Twitter can supercharge a word-of-mouth campaign, invigorate the street food market, and even replace the restaurant industry's comment card.
Jason Cox, aka @MJasonC, was planning a birthday dinner. Rather than call a restaurant or book a reservation online, he sent a tweet to William "Marty" Kotis, aka @darryls, the owner of Darryl's Wood Fire Grill in Greensboro, North Carolina. A few hundred characters and one birthday S'more promise later, he not only grabbed a celebratory dinner at Darryl's, but also tweeted with the owner through the meal and came back to book a 50-person event as result of their correspondence.
The success of Darryl's is the direct result of the success of @darryls, Kotis claims. "In a restaurant, the comment card has been replaced by the tweet," he says. "I've had conversations, 140 characters of less of course, with guests that are dining in the restaurant. It's instant, effective, and creates a real wow factor for the guest to get instantaneous responses to their comments."
To tweet or not to tweet? is the question many small businesses face when designing high impact marketing plans on a small budget. For some small businesses, Twitter is more than a marketing gimmick. It's pivotal to the business model -- if you know how to use it.