Starbucks, Twitter and the Path to Glory

@Starbucks is the coffeemaker’s voice in the Twitterverse. They have 309,969 followers and are following 85,276 of you. If the person they have behind the scenes uses Tweetdeck, it must never stop dinging. The voice is strong and human, and shares things Starbucks likes &#151 including this video about the making of the music for “Where the Wild Things Are”.

The tweet above alerted me to the video, and my first thought was &#151 wow, they shared something not related to the brand! Wrong. The following tweet: “The soundtrack is available in Starbucks stores now. Can’t wait until the movie comes out!”

Likely. Anyway, the brand is everywhere these days, chugging along as it pushes out the new Via instant coffee stuff. Nothing negative to report, but for a second I thought hmm, maybe Starbs has transcended the “we can only push our own stuff” barrier. A quick look into recent tweets shows that nay, the effort is not primed to share anything but that which is somehow attached to the brand.

The Twitter feed does act as a Q&A hub, it seems, which is sort of good. Last thing anybody wants is for it to turn into a customer service tool, but there’s really no avoiding that.

More: “Op-Ed: What Social Media Revolution? By Gareth Kay”

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