Twitter at Work

As some of you may know, we have been ‘Twittering’ at Welcome for the last couple of months. What started off as an internal office debate about the merits of informing people you’ve just eaten a sandwich has turned into an interesting marketing experiment.

A quick search on Google and you’re flooded with advice on the advantages and disadvantages of Twitter to businesses. However, I thought I’d give you my take on our fairly limited experience because when we signed up, a number of our customer did the same but appear to have left their Twitter pages untouched.

It’s easy to see why. As soon as you sign up to Twitter, you’re presented with the slightly intrusive question: ‘What are you doing?’. This is where the true benefits of the service are either won or lost.

If you take that question at face value, you are likely to get either very bored or very disillusioned very quickly. No one is particularly interested in what a business is doing on a day to day basis. Twitter can be used as a way of communicating with existing and prospective clients who would be far more interested in hearing about things that directly affect and benefit them.

We have used Twitter to highlight the benefits of the various additions for our systems as well as pointing our followers in the direction of website news items and blog entries (indeed, you may have arrived here from Twitter!). While we have not made a direct sale from Twitter, it is yet another avenue of keeping in touch with customers and partners.

I would urge hotels to consider setting up their own account and explore it’s possibilities. A following can take a while to build, but once you have a significant number of people following you, you have an almost instant, free, marketing channel for that weekend special you’ve just announced, or the new menu for your restaurant. I’ve even seen local pubs Twittering, informing their regulars of forthcoming entertainment and offers on drinks.

The Government are at it, too (although don't let that put you off): http://twitter.com/coigovuk.

I’ll no doubt cover this subject again at some stage, but in the meantime please visit our Twitter page to get some inspiration!

Mark Ellis 16th April 2009

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