The other day, I was chatting with my colleague, Sarah Rand, about Twitter use. Many of our traditional baccalaureate students – young women who entered college directly from high school – don’t use Twitter nor see a reason too. Facebook takes enough of their time as it is. That makes sense to me – why use Twitter unless you get something from it? For me it’s a great way to peruse the local news in 5 minutes every morning, check on issues and industries I follow, and find experts in my local marketing field. Another colleague, Scott Pakudaitis, has had success rectifying customer service issues via Twitter.

So last night, I decided to conduct an experiment.

I was dining with my family at D’Amico & Sons – awesome cafeteria-style Italian food where kids eat free on Sunday nights with their parents. Standing in line looking at the posted menu, I noticed a small sign on the wall that said:

Buono Appetito

It caught my eye because “buono” should have been “buon” before “appetito.” While I no longer have an Italian grandmother to correct my grammar, my Italian’s good enough to spot a pretty obvious error like that.

The restaurant was swamped, so why bother pointing this out to anyone scurrying around filling wine glasses and clearing tables when I had social media at my fingertips. So while waiting for our dinner to arrive, I Tweeted and checked in via FourSquare and Facebook to point out their error.

Again, this is an experiment. I like D’Amico & Sons, I’m not trying to make them look bad, I’m just curious to see which medium they respond to first.

Fourteen hours later on a Monday morning, I haven’t heard anything. Let’s see if I do by the end of the day.

UPDATE:  48 hours later (Tuesday night.) I just found their Twitter account:  http://twitter.com/#!/DAmicoandSons and re-Tweeted my message. I’m not impressed with the iPhone Twitter app — sometimes I can find something, sometimes I can’t. On the App version, I couldn’t find their account, from my Macbook, I had no problem.

UPDATE:  Wednesday Morning. A lovely “Grazie” from D’Amico & Sons with the reply that because I had not used @DAmicoandSons for my initial Tweet, they didn’t get the message.

My response? You have to monitor Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Checkin, and Foursquare for your name or some derivation of it — case in point:  St. Kate’s, St. Catherine University, College of St. Catherine all with or without a period after “St.” assuming, of course that “Saint” is abbreviated to “St.”

Grade for D’Amico:  “B”

• They responded in kind (i.e. I Tweeted and that’s how they replied) to at least one of my medium, but I wonder what all those patrons on Facebook and Foursquare think? Maybe that D’Amico doesn’t read their comments…?
  
• They used humor (the grazie)
• Their response was fairly timely, only 2 1/2 days later, although I’m not sure if that’s because a friend’s sister works there…
• No interaction via Fourquare, Facebook, Facebook Checkin, or evidence of a Google Alert with some derivation of their name