The B&B Twitter TTSF Technique

As with all social media, Twitter can be highly addictive. To get the best out of it you have to set yourself certain guidelines and stick to them. 

Firstly a few words about Twitter etiquette. The old analogy of a cocktail party is a great way to help describe and understand what Twitter is. For a hotel like yours it’s like a cocktail party full of your old guests, future guests and probably a few gatecrashers you’re not too concerned about! 

If you were at a cocktail party, would you constantly be telling people about your cheap room rates and ‘sympathetically’ decorated rooms? Would you real of extremely blue jokes, or share pictures of your hotel to any stranger that would listen? No! Unless you were incredibly drunk!! 

Twitter has a code, that if broken will see you being ‘unfollowed’ by potential guests (the equivalent to having your back turned on in a cocktail party!)

Think carefully about how you should connect with strangers, (but don’t be overly concerned or you won’t do anything!) The trick is to be entertaining, interesting, engaging and fun to all. In 140 characters or less!

Before you begin using Twitter, or if you haven’t already, have a look at the business guidelines.

Twitter should be a small, but important part of your marketing plan to win guests.

 Remember you are now a Publisher, so think about each tweet carefully. Though there are exceptions, I don’t believe that most tweets should have a link to a picture or web site. Busy people only have time for 140 characters!

However tempting it may be to show pictures of a nice breakfast or something personal that you made, don’t do it unless what you've made is particularly exceptional. 

The first thing to do is gather guests usernames. This is fundamentally important to making Twitter work for you as a hotelier. Change your booking form to include the field ‘Twitter Username’. You’ll be surprised how many people will fill in the box and think it's cool. This will become far more useful than a phone number or email address.  If they don’t fill in the box, then your follow up email, (which asks guests to write a review on Trip Advisor if they enjoyed their stay) can also ask for guests’ Twitter ID.

Hopefully you have every email saved on your machine, of every customer who has ever booked with you on the internet. Send one mass email to all asking for their Twitter user IDs.

Now you have all your past guest Twitterer’s (?) user names, have found them online and started following them, (and some of them are following you) it’s time to start thinking about content.

 This will either make you or break you as a successful Tweetist (I’m making these words up now). Four tweets a day is probably a good rule to start with. Think what will interest people as well as jokes and amusing anecdotes. Talking about walking the dog or a picture of the pet rabbit just doesn’t cut it anymore. There’s so much to choose from out there that people will only remember you if you’re interesting. Think of each tweet in the same way that you would think about writing literature or advertisements. It’s important to get the right tone and not be too formal.

Lots of people tend to tweet three times in a row because they are on their PC or phone at the time when they have things to say. This is a mistake because only a small number of your audience are likely to be online at one time. Spread content throughout the day.

Here is what I think would make for a good day’s worth of tweeting from a B&B. By making sure your tweets fit into the following categories, you will ensure each tweet is successful at engaging your audience.

TOURISM - 10.00am Just heard on the radio that ‘my area’ has won an award for Most Beautiful Village in the county. Congratulations Paulsville! 

 TEASER - 2.00pm Guests have been out walking the fells. Lucky people, such a lovely day. Braised pheasant for tea. Mmmm.

SPECIAL DEAL (FOR TWITTERERS ONLY) - 5.00pm Guest cancellation for the 25^th! Would anyone like to stay for half price? Special Twitter deal, expires tomorrow!

FUNNY - 10.00pm Apparently the Disney Corporation are mounting a legal battle with Scotland, demanding they change the way they say 'Does not'.

Good magazine editors 'spike' content that is not interesting, informative, funny or engaging. Begin to think like a Publisher, because you are one.

If you have a Facebook account, save yourself time by downloading this application, which allows you to update FB and Twitter at the same time,  when you see fit. Not all your updates/tweets are suitable for both networks so Selective Twitter is a great idea.

 

 

A Completely Uneducated Biased View of Distribution Channels

Ok so I'm writing a blog here. This means that, according to my blog mentor, David Meerman Scott, what I write doesn't necessarily have to be fact. Blogs are not fact-based like journalism (should be!), they are just opinions, like people talking in the pub. If you don't agree with someone's opinion in the pub (as long as they aren't too big and scary!) you would tell them wouldn't you?

So here's my opinion of distribution channels for hotels. None of it is fact, it's just what I think and could most probably be wrong (it isn't though!)

I won't name any particular channels but if you run a hotel you will know who I mean. They sell rooms for you online, at a cheap rate, and charge outrageous commission for doing so - the hotel loses 50% on the room in some cases!

They do this by using their brand name and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) methods to get you up to the top of the list in Google. 

There are two ways of looking at this kind of activity. The channels would like you to believe that some money is better than no money. Without them you won't sell the room, so you may as well take the hit rather than miss out completely.

Another way to look at it is this - the distribution channels are completely monopolizing the internet like a mafia gang would do with a city's drug trade. They make it an unfair playing ground by being so large and not allowing you access to your customer base. Because they have a million hotels on their books in your area, they will always come up first when people search.

It's a bit like what's ruined and 'globalized' every town in the UK. Shopping centres. Big companies buy huge spaces and charge extortionate rates for global names to sell their over-priced wares in. Meanwhile the small shop owner gets put out of business. 

The small shop owner has three choices. He either pays the extortionate rates and tries to make a go of it, competing in the shopping centre with larger names. He does the best he can to market his shop and attract people out of the centre, or he goes out of business and lets them win.

Let's take this back to the internet and with distribution channels for hotels. Thanks to the world of social media the web now has no walls and the shopping centre is wide open. Everyone can reach their customers directly with Twitter, Facebook etc and the boundaries of technical know-how are behind us.

So why are hotels still using the distribution channels to sell rooms and paying their extortionate rates?

Educate me please.

paul@bedandbreakfastclub.co.uk