10 Best Twitter Practices for Small Hotels

Did you know?

“Every second, on an average, 6000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter; this means on a regular day, there would be an average of 500 million tweets.”

Twitter has the potential to be a great marketing and guest engaging tool for hotels, but surprisingly many hotels are still a little wary of using it. Hotels across the globe should seriously look at targeting Twitter as one of their main social media marketing medium. Twitter, with the right strategy, can give a hotel the scope of having their information reach out to numerous members across the globe.

Twitter has more than 284 million ACTIVE users and 80% of active users access the platform via a mobile device. Hotels should definitely get a slice of the Twitter market but they should ensure that they go about it the right way. (Also read: 5 trends all small hotels should watch out for in 2015)

Below are 10 best practices hotels can follow to ensure they make the most of their Twitter presence

Get your Profile Right: The hotel’s profile shall be the first impression a viewer has of you. The impact of the profile page should be very strong on the viewer. 160 characters may seem too short, but remember to keep some good keywords and be innovative.

Follow the right people: To reach out to the right people via Twitter you need to cultivate a relevant community. Don’t start playing the number game as Twitter has over a billion users but only 280 million are active. Look at brands which complement your property and follow them, check up on suggestions given by Twitter but don’t just follow them blindly.

Grow your Twitter Community: Create interactive posts which encourage your followers to respond. This will create a ripple effect and encourage more people to follow you. Research for those who follow other brands or properties similar to yours on Twitter. Eventually find forums where you can engage with them.

To grow the Twitter community, the brand has to create interesting, active and relevant posts which people would enjoy reading as well as would be encouraged to repost.

Monitor Twitter: Keep an eye out for posts of people looking for recommendations for places to stay in your city or places to dine at. You can use the twitter search engines as well as search for hashtags for posts associated with your city. This shall provide a great way for hoteliers to engage with prospective clients. It’s all about being proactive.

Listen to your guests: 80% of active Twitter users access the platform via a mobile device, therefore it means many of them are posting in real time, what they are doing or experiencing at that very moment. Guests staying at hotels and at restaurants can tweet about their experiences in real-time and the hotel should be vigilant about what is being said. A proactive hotel which responds to the guest’s feedback constructively and promptly is always appreciated.

For example, if a guest is staying at your hotel and faces some problems with the AC and tweets about it, the hotel should promptly tweet an apology and ensure they address the situation ASAP in the virtual as well as the actual world.

Use the forum as a means to actively engage with your guests.

Post Pictures: Twitter analytics show that pictures get more engagement, so definitely look at posting pictures which depict intriguing and attractive features of the hotel. Have engaging pictorial posts wherein your guests can respond.

Encourage Guests to Post: Several hotels are now encouraging guests to socially engage with them and tweet feedback. This also enables the hotel to use Twitter for service recovery issues and to know where the guests are facing problems. Encouraging guests to post gives the hotel a great opportunity to respond to them in real-time and show them as well other potential guests that they take their feedback extremely seriously.

Be active: Once the hotel has a Twitter account, learn to be active and to tweet regularly. In case the hotel is unable to post regularly or cannot monitor tweets written about them, then there is no use of having the page. There is nothing worse than having a client visit a page that is still there but has no activity. To them, that is a reflection of how the hotel would also be.

Position your promotions well: A hotel should know how not to over promote itself. For every promotional tweet, there should be a couple of engaging and interactive tweets that can provide some tidbits about the city or things to do.

Remember that when a hotel tweets about a promotion, words like ‘exclusive”, “free” and “win” tend to drive more engagements. The offers should be self explanatory and exciting.

Define your Hashtags but don’t overuse them: Hashtags work brilliantly when you want a brand to become popular, but are also one of the most over used and abused things in social media marketing: so use them well and use them in the right context.

Do not use more than 2 hashtags in a tweet, it can become overwhelming for the reader and dilute the whole tweet. Also, look at hashtags which are trending and if you plan to use them, ensure that your context is right.

Hope these best practices help your hotel reach out to more active followers in the Twitter universe. Happy Tweeting!