Twitter Basics for Hospitality Businesses

by | May 26, 2020

Social Media

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With 80% of its 320 million active monthly users connecting on mobile phones, Twitter is a fast paced social media platform for real-time conversations. Almost every business has a social media presence on Twitter, and it’s generally a given that your business will have someone taking care of your account on a regular basis. Simply tweeting, however, is not likely to fully realise its potential and a refined strategy is much more likely to give your business the full benefits of an active Twitter account.

Therefore we’ve put together a few points to remember:

To start with, keep in mind why most people are on Twitter – and no, it’s not to find out your latest offers! Broadly, Twitter users are looking to:

  • To follow their passions (e.g. celebrities / restaurants / food)

  • To share everyday moments (e.g. opinions and photos)

  • To tap into current affairs and culture (e.g. news, memes, trending hashtags)

  • To connect in meaningful ways (e.g. social activism)

That stands in contrast to the usual objectives for small businesses:

  • To increase website traffic

  • To increase followers and engagement

  • Campaign promotion

  • To drive sales

As such, it’s a good idea to keep in mind the different objectives to make sure that your content strategy offers what your audience wants.

Where to start?

  1. Set an objective

  2. Determine your target audience

  3. Define your metrics for success

  4. Follower growth

  5. Impressions

  6. Engagement

  7. Conversion

  8. Monitor progress with your account and Analytics

After you’ve identified the broad themes and approach relevant to your target audience and business, plan your key dates and promotions in advance and schedule general posts.

Types of Tweets:

  1. Broadcast/Informational Tweets

  2. Engagement Tweets

  3. Informational Tweets: relevant information pertaining to the brand, such as press coverage, big news, blog posts, or even other companies’ blogs and articles.

  4. Engagement Tweets have a stronger call to action, e.g. to retweet your posts, use hashtags to start a conversation, or ask a question.

  5. Use the 80/20 principle – 80% engagement tweets and 20% informational tweets

General tips for better engagement:

  • Keep your tweets 100-120 characters in length, including any links or images (20 to 40 characters of space for followers to retweet and/or add comments)

  • Include relevant images as they have higher levels of engagement

  • Use link shortener, such as Bitly.com

  • Aim to broadcast tweet at least 5-7 times a week, with extra engagement tweets

  • Use Twitter as a customer service tool to respond to inquiries

  • Embrace live Tweeting – show people your business behind the scenes

  • Use video posts, natively embedded on Twitter

Tips on hashtags:

  • Research key hashtags relevant to your industry, competitors and audience

  • Include hashtags and calls to action, around 3 hashtags per tweet

  • Strong, clear call-to-actions without mentions and # – especially when paired with Twitter’s lead generation card

  • Use tools such as ritetag.com and hashtagify.me – for finding and analysing quality hashtags

Tips on building the audience

  • Add followers strategically not just anyone! i.e. follow accounts who fit into your target audience, influencers in your industry and competitors

  • Use tools such as http://rightrelevance.com/ to find out what accounts and topics are for you

  • Retweet, reply and tag other accounts regularly

  • Twitter is an arena for conversations so don’t forget to engage!
    Conclusion – key tips and ideas

  • Be visual (photos & videos)

  • Don’t go # crazy

  • 80/20 – content & interactions, not promotion

  • Check daily – it’s real time!

  • Analyse and plan

  • Content strategy

  • Be human – Twitter is about genuine interaction

  • Analyse results based on objectives

For more details on how we can use Twitter to drive bookings get in contact today.