How to Use Twitter to Promote Your Hot Dog Cart like a Restaurant

Most businesses know how to promote their products and services on Twitter, but you’re not like most businesses; you’re in the hot dog business! Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been slinging dogs and sauerkraut since the late 1800s, it can be hard to get your cart the attention it deserves. Learn how to use Twitter to promote your hot dog cart like a restaurant with these simple steps and tips!

Set Up An Account

Before you can start marketing your hot dog cart on Twitter, you need to set up an account. Creating a dedicated account for your business can be useful in a few ways. For one, it helps separate your personal and business-related tweets, making it easier for customers to follow updates from both sides of your life. It also allows you to share photos with potential customers without having them show up in everyone’s feed. Just don’t lie about what kind of food you serve—you’ll get found out eventually and that kind of deceit won’t end well for anyone. Most importantly, it will give you an opportunity to think about how exactly how your brand will look on social media.

Create A Bio

The first thing you need is a profile that’s easy to read and understand. Include things like your location, website, number of followers, business hours and anything else that can be useful for readers. Make sure that your profile picture is clear and easily identifiable as you—you want people looking at your cart to know it’s actually yours. Once you have an appealing bio set up, it’s time to start tweeting. But how do you come up with topics?

Design A Profile Picture

One of Twitter’s guidelines for business accounts is that you must include your logo or business name on all your profile images. Logos, at least, are relatively easy to design; in fact, there are entire websites dedicated to offering pre-made logos for any and every possible industry. If you’re crafty and have Photoshop or some other vector-graphics software on hand, it may be easier just to create your own logo from scratch rather than finding an existing one that fits your brand. To do so, look up symbols associated with hot dogs — mustard and ketchup bottles, balloons, and tiny top hats — then pick one that feels right and translate it into a graphic file.

Choose An Icon

The first thing that your followers will see when they land on your profile is your avatar. Choose an avatar that looks professional and makes you memorable. If you’re having trouble deciding what works, scroll through your social media feeds for a few minutes. Do any of these images make you want to follow them? Is there anything specific about their image that does? Note down anything it might be, then try for yourself. Oftentimes, it’s as simple as personalizing it (maybe an image of yourself or something tied in with your business). Just try not to get too crazy—after all, first impressions matter!

Choose Background And Header Image

Once you have your logo and tagline, you’ll need to choose background and header images. Background images can be really useful for giving your account some visual flare, and it doesn’t matter if they don’t go with your branding theme – they won’t be on display all that often. Header images are what will appear above each of your tweets; most people keep their name there. There are two ways to upload these images: upload them through Twitter or ImgUr, which is quicker but only supports PNGs. If your image isn’t an acceptable format for either service, use an image editing program such as GIMP or Photoshop to crop it and save it as a JPG.

Add Some Graphics

Adding visuals is important for any type of business and can increase your following. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but so is an animated gif or meme. The following section will discuss how adding graphics and images can help boost your social media presence by using tools such as Pixlr, Canva, Fotor, and their ability to export images in multiple sizes. You will also learn how short Facebook descriptions become long-winded posts when you’re only able to describe something in just 160 characters—and how adding pictures can help solve this problem by making it easy for others to see what you’re talking about immediately. As well as being entertaining, most forms of media are easily shareable—meaning that others may see your content and decide they want to do business with you too!

Customize The Layout

Anyone who has used Pinterest knows that good images are important. With your social media strategy, layout is just as important. When using Twitter to promote your business, it’s nice to look professional and use standard formats so users will understand your tweets more easily. First impressions are important for both businesses and people, so clean up that profile page! To help you get started with Twitter layout ideas, take a look at these creative templates from experts in several industries: Julie Solomon: Buzzfeed StorySided: Creative Agent Social Media News Mike Stanger: CNBC Using short sentences when writing this section for more of an impact.

Create A List Of Tweets To Tweet On Launch Day

Make sure your first three tweets are: (1) something intriguing, (2) sharing something of value, and (3) talking about how great you are. Include hashtags when appropriate and use @ mentions sparingly. Take advantage of trending topics if they relate to your product or service, and make sure you’re following big accounts in your industry. These simple steps will help you build momentum right out of the gate. If you’re looking for more great tips on how to get started on Twitter as a small business, check out this guide from our friends at HubSpot: How Small Businesses Can Get Started On Twitter In 3 Steps .

Retweet And Reply To Tweets From Others That Are Relevant To Your Topic

One thing that we have seen others do successfully is retweet tweets from others that are relevant to your topic. These short sentences about your product can be put out into cyberspace for free and then will hopefully attract new business. This can turn out very helpful in bringing in customers as it uses both organic marketing and paid marketing at once. It also spreads word of mouth of new services or products that you offer without having to spend money on paying someone else’s marketing department.