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Coffee Groundz: Where Everyone Knows Your NameAronicaCoffee Groundz: Where Everyone Knows Your NameJanet N. AronicaSt. John Fisher College1
 
Coffee Groundz: Where Everyone Knows Your NameAronica
Coffee Groundz: Where Everyone Knows Your NameA Case Study Analyzing the Effect of Twitter as a Marketing ToolABSTRACT:
Given the increasing prevalence of Facebook, blogs and Twitter, more and more businessesare beginning to incorporate social media into their marketing strategies. Although signing up for aTwitter account is free, it requires an investment of time that marketing professionals have to justify by showing how Twitter can increase visibility and sales for a company. This paper will use theneeds described by Kat, Gurevitch and Hass in the Uses and Gratifications theory to evaluate theeffectiveness of Twitter as a social media marketing tool. The qualitative study will focusspecifically on the Twitter account of The Coffee Groundz, a Houston-based coffee house. Through participant observation, and the analysis of a case study and in-depth interviews with severalcustomers/Twitter followers, the researcher will show how The Coffee Groundz’s innovative use of the micro-blogging platform has created an online community that garners brand loyalty andincreased success for the business.
INTRODUCTION:
Twitter is a three-year-old micro-blogging website. Micro-blogging consists of 140-character status updates that answer the question: “What are you doing?” People write a variety of  posts, from “I’m eating a turkey sandwich” to “I’m reading the
 New York Times
and riding thesubway.” Twitter is growing fast—this month, Twitter surpassed 14 million users, a 76.8 percentincrease from last month (O’Neill, 2009).By creating an account on Twitter, a user selects a username called a “Twitter handle.” Theusername is preceded by an “@” symbol. The Twitter handle for The Coffee Groundz is2
 
Coffee Groundz: Where Everyone Knows Your NameAronica@coffeegroundz. (For the purposes of this paper, “@coffeegroundz” refers to the Twitter account,whereas “The Coffee Groundz” refers to the physical place and the real-life company.) The user  posts updates (called tweets) and follows the tweets of others. In many cases, the others follow inreturn, and therefore are able to see the tweets of the user.From Jet Blue to Starbucks, from General Motors to American Apparel, hundreds of  businesses large and small are on Twitter. No matter what the brand, they are drawn to the website by one common goal: to directly connect with consumers. Twitter is blogging. Blogging is aboutconversations. The concise nature of the communication on Twitter conveniently lends itself to theinteractivity businesses are looking for in order to engage consumers in conversations about their  brands.In the book 
The New Rules of Marketing and PR
, author David Meerman Scott (2007)describes three uses for blogs in marketing and public relations. Whether acting as a supplement toan official, full-length company blog or as the exclusive blogging outlet for an organization, Twitter sets the stage for a company to meet these uses. According to Meerman Scott (2007), the first use isto monitor what people are saying about a company, the market it sells to, the products it sells, or the organization as a whole. Companies can monitor the conversations on Twitter in a variety of ways. One of the simplest is to use the websitewww.search.twitter.com, which can be used to perform a live search of the Twitter traffic for any mentions of the company.3
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