The shear volume of tweets on the social network Twitter and its resulting highly viral nature makes it vitally important for hotels to have an active Twitter presence. Twitter’s space limitations (140 character message limit) may make hoteliers wonder if it is worth their effort, but that would be a mistake. Since Twitter is all about people communicating in real-time and the hospitality industry is naturally operated in a time-sensitive manner, the two are a good fit.
Make It A Conversation
Begin by just listening, and then join in the conversation. This is where there is the biggest possibility for mistakes. Twitter is not the venue for stale marketing blurbs. Ask questions and answer those that come to you quickly. Re-tweet comments by audience segments that are important to you. Twitter search engines will help you find potential prospects based on terms they use in their profiles. Follow them, listen in for a while, and then join in their conversations where appropriate. Use hashtags (#) connected to important keywords in your tweets. Some people follow certain key hashtags of importance to them.
Complete Your Profile
Your Twitter profile needs to be visually appealing and grab the attention of your followers. First impressions count. Include an image that highlights your hotel, along with a Twitter background in tune with your brand. Make sure your bio is complete and keyword-rich within its 160 character limit. This is important to Twitter search engines.
Monitor When You Are Mentioned
Keep track of everything said about your hotel as much as possible. You can use Twitter’s advanced search features to accomplish your monitoring. From there you can see all mentions of your hotel, both positive and negative, to stay on top of the conversation and head off any potential problems. Also, monitor Twitter for any mentions of terms related your hotel’s location, such as “Miami hotel” or “beach hotel” for example. Responding to these can be a great technique for bringing in guests.
If used properly, Twitter can be a surprisingly effective marketing tool for the hospitality industry. In the next part of this series, we will see what Foursquare can do to improve a hotel’s revenue.
Written and produced in beautiful Naples, Florida by OnFast.com. Visit OnFast.com today to get your free trial subscription to our Social Media Marketing Service.
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