Twitter Used To Boost Local Retailing

The connections you make in social networks are the primary value of spending time in social media. It's not the marketing or advertising that makes you money, it's the people you meet who refer you business, solve a problem for free (or for a fee), and drive attention and traffic your way.

Until of course, enterprising business owners realize that being connected to a community can yield profit.

Enter Twitter as the ultimate traffic driver for retailer. Leave it to a small business owner to do this, but a coffee shop/lounge owner in Houston decided to join Twitter, he didn't realize it would double his traffic.  His store traffic, that is.

For real.

When J.R. Cohen, Operations Manager for CoffeeGroundz (@coffeegroundz) Cafe in Houston, Texas first heard about Twitter from one of his customers, he was puzzled but intrigued. Today, he credits Twitter with almost doubling his clientele and with opening his eyes to a whole new way to build Community.

What's interesting about this is the owner just joined to make friends, and the business aspect happened as a natural outgrowth of his success in becoming a personality online.  Once a customer was comfortable that he would be reached, the customer asked a question about business, and the result was a "slap yourself in the head and say why didn't I think of it" moment. Those are the best ideas.

It makes a lot of sense.  Twitter is basically a texting tool that is online instead of on your phone (and the apps on your phone don't count, as they are online as well).  Individual texting for business is okay, but Twitter adds the personal touch that allows CoffeeGrounds to get a Word of Mouth campaign going.

It's what happens when people start joining networks.  They naturally start to look for ways to use the networks for their own benefits  Using Twitter to order food is  a natural outgrowth of being on Twitter all the time. It's easier than calling and waiting, or calling and talking to someone.  And it beats having to get up and walk up to the counter if you're sitting with a client.

It's a great, heart warming story, and I want to hear more.  As of this writing, over two hundred RT's (ReTweets, where someone copy and pastes a Tweet to send it to their audience) have hit Twitter.  That's a big number.

I'm also heading down to the local coffee store to see if they might be interested in hearing about a new idea I have.