Tourism Marketing Logo

Twitter & Yelp

Twitter has such a high profile because of it’s users that it must be included in these Tips. Notice why; not that it has as many users as Facebook or the tourism influence of TripAdviser, but because politicians and corporations have made so many wild-eyed statements on the platform that it cannot be ignored.

Twitter Logo

Having said the obvious, it must also be pointed out that Twitter is a good value for the advertising dollar. Twitter also has the advantage of having a feeling of being live. It is what is being said at this second.

Now for the advertiser, that is not a good thing. One advantage of print advertising is its “legs”. Which is to say that a publication will lay around the house for days and be looked over a couple of times by different family members. A Tweet that’s five minutes old is finished.

Another issue we have with Twitter is that you can often find that you will have hundreds of followers who will never do business with you. Often, these are people in your same niche. They follow you to see if they can learn from you. They also know that it's a good way to get follow-backs and inflate their numbers for the benefit of the boss.

Having read the above, you may believe that we don't recommend giving Twitter advertising a try; just the opposite! Cards are highly effective and we also find we can segment the target audience in a fine, granular way. It's an excellent way to locate exactly who you are looking for and in some ways the targeting is better than Facebook.

If you do start on Twitter, be sure to monitor and use the platform almost constantly. Its very nature makes it a poor choice for answers the next day.

As with any major Social Media Platform, there are now several companies creating products to be used on Twitter. We want to take a moment and look at several.


Twitter Based Sites We Use & Recommend

There is an App Developer from Sweden, @CarlHamlet. He has created a free website service that ranks how likely someone is to follow you back when you follow them. You enter several keywords and can follow up to fifty Twitter accounts per day. It’s a classy service that even allows you to unfollow those who don’t follow you back in three days. It’s a excellent way to grow your following with people in your target keywords. Want more? Great, the premium tier is only four dollars a month.

Another service with a free tier is StatusPeople.com. These folks will let you enter your account info and they will tell you how many fake, inactive, and good Followers you have. One percent of my Followers are fake.

Let’s close with a final freebie: you almost certainly know Hootsuite. We have used both the Pro & introductory levels and recommend both. If you do use them for posting to Social Media, be sure to get their free Hootlet app. It’s handy for when you are reading an interesting article.

Sites we don't recommend

The basic idea behind Social Media is that you try to develop a personal relationship with people who will later think of you when they need someone in your niche. There are several companies that offer services that help you. They respond to a new follower by sending out a canned message. “Thank you for the Follow! Connect with me at xxx.” I once received two of these at the exact same moment, from different people with the exact same text. To make matters worse, the free account also as some verbiage about how I too, can have this wonderful service.

One such service, Commun.it, will even post their ads on your timeline. Statusbrew will add a large logo to their ads on your timeline. Look, we are as cheap and lazy as the next guy, but you really need to pay for something better if you want to use a service like this.

Perhaps the most outrageous company in this space is TrueTwit, a validation service. First, they don’t make any promises about spam detection; second, if you sign-up for their free basic account, they will Re-Captcha your friends from now on until they sign-up. Moreover, you can’t opt-out your Followers from the service until you give them $20 a year. Here is an article.


Yelp Logo

Yelp is used extensively for restaurant reviews and carries weight with a segment of the public. The company wants to open the platform for all types of reviews but this hasn’t yet caught on. If your tourism based business happens to be a restaurant, you really should look into Yelp.

The video lecture covers a controversy concerning advertising and rankings on Yelp. The Lecture doesn’t take sides but you should be aware of the accusations. The charge is that those who advertise get higher reviews. With this in mind, do due diligence before claiming a business. If you want to know more about this important issue, please contact us.

Twitter? Direct Message us at @WeggieSmurf

Try Our Newsletter

We do value your privacy and want to be compliant with all laws. To learn more visit our Cookies Page