chicago last Fall – it hasn’t gotten involved in the community and shown some love! Don’t just promote the wine bash – find out what the neighbors are doing and promote them. Why? Because people may trickle in and even if they don’t, they will remember the restaurant that told them about a cool local event and probably stop by at some point to have a meal. Give and it will come back. But Quartino, you guys still rock!
In conclusion
Case studies are cool because they offer us all a chance to learn from what others are doing. Quartino is doing very well and only need to adjust a few things to hit perfection.
Well, what do you think? Did you learn anything? Do you agree with my suggestions? I would love to hear what you have to say!
Ahna Hendrix is LinchpinSEO's very own Social Media expert. She previous designed Facebook product launches for Eva Longoria, Angry Birds Space book, Wolfgang Puck ads and National Geographic Books campaigns. Based in the NYC area, she enjoys running with her dog, Mani, indulging in oaky red wines, and curling up with a good book.
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