Fresh Cup

FEB 2013

Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.

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special deals for customers unlocked by liking us on Facebook. For a shop with a single location, a business page is the tool to use, but a shop with more than one location will have to choose between a brand page and a business page. The business page only allows you to specify one location for your shop, while a brand can have a different page for each shop, though there's no real connection between them—people who like one brand page don't see things posted at another brand page. It's important with Facebook to specify your businesses location and contact information—many people use Facebook as a virtual Yellow Pages, so be sure to search for the setup instructions to list your store's address and information. TWITTER. For some shops, especially those in urban areas with a high Twitter adoption and use rate, Twitter can be nearly as important as Facebook. Mobile food carts use Twitter with great success, and stores that often update their specials or daily items can quickly get their messages out via Twitter. However, most shops will find that it's enough to set up Twitter to automatically repost things that are written to the blog and/or Facebook. They will then have to check into the Twitter feed regularly to make sure any questions or comments are addressed. INSTAGRAM. Despite the fact that Instagram (as of this writing) was experiencing a backlash for its new terms of service, the photo-sharing network has been extremely popular, especially with the demographic of young professionals who are the mainstay of many upscale coffee shops. You can very easily connect Instagram to share with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other sites. GOOGLE PLUS. Despite an initial wave of interest when it launched, Google Plus hasn't been as popular as the company hoped, and as such we don't see a lot of businesses doing outreach via Google Plus. However, keep an eye on Google Plus, especially if users of Facebook and its tools face more resistance to onerous terms of service. YOUR WEB SITE. Perhaps the most overlooked avenue of communication with your customers is your Web site. A Google search for your business will bring people to your site more often than Facebook or Twitter pages, so that's the best place to begin interacting socially with customers. Run a blog, post important notices there and direct people to your other social platforms. Most site development tools allow you to drop in widgets or plug-ins to show content from Facebook, Twitter and the rest, and it's a great way to connect people directly to your social-media tools. And as the saying goes, you never have a second chance to make a first impression. TEST THE WATERS New social-media tools pop up constantly, as everyone wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. It's almost impossible to tell which will be the next must-use tool, so it's a good idea to set up accounts on any new service but not to dedicate time and resources until they've established a foothold. freshcup.com February 2013 31

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