In a spur of the moment decision, we headed to the Coast to spend the night earlier this week. We’ve done this before, but sometimes we do actually book a room before we get to our destination. This time however, it wasn’t an option, we simply didn’t have time. I looked online for deals, but seeing none, we tossed our bag in the car, and we ran to our last meeting of the day…
But not before I remembered that a MAJOR destination hotel on the Gulf Coast is on Twitter.
I immediately followed them and tweeted at them: “@hotel_name DM me some deals.” I’m a known cheapskate, so I love a deal. Having sent the tweet, I thought that should initiate SOME response on the part of aforementioned destination hotel.
Now, nearly 18 hours later, I’ve spent the night with a competitor who offered me a deal over the counter. Much like selling a home, I took their offer, counter-offered, and then we settled on a price (about 40% less than their list price that evening).
So why didn’t the first hotel, which is one of the largest employers in the area, have ANYONE who could Tweet back at me? Direct Message me or anything? I don’t know, but I’m guessing it’s because they see Twitter as a new twist in the old-fashioned push marketing game. To them, Twitter is just another billboard: one with 140 characters… A one-way communication street.
Experience and theory in hand, I decided to look at the numbers behind the “destination hotel” Twitter account. Other than MY Tweet, they’ve gotten only two human @replies and 1 bot or automated @reply in the last 5 days. They have 485 followers, but they only follow 50% of those people.
From my professional vantage point, that’s abysmal since they are a huge hotel, casino, and entertainment venue with exponentially more than their follow number as in-house customer count at any given moment of any given day.
Unfortunately, this phenomenon isn’t unusual. mainstream, old school marketers are flooding onto Twitter en masse to “keep up” with the buzz. The problem is, they are using it for themselves – and their clients – to PUSH information out and INTERRUPT followers. They wonder why more people aren’t engaging with them on Twitter – because they aren’t engaging.
Relationships are the single most valuable asset to any business. Twitter provides a venue for nurturing relationships and finding new relationships – all with the brevity of 140 characters with tools called @replies, DMs, hashtags and Twitter Search. If you don’t “get it” – maybe it’s because you’ve only seen folks doing it WRONG. For those doing it “right” – success has been overwhelmingly positive with immediate results where it matters – on the bottom line.
To provide some closing contrast, one of our local small businesses (a client) has gotten SIXTEEN @replies in the last 24 hours as they engaged the community, answered customer questions and received customer compliments.
To destination hotels who want to use Twitter well to intercept customers from your competition, answer customer questions, get customers in your empty rooms tonight, sell tickets to events and fill tables at your restaurants – it can all be done. Twitter is an amazing tool. But right now, there are a lot of mainstream marketers making it #fail.
(If you don’t know what that means, maybe you should give us a call – we’ll teach you how to do it well. You’ll know right away that something’s different. It’s what we do.)
Photo Credit: nickbilton
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