As we have learned in class, companies are always looking for new ways to reach their customers and gain information about them. As the “groundswell” technologies advance, companies must learn to adjust to these new trends and use them to their advantage or they can fall behind their competitors. As the popularity of social media outlets such as Twitter grow, the value of utilizing these mediums increases for companies. Two companies that I believe are doing an excellent job of reaching their customers through Twitter are the restaurant chain Kona Grill, and ESPN.
I first noticed Kona Grill after a friend of mine “retweeted” a tweet that Kona Grill had posted mentioning him. A retweet on twitter is a way of expanding the reach of a post to more viewers. People usually retweet something when they think it is funny or interesting and they want it to be seen by their friends who may not be “followers” of the tweet’s composer. Upon investigating Kona Grill’s profile page I noticed that almost all of their tweets specifically mentioned and personally thanked twitter users who had just eaten at the restaurant. This was either because these people used four-square, another social media phenomenon, to “check-in” at Kona Grill, or because they decided to become followers of the restaurant when they ate there. The reason that all of this is important is because Kona Grill found a new way to connect to their consumers and not only enhance their dining experience, but also gains information about them. Kona Grill is building customer loyalty and making people feel more of a connection to them by sending out personalized thank you messages to any customer that eats at their restaurants. This is a very cheap and efficient way to make people feel more comfortable with a restaurant, and can lead to customers coming in more often. Also, Kona Grill’s technique allowed them to reach a potential new customer like me because my friend Kevin retweeted their initial thank you. This is kind-of similar to how the groundswell mention the “blogosphere” in that blogs are linked together by fellow bloggers by including links to each other and creating a tie between them. In this case it was tweets linked together, but the same goal is accomplished in that two posts of social media are related an tie together in a way that adds exposure to both members. Kona Grill also can gain insights and information about its customers through twitter because once they “follow” some of their past customers they can see what other restaurants they are visiting when these users “check-in” other places. They can see what other restaurants the customer may be following or followed by, getting a better grasp of their competitors.
ESPN also does a very good job of utilizing Twitter to reach their customers by utilizing the groundswell. Twitter is growing every day with more and more new members of the general public, national media, and even professional athletes themselves. ESPN’s staff reporters and writers and extremely popular on twitter, with followers usually in the 100,000’s or even millions. Some of the most popular ESPN personalities such as Bill Simmons, Buster Olney, Erin Andrews and Mathew Berry all use twitter to share their opinions as well as distribute breaking sports news. More importantly, they are able to use twitter to post links to their own stories or blogs on ESPN. Buster Olney has a daily blog on ESPN, and every morning when I wake up and check twitter I see that he has posted the link as well as a short description of what is covered in less than 140 characters. So not only do I get to read my favorite writer’s thoughts, but when I want to read his work it is a quick and easy click away. Bill Simmons takes it a step further, and not only posts links to his stories on twitter, but utilizes the groundswell even further by posting links to his podcasts as well. Simmons is one of the most downloaded podcasters on Itunes and has been an early adopter to this new way of reaching his audience. As the chapters stated, podcasts are only popular among 11% of Americans. However, ESPN is definitely on the cutting edge of this new type of social media with shows such as Simmons’ “BS Report,” as well as others such as “Pardon the Interruption,” and Mathew Berry’s podcasts about various fantasy sports. ESPN employees are increasingly becoming more involved in all types of media such as blogs, twitter, podcasts, and “webisodes” in order to reach their fans. Undoubtedly whenever the next big social media outlet surfaces ESPN and their staff will be among the early adopters of the new groundswell technology in order to stay on the cutting edge of connecting with customers.
http://twitter.com/konagrill
http://twitter.com//Buster_ESPN
http://twitter.com/sportsguy33
http://espn.go.com/espnradio/podcast/index
