Expect a flurry of social media activity between now and the end of June 2010.

In 11 days time the World Barista Championship 2010 kicks off in London, coinciding with Caffe Culture, an established annual cafe bar tradeshow.

The organisers are expecting 10000+ visitors to the event, and a large number of these have a healthy interest in social media technologies, with many companies tweeting, blogging and interacting with their clients in ways not dreamt of just 12 months ago.

To receive a list of recommended tweeters to follow during the  World Barista Championship / Caffe Culture then send a tweet to @5mcoffee, or join our mailing list

To join our mailing list simply enter your name into the subscribe via email box on the top right corner and click subscribe

add your twitter name or blog address to the comments section

If you’d like to be included on the list of tweeters then add your twitter name or blog address to the comments section. The list will be sent out on Saturday 19th June.

I was prompted to review the visibility of the 5M Coffee Blog in light of recent changes we have made to the site structure and it occurred to me that we had not ‘claimed’ the blog on a number of search media services such as Technorati, thus slipping under the radar of searchers who look for coffee information, training or consultancy.

Since claiming the blog (using a token, eg R4RXBXNGBWF4) we have seen an increase in targeted traffic, with lower bounce rates which leads to great conversion.

Ensure you regularly test your RSS feed is working by creating a Tumblr or Flavors.me account and ensure your content is being distributed.

We have also added more visible buttons to help you spread the word (see directly below)
We regularly click these after replying to comments on other companies’ blogs as more exposure for an author often leads to more motivation to provide content on topics we are interested in.

Not too many years ago, most contacts were kept on paper, in address books or on a rolodex. Nowadays most contacts are stored digitally.

With the recent surge in social media and web 2.0 technologies, we are embracing technology in new ways, storing contacts, client data and supplier details electronically.

When Twitter went offline for a few hours earlier this week, many small businesses found themselves exposed. Their clients, many of whom buy from them regularly, and provide them with feedback about their products and services, were not visible for what seemed like an eternity (but was in reality only a few hours).

The reason for the vulnerability was that they had engaged with their clients but had not captured their contact details.

If Twitter or other social networking sites stopped working for a prolonged period, how would they communicate?

Savvy companies had already backed up their data and stored information locally, using sites such as Tweetake to harvest information about whom they communicate with on Twitter and added snippets of information such as phone numbers or email addresses and in some cases aligned purchase histories too.

Storing contacts locally is not enough though. Regular backups should be made and stored securely (on CD/DVD or a second external hard-drive)

What most companies fail to realise is, that in order to truly engage with your clients, you need to interact with them. A simple phone call to thank a client for their business can have a positive effect in keeping your database up to date.

Lastly, don’t forget to advise your clients how their information will be (securely) stored. You need to ensure you comply with current regulations.

Judging by the #coffee tag usage more and more people are tweeting about their coffee experiences.

Sadly not all posts are on topic and the word coffee is being used liberally, but there are some nuggets contained in the tweets.

The best way to keep on topic is to follow those who consistently tweet about coffee, their experiences and tips of others to follow.

If you want to get in touch with the growing coffee community members who have embraced Twitter, change the search topics from the results you get from clicking the above link by adding a + in between words to define your search results (eg coffee+industry or scaa+wbc)

You’ll be amazed at who is online and may engage with you.