As social media has taken off in recent years, it’s been a boon for smart companies that are using these tools to connect with online customers. But for smaller businesses, especially retailers that rely on a local customer-base, social media hasn’t always shown quite as much promise.
But thanks to tools like Monitter.com, that could be changing. Monitter.com is a location-based monitoring system that tells you what people on Twitter are tweeting about right now. You put in the zip code you want to pull tweets from, and how far away you want to go, then the phrases you want to search for. Let’s say you are an Italian restaurant in Nashville. In the above screen shot, I put in the 37201 area code, and am pulling tweets for people using the words ‘pizza’, ‘hungry’, and ‘lunch’. So if you tweet about any of those words, and you’re within 20 miles of the Nashville zip code 37201, I’ll see your tweet.
As you can see, this holds enormous potential for a local business to use Twitter to connect with some new customers. Let’s say I own Tony’s Pizzeria, and I’m using Monitter.com right now (an hour or so till lunchtime) to scan Twitter. What if I see the following tweets:
‘Everyone in the office is hungry for pizza but no one near us delivers! Now what?’
‘Ugh, had McDonalds for breakfast, mexican yesterday. Want something different, any ideas?’
‘At Olive Garden and they are PACKED! Quick Twitter, what’s another Italian place that has room for a party of 8?’
If I were Tony, I could quickly use Twitter to connect with dozens of potential lunchtime customers, just by scanning tweets with Monitter. And in setting up those searches for this post, I’ve noticed that a couple of pizza businesses in the 37201 zip code are already active on Twitter.
What other ways could a local business use this? What about car dealers scanning for people interested in buying a new car, or even for helping out customers that are having a problem with their car (How impressive would it be if I tweeted that my Acura just died on the highway, then a few mins later a mechanic from the local Acura dealer showed up to help? You better best believe all of my 11K followers would have read me tweeting about how amazing that Acura dealer was!)
The possibilities are endless, and I think that Monitter.com is a great FREE tool that really benefits local businesses, and helps them connect with LOCAL customers! If your business is using Monitter, what have been your results?
Want to read more about how you can better use Twitter? Check out my Social Media Library. Ready to get started using Twitter to build your business? Email me to hear more about how I can help your business get its Twitter and Social Media efforts off the ground!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Mack, Good Evening,
While In can’t speak for a larger business, I can for a small business, why would they just set up tweetdeck with select key searches and do what you are suggesting for free. I assume that this service is a monthly fee?
Point too is, If you are not already practicing in the Social Media Space, this all sounds foreign, but it is really pretty simple, as is most everything about twitter.
Eric, there’s no fee for Monitter. Second Monitter does the same thing you can do with Tweetdeck BUT, it’s location-based. Meaning that you can search for the same terms PLUS search for them in a particular geographic area.
For example, if you wanted to search for ‘looking for an apartment’ AND for only tweets coming from the zip code where your apartments are, you can do that with Monitter.
Pretty sweet, eh?
hey mack,
great post,
what are your basic suggestions for social media platform creating for a bar or a restaurant?
how do you advise to attract the first mass of followers and fans?
just clicking on profiles or some other more advance technics?
thanks,
Yotam
Hey Yotam, it sounds like you’re asking how could a bar or restaurant utilize social media to reach customers?
First, start out with your customers. What social media sites/tools are they already active on? Twentysomething patrons might be active on a different site than their parents are.
Second, as an experiment, create a Facebook and Twitter account and promote both at your bar/restaurant. By the registers, and the door as people leave. Watch and see which site your customers connect with you on, if you promote your Twitter and Facebook sites at your restaurant today and over the next week new Twitter followers outnumber Facebook fans by 10 to 1, that’s a good indicator that your customers are probably more active on Twitter, than Facebook.
Let’s assume that’s the case. Then next you could continue the experiment by tweeting out a few ‘Twitter-only’ specials. Like say from 12pm-2pm on Thursday, mention code ‘Twitter’ at checkout, and you’ll get 20% off your order. But ONLY publicize that special on Twitter. Then do the experiment again for Friday nite from 6pm-8pm, but this time only give the code out on your Facebook Fan page.
After you’ve done both, look at how many people used each code, but ALSO look at how many people cashed in on the code relative to how many followers/fans you have. For example, if 25 people cashed in the Twitter code compared to only 15 for Facebook, that sounds better for Twitter, unless you have 200 followers on Twitter, and only 35 fans. In that case, the numbers suggest that your fans on Facebook are more engaged with you than perhaps your Twitter followers are.
As with anything in social media, a great way to figure this stuff out is to jump in, experiment, evaluate the results, tweak if necessary, and try again.
Mack,
Thanks for the heads up on Monitter. Because I’m in PR, it’s crucial to know not only what everyone is talking about, on a large scale, but on the local side, especially with the smaller businesses that come to me! Have you used this program much yet? Does it have any aps to it or additional sites that pair up well? Thanks again! I’ll be sure to get to your survey sometime tonight/tomorrow.
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