Twitter Proves Its Worth as a Killer App for Local Businesses

All those brands trying to figure the ROI of Twitter? They might do well to follow the lead of the local pizza joint.

NAKED PIZZA: Recent Twitter promotion brought in 150% of a recent day's business.

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that's hoping to go national -- Mark Cuban is a backer -- has been marketing itself via the microblogging service. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day's business.

Twitter has a golden trait that appeals to small businesses: It's easy.

"The reality is Twitter's got all sorts of business models available to it," said Todd Chaffee, general partner at Institutional Venture Partners and a Twitter investor.

TRACK EVERY SALE. Sure, Twitter's relatively cheap, but you still want to know you're getting something for the human effort.

Twitter is more immediate -- if a person doesn't check their Twitter feed for an hour she could easily miss the message

Don't blast promotions incessantly. Intersperse them with other nuggets of wisdom or news related to your products and industry or neighborhood. Or, if you have a broader social mission, use Twitter to communicate that.

Twitter's immediacy is its biggest strength -- so use it to pump up business during lulls or discount last-minute unsold goods, said Zack Steven, co-founder of LocalTweeps, a local Twitter directory, who caught same-day discounted tickets at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis via Twitter.

Alert followers when you are on the go.

Excerpts from "Media Daily" of Advertising Age

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