My post yesterday at Smart Data Collective on the Analytics of Geolocation was replied to by another from well known (and former BusinessWeek Insider) Steven Baker in a post titled Is a Tweet worth a Drink?

The answer is Yes – and I’d say it over and over again - a drink costs next to nothing – what it can help build can be priceless.  That’s just my opinion, btw, I don’t speak for Havana Central in this – the whole thing was my idea and it came to me spontaneously.   And as Steven says, maybe that idea needs to be fine tuned.

Note: The idea of giving customers a drink was an evolution – the community strategist, Cecilia Pineda Feret, and I were in Havana Central to check on a customer who had tweeted ahead they were coming (and did not show up that night).  Outreach was already being done; having set up the Radian6 alerts, I took the step of saying “while we’re here, and customer is tweeting that they’re at this Havana Central location now – let’s reward them with a drink”.

It’s not the drink – that’s not the point – it’s the thought and caring that counts.  It’s giving back instead of taking – it’s in  recognizing the value of a customer – a customer Havana Central, in my opinion, is in the business  to serve.

Yes, a business needs to make money and be profitable – perhaps not everyone can get a free drink just for tweeting or showing up – though I bet if businesses are doing that a lot more within a year or so, we’ll see the bar raised higher and customers will still be rewarded – but for other actions more in keeping with specific business goals.

So maybe, just showing up and tweeting is OK now, and next year – ordering a specific menu item that is being promoted will be what is being measured and rewarded – things always progress even as they stay the same.

Here’s what Steven said in his post minus the last paragraph which I will elaborate on here.

A New York restaurant, Havana Central, gave free drinks to a woman who was tweeting about the place. Marshall Sponder, who was monitoring the tweets,orchestrated the promotion. And the pay-off was that the woman, Kimberly 819, tweeted to her 126 followers that Havana Central was her ‘new favorite spot!!’

Seems like a good deal for all concerned. But if the news about Havana Central spreads (as it is at this moment) and others go there hoping to get free drinks for tweets, what should the restaurant do? Are thousands of tweets worth thousands of well drinks? What if someone is tweeting to a following of two? Or one? If Chris Brogan walks in there with his following of 136,000, should he get better drinks?

Connie Mack Stadium

Decades ago, after the Philadelphia Phillies moved from the venerable Connie Mack Stadium to a big concrete-and-astroturfed donut called Veterans Stadium, I went to a game. I paid more and got far worse seats than at the old park, and I wrote a letter of disappointment to the team. Within days, I received a letter from the club president, along with a voucher for two box seats for the game of my choice. My best friend promptly wrote a similar letter, and got the same treatment. Then his 12-year-old brother wrote one. He got back a letter, but no tickets.

And what if Chris Brogan came into Havana Central and got a free drink -wouldn’t that be good deal for everyone concerned?  In fact, I hope next time he’s in NYC, Chris Brogan does come in for a drink.

Somewhere between the second letter and the third, the humans in the Phillies office sniffed a scam. The challenge, for Havana Central and others, is to make automated systems just as smart.

The automated systems don’t have to be as smart – we’re not trying to automate anything – rather, we’re working on creating a system and methodology/process that allows us to respond in real time.  No automation is need – except, perhaps in collecting the data and classifying it – but even there – all we really need to do is know some one is in one of the locations – is planning to attend, or was there earlier in the day.

FourSquare, for one, allows tracking some of this via the Venue Dashboard they released last month – if you are the owner of a venue and it’s on FourSquare – you can get the dashboard (once you get authenticated as the owner by 4Sq).  I predict Facebook won’t be far behind – and there are other services trying to do the same thing in their own way.    In fact, you don’t to automate the whole process because what makes it effective is the a human response – otherwise, you might as well just put EasyPass in venues and just get credit by blinking your card as walk in and out the door.

Analytics wise – up till now – including now – setting up alerts via Radian6, Biz360 even Google Alerts (though Google Alerts is not really the right tool for this because it’s not granular enough) or something similar might have been the way to go – and the way I have been going.

I noticed that, besides any social media strategy that we might employ – customers are coming into Havana Central anyway – and they are tweeting that they are there – usually they also say they are having a good time -  you want know how many followers collectively are seeing those messages?  More than a half million!!!!!!  Over the last 90 days – that’s right.

This chart was a quick data pull out of Radian6 based on the most common parts of a tweet that indicate someone is in the restaurant, was in the restaurant or will be coming – but I admit -the queries I used could use a bit more work and care and would improve the accuracy of the data pull.

I’m putting this chart out to make a point – any way you cut it – a drink for a tweet is worth it  it could be improved and I bet if it was, the number of followers would be higher.

But that’s for another day.