I actually don’t go to Jo’s Coffee much at all. They’re way down in South Austin, where-as I’m in “North Central.” But, they have a Twitter account which was used a bit at first, but has since died down (no posts since nine months ago). My thinking is that they should just hook-up a Twitter bot to post 2-3 things every day, maybe pre-load it (use an auto-posting bot) each week with a bunch of silly comments like:
- Just got a new shipment of onion buns for our burgers. Cooking up rare patty now for breakfast burger. So good.
- Print out this Twitter and bring it by Jo’s south for a free refill on coffee. Bet in the first 10, and get a free cup!
- I think those Amy’s Ice-cream people across the street are up to something. Coffee melts ice-cream, boy-o.
- Thinking about introducing coffee line for dogs.
- In the summer, how can we get the coffee just hot enough to taste good, but not so hot that you don’t want to drink it in the Austin heat?
- A little embarrassed that we have a shop in something called 2nd street district. “District” is just one friggin’ block!
- [Assuming some ERP/back-office integration] Just sold 300 cups of coffee today. It’s only 10AM.
I’m sure the customers could think of better things to say. Indeed, Jo’s could put up a little sign that said, “write down 140 character thing for Jo to say: get a free re-fill” and then use those “user-submitted” Tweats. A free re-fill is certainly better than digital sharecropping for nothing.
The point here, of course, is to sell more coffee eventually. More so, it’s to keep me and other @joscoffee people entertained and eye-balling Jo’s even when they’re not there drinking coffee of enjoying those delicious onion-bunned burgers. Sure, you could think of it as annoying spam-junk, but then you can just not follow and even block them.
Now, if you had the actual employees manning the @joscoffee account, well, that’d be a whole new thing of excitement.
Either way, I’m sure people following @joscoffee would often see a Twit, think they want a coffee, and then next thing you know end up at Jo’s, where they’d probably be going already if someone would just ask. I mean, it’s the internet man: that’s the kind of crap we do if people opt-in to it.
As always, this general train of thought applies to more than just @joscoffee, or even coffee shops. It’d be rad if my neighborhood coffee shop – which I do frequent, mostly for coffee on the go – Thunderbird had it.
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