Thursday, April 23, 2009

Hit of the Week: Restaurants using Twitter in Reuters


As more people jump on the Twitter bandwagon, it becomes increasingly difficult to stand out in a crowded space. The goal, as media relations-focused PR professionals, was to figure out how to leverage our clients’ presence on Twitter to get them placed in a story that highlights them as being innovative and successful at what they do.

We worked with Reuters to develop a story about how restaurants are using Twitter to help boost their business, reach out directly to their customers on a more personal level and establish their brand. Inspired by the Kogi BBQ phenomenon here in Los Angeles, we gave the journalist a list of different types of restaurants and chefs who Twitter well, pitched how Twitter is a powerful direct to consumer communication tool for small business like restaurants, and hooked her up with some restaurant marketing and advertising gurus. The result: an amazing article that featured three of our clients - Tender Greens, Rush Street and Maggiano’s - alongside major companies like McDonald’s, Burger King and Starbucks as trendsetters and examples of restaurants that are creatively using Twitter.

Reuters is a business news syndicate that is distributed to 15.3 million outlets internationally. This article was picked up by more than 35 online business, technology, lifestyle and food outlets in the U.S. and internationally including Yahoo! News, Forbes, Money.CNN.com, WashingtonPost.com, Portfolio, ABC News, PC Mag and more. The story resulted in an instantaneous increase of followers for each of our clients, large amount of Twitter chatter, re-tweets with links to the article, and interest from other media and experts in the industry.

To read the Reuters article, click here: http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE53I11Z20090420?sp=true

To see the Twitter chatter and people linking to the article click here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Reuters+twitter+restaurants

Posted by Christina Wong, Account Executive

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