What spurred the quick-serve restaurant to put up a page?

"Twitter is an opportunity for Dunkin' Donuts to engage directly, in real time, with people of all ages who are fans of our brand, or even just rely on a cup of coffee to keep themselves running," says Manager of Interactive Marketing David Tryder. "We saw a fast-growing social media outlet where users were excited to have their favorite brands present."

Special offers will appear as part of the content, but they will not be "the hallmark" of Dunkin's Twitter presence. "We hope the primary reward will be opening up the doors to Dunkin' Donuts and providing a means for fans of the brand to connect and have a dialogue about or with the brand," stresses Tryder. "It's about acknowledging your loyal fans and customers as integral parts of the Dunkin' family."

The growth of "followers" on Twitter is organic, although Dunkin' and other brands are obviously jumping in both by responding constructively to tweets and throwing out topics as conversation-starters.

"This is a smart, competitive move on Dunkin' Donuts' part," says Reggie Bradford, CEO of Vitrue, Inc., which helps global Fortune 500 brands engage with customers through social media. "It shows that Dunkin' is listening to its audience, and it will help develop a persona for the brand in social media and a higher share of voice, at a low capital cost."

Dunkin's heated competition with Starbucks may also be providing social media motivation. Starbucks had a head start on the Twitter and social media front in general, judging from the scores for the two brands as measured by Vitrue's new Social Media Index. SMI is a proprietary tool that measures various types of online conversations about a brand at a given point in time and provides an index score based strictly on mentions (no attempt is made to measure how positive or negative mentions are). Updated daily, it includes social networking, video sharing, micro-blogs (primarily Twitter), photo-sharing and blogs.

When Dunkin' and Starbucks were measured on Oct. 21 (to be used as an example accompanying the press release for SMI's launch), Dunkin' scored 14.9 to Starbucks' 278.

Dunkin' launched its official Twitter page on Oct. 24. As of Monday, Dunkin's SMI was up to 16, versus Starbucks' 286.

Although SMI is new, a score in the high 200s seems "pretty decent" for a consumer product, says Bradford, pointing out that Coke and Pepsi were at 221 and 155, respectively, as of Monday. On the highest ends of the scale are hot products being discussed by early adopters (iPhone's current SMI is 2,580) and hot issues or topics ... like today's elections. (As of Monday, the SMIs for "Obama" and "McCain" were 7,140 and 6,270, respectively.)

Dunkin' had 480 followers as of Monday to Starbucks' nearly 7,880--but again, Dunkin' is just out of the gate. Furthermore, Tryder says the brand has no specific follower goal in mind.

"We never discussed how many 'followers' we hoped to achieve," he reports, stressing the "organic" nature of Twitter growth. "That's inherent to the beauty of joining a social media network like Twitter. If the number of people following Dunkin' Donuts doesn't grow, then we'll have real-time feedback that we're not Twittering effectively or we're not being authentic--or we're not relevant within the network."

This news story is important. I recommend that everyone read it.