Twitter is a fast-paced, never-ending stream of information, and if you are not tapped into that stream, you will miss out on important conversations and opportunities to grow your following. Did you know roughly 500 million tweets go out every day? If you are simply posting content and not making meaningful connections or interacting with others, you are in danger of becoming stagnant.
The benefits of cultivating a social network are numerous. You will:
- Gain valuable customer insights
- Increase brand awareness and loyalty
- Have a way of measuring yourself against your competitors
- Drive traffic to your website
- Build valuable relationships with surrounding businesses, guests, bloggers, and other crucial social influencers
There are many easy ways to create and maintain a strong network on Twitter and we are going to show you how!
Tag, You’re It!
When you tweet about a business or social influencer, it is crucial to tag them. Tagging allows your account to become visible to others, as well as their own, often extensive, networks. For example, frequently connecting with your hotel’s brand account is an excellent way to build your network. It not only provides the opportunity for your account to be seen by the brand, but it also increases your chances of being followed or interacted with by other hotel accounts connected to that brand.
Hilton Newsroom has 141K followers and is strongly connected with other hotels. Whenever possible, tag accounts such as these to open the doors of conversation and connect you to much larger networks. Remember that the best payoff you can receive from tagging a Twitter account comes from a retweet or shoutout. These actions are powerful because they increase the reach of your content to a much wider audience.
As a result of tagging, the above posts were widely distributed and seen by a larger, more diverse audience than they would have been without a tag. This kind of interaction is not only valuable, but crucial to the advancement of your account.
Pay Attention to Conversations
Monitoring keywords and hashtags associated with your hotel will help you find opportunities to engage with others on Twitter.
We highly recommend creating a keyword search in TweetDeck using your hotel’s name (or other common variations of your name) because people will not always use your Twitter handle when they attempt to tag you in their tweets. Users often create their own hashtags or simply mention you in a tweet without the “@”, and you will not be notified. Below are examples of tweets that contained the keywords ‘Renaissance Asheville,’ but would have fallen under the radar had a search tab not been created.
To set up your keyword search, navigate to ‘Add Column’ in TweetDeck and select ‘Search’.
You can then add several search columns for different keywords, giving you the opportunity to not only monitor your hotel, but also relevant users and their accounts.
Finally, be sure to pay attention to your Trends column, which can be found on the left hand side of your Twitter homepage.
This column provides a daily alert of hot topics being discussed on Twitter. For example, many people tweet about #mondaymotivation on Mondays or #FridayFeeling on Fridays. Try including these hashtags in your own posts as well as interacting with Twitter accounts using them.
Seek Opportunities to Connect
As with any social channel, you must be actively engaged. This means consistently interacting with Twitter users via:
- Retweets and favorites on their content
- Commenting on tweets, especially those that mention your hotel
- Responding to comments
- Proactively following relevant Twitter accounts such as local businesses, bloggers, or hotels associated with your brand
People are on social media to connect with others and be heard. If you are not connecting with your audience, you are missing opportunities to grow, network, and influence.
Ready, Set, Network!
You are now ready to go forth, build an amazing network, and engage with your followers! Our experts at Blue Magnet are always here to ensure you are updated in the world of digital marketing. Join the other hoteliers who are subscribed to our email list and receive our insights and tips about hospitality marketing.
