The extremely busy schedule of a food truck owner creates time restrictions that do not favor doing a lot of social media marketing, especially time released updates like we have discussed.
Luckily for us there’s an app for that.
Being able to schedule your Tweets via software is like having another employee that you don’t have to pay.
The reason it works is because you already know:
- The location you want then to find you
- The time you will be there
- When you will be leaving
- What you will be serving
- Pictures of what you are serving
- Any future events you will be at
- Specials and Pricing
- New food items
- Where you will be the next day
It’s possible you know your schedule for the next 2 weeks to a month.
That’s why scheduling your tweets makes all the sense in the world. If you have locations and times planned then you can start scheduling Tweets.
The best way we have found to do this is an online service called Hootsuite.
Helping You Schedule & Organize Your Social Media Efforts
Hootsuite is a free social media management platform that can be used on your computer or mobile phone. It coordinates all of your social media accounts in one place. This can be a powerful tool in your business. It can be used to manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and others.
Linking Hootsuite to your Twitter account is really easy. If you already have a Twitter account (and if you read Part 2 of this series you should have a Twitter account). Once you’re linked, you can start using Hootsuite exclusively to send and receive Tweets.
Anything you can to do with Twitter can be done with Hootsuite. You no longer have to go into Twitter anymore. In fact, after I linked my accounts, I hardly ever log into the actual Twitter page or Twitter app on my iPhone anymore!
You can send out Tweets just like before, but now, you’ll have the ability to schedule your Tweets and even track clicks from your embedded links.
Scheduling Tweets with Hootsuite
When you click the calendar button, a calendar interface will pop-up. It looks like a calendar you’d see on a hotel booking page. You simply click on the date you want the Tweet to be sent and pick a time. It’s really easy.
We covered a list of 12 Tweets in Part 2 of this series. Each of those can be scheduled the night before, that way you know they will go out the next day so you can concentrate on taking care of business.
Important thing to keep in mind, if something changes that affects business during the day, a malfunction in your truck, location suddenly unavailable, bad weather… Remember to go in a delete scheduled tweets and update and inform your followers.
Benefits Of URL Shortening and Tracking
Hootsuite has another great feature and it is the ability to shorten and track links in your Tweets. Hootsuite uses their own URL protocol when it shortens links. Their links start with: http://ow.ly/
You can shorten any link, it saves space and allows you to use that space for more of your tweet. Hootsuite provides an input box just under the composition window to enter your links for conversion. Once you hit the “Shrink” button, the shortened link is automatically inserted into your Tweet.
The other great thing and my favorite part about shrinking your links is that now they can be tracked by Hootsuite. This information is really important because you can tell what links your followers find valuable enough to click on and which ones they don’t care for.
Each shortened URL is unique and there’s a statistics page at Hootsuite to show all the links you’ve embedded into Tweets. Whether you know what to do with this type of info right now or not it’s always s good idea to collect it for a day when you would like to do a little research, and then you will have it.
Be sure to check out the next part of our Food Truck Marketing Series where we cover Facebook.