Presentation on Twitter for Tourism from Heidi Schneigansz from Quirk eMarketing at the E-Tourism Africa Summit in Johannesburg 2009

1. Twitter for Tourism
by @SnowgooseSA
a.k.a Heidi Schneigansz

2. So, WTF is this ‘twitter’ thing anyway?

3. It’s Microblogging
• An online common
room
• A mixture of
banter, socialising
and practical
advice
• Users answer the
question “What
are you doing?”

4. In 140 characters or less

5. Everyday, millions of users create,
share and discover ideas on Twitter

6. 58.4 million, to be exact

7. Twitter use by country
Source: comscore report September 2009

8. But it’s only for teenagers, right?

9. Wrong…
• A huge chunk of twitter users are 35-54, that magic
tourism age group
Source: comscore report August 2009

10. OK, but how does it work?

11. Twitter lets you write and read
messages of up to 140 characters, or the
very length of this sentence, including all
punctuation and spaces.

12. The messages are public, and you decide
which accounts you want to receive
messages from, by subscribing to them

13. Twitter works equally well from your
desktop or mobile phone

14. Learn the lingo
• To follow somebody is to subscribe to their messages
• A tweet is an individual message
• A DM or direct message is a private message on Twitter
• RT or retweet is to repost a valuable message from
somebody else on Twitter and give them credit
• Trending topics are the most-discussed terms on Twitter
at any given moment

15. Learn the lingo
• @username is a public message to or about an individual
on Twitter
• A hashtag–the # symbol followed by a term and included
in tweets–is a way of categorizing all the posts on a topic
• Shortened URLs. To fit links into the short messages,
Twitter shrinks some URLs down automatically

16. People use twitter to
• Share their daily activities
• Have group conversations & chats
• Crowdsource ideas
• Find useful and interesting content
• Get their news
• Even propose marriage!

17. And for Tourism businesses?

18. It’s even more valuable
Users also find great value in connecting with businesses of
all kinds on Twitter to:
• Share their experiences, both good and not so good
• Provide feedback on recent events or launches
• Discuss product ideas
• Learn about exclusive deals or offers
• Get customer service

20. A success story
• Twitter is currently one of the largest sources of traffic to
LocalGetaways.com
• Secured thousands of qualified followers in less than 30
days
• Tracked Twitter clicks through to sales
• Realized more than 20K website clicks in 2 months
• Generated national traditional media story
• Tweets trickled out to other social media sites,
generating additional website traffic
Source: http://www.inkfoundry.com

21. Wow, so how do I do that?

22. Getting started
• Go to twitter.com and hit
• Signing up for an account takes just a few minutes and
it’s free
• To help people recognize and trust your account, fill out
your profile completely and include a picture

23. Getting started
• Find and follow relevant people by using
http://search.twitter.com
• Write a content plan, don’t just tweet
• When people follow you, follow them back

24. STOP. Let’s run a little exercise…

25. Tips for success
Build relationships on Twitter
• Listen for comments about you
• Respond to comments and queries
• Ask questions
• Post exclusive deals
• Post links to things people would find interesting (they
don’t have to be about your business)
• Retweet messages you would like to share
• Use a friendly, casual tone
• Don’t spam people

26. Tips for success
Leverage the real-time nature of Twitter
• Ask questions, float ideas, solicit feedback —
and expect fast feedback most of the time
• If you’ve launched a product, new branch or new
campaign, search Twitter for comments
• Respond to customer service issues quickly
• Engage in discussion on a tricky public issue your
company is dealing with

27. Tips for success
Measure the value of Twitter
• Before setting up measurement tools, focus on the
quality of your engagement: do a gut-check of how things
are going
• Try to analyze the quality of feedback and topics of
discussion, you may find this changing over time
• Keep a tally of questions answered, customer problems
resolved and positive exchanges held
• When offering deals on Twitter, use a unique coupon
code or separate landing page

28. Get creative!

30. The dog that tweets
• A chocolate Labrador at the Best
Western Chocolate Lake Hotel in
Halifax, Nova Scotia
• She gets fan tweets, fan mail, and has
become an attraction unto herself at
the hotel
• Having a dog like Cocoa (her real life
name) as a concierge also allows the
hotel to engage with an audience of dog
lovers who may also like to travel with
their dogs.

31. It’s awesome, but I don’t have time!

32. Enter

34. With Hootsuite you can…
• Manage multiple social networks
• Tweet from multiple accounts
• Schedule your tweets
• Keep a tally of questions answered, customer problems
resolved and positive exchanges held
• Embed twitter widgets in your website
• Track your tweet statistics
• Set up team workflows
• …and much more… for free!

35. So you’ve seen what twitter can do
for Tourism — now go and get an
account!

36. Get in touch
• Twitter.com/SnowgooseSA
• Snowgoose@quirk.biz