The web is certainly changing the way people learn about things. Coffee shops need to be sure they stay in tune with the popular social networks online and go where their customers are going. A site that launched over a year ago is fast becoming my personal favorite. It’s called Twitter and it’s really simple. Think of it as instant messaging all of your friends at once online and being able to follow conversations among all of your friends. More and more businesses and individuals are creating profiles on Twitter and using it to promote themselves and just for fun to keep up with friends. If I owned a coffee shop I would make Twitter a part of my marketing program. Here is the official Twitter profile for Arizona Coffee: http://twitter.com/arizonacoffee And here is my personal profile: http://twitter.com/christingom If you have a Twitter profile (I know some of you do!), go ahead and add Arizona Coffee and let us know in the comments.
AzBill Wow, make twitter a part of your marketing for a coffee shop. What a great idea! I wonder what forward-thinking coffee shop owners will jump on that bandwagon? I wonder which ones already have… http://www.twitter.com/daily_buzz 0 Reply February 8, 2008
Victor I guess I don’t get it. Looks like most people write a few blogs to begin with, then forget about it. But then I’m not into MySpace-type things either. I must be missing something here (I’m sure) 0 Reply February 10, 2008
Austin I think thats the thing about twitter. There isn’t really much to get. It almost like a permanent chat room or also a place to tell people about what you are doing or what is going on. Also the fact that you don’t have to visit the site all the time is a plus. Its not really much of a place for introverts though. 0 Reply February 10, 2008
Chris Tingom Yeah, one of the other things is that if you have few friends on Twitter, then it is less interesting. I’m hoping a few more coffee shop owners get into it, and we can have some good discussion back and forth. 0 Reply February 10, 2008
David SB I don’t think I get Twitter, but then again I’ve never been into instant messaging or text messaging. I guess the downsides I see with Twitter are 1) banality — sort of like the trivial discussions that characterized most Seinfeld episodes 2) TMI — I can just see someone posting stuff like “on the toilet now.” I hope I’m wrong; maybe I’m just too old to get it. 0 Reply February 10, 2008
Austin David. No you aren’t wrong in the least. But if you are a blogger on have people you know who are it becomes like an rss feed of their life. I meetup with people now and again just being bored and announcing that i am going to be at a certain place. 0 Reply February 10, 2008
Chris Tingom On Saturday I “Twittered” that my Sunday afternoon chess group needed a 4th person. Someone following me on Twitter showed up. It’s only valuable if you get your friends to use Twitter as well, or you run a business and work to get your customers following you. 0 Reply February 11, 2008
David SB Thanks, Chris. I think I begin to see the potential value when a network of people are twittering together. A coffee house or restaurant could broadcast daily specials or spur-of-the-moment offers to its regular customers and reach them on cell phones even if they’re not on a computer at the moment. 0 Reply February 11, 2008
David SB Coincidentally, I just saw this in my Google Reader. All about twitter etiquette: http://www.chow.com/stories/10910 0 Reply February 12, 2008
Chris Tingom Interesting link David. I don’t even have the SMS capabilities of Twitter activated. But even then: a lot of people are so good at text messaging that they can whip out a message in a few seconds. 0 Reply February 12, 2008
Victor Now it makes more sense. Good for a group of people who need to have sort of like an on-going text meeting instead of each person communicating by group email. I sure could have used something like this during the course of this past week. 0 Reply February 12, 2008
