This post was originally published on February 3, 2009 on the DeckersMarketing.com blog, which will soon be closed down.

J.R. Cohen, operations manager for CoffeeGroundz Cafe (@CoffeeGroundz) in Houston, TX, used Twitter to nearly double his clientele, by using it to take advance orders from customers, thus flying in the face of everyone who has ever said Twitter can’t be used to make money.

Erica O’Grady tells an interesting story at the Pistachio Consulting blog about Cohen’s foray into Twitter, and how he used it to successfully grow his business.

Before he started, Cohen had never even heard of Twitter, but a customer talked him into trying it, and he soon had 1,000 followers on the micro-blog network.

It started on Halloween Day, 2008 when one of Cohen’s regulars Tweeted a drive-through breakfast order to him. This was hailed as possibly the first to-go order placed on Twitter, and Cohen began taking orders via direct message from his followers.

Cohen has become such a big fan of Twitter that he used CoffeeGroundz as site for a Tweetup for 100 Houston Twitterites – who bought food and drinks – which O’Grady says was the largest Houston Tweetup ever.

Houston Twitterati meet at CoffeeGroundz for a Tweetup

What about you? How do you use Twitter? Have you made money from it? Is there a way you could? Or do you have any suggestions from anyone else who wants to dive into Twitter?

From the Pistachio Consulting site
Erica O’Grady is the #1 Erica on Google – Most days :o) Currently she is a Social Media Consultant based in Houston, Texas (the damn near finest city in the South). You can read her blog at ReinventingErica.com or follow her on Twitter (@ericaogrady).

About the Author: Erik Deckers
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.

Tags: coffee shops, social media marketing, twitter

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Lead Generation, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.