How can you compete with major brands that have millions upon millions of followers? Even if you manage to amass a small but dedicated following, you’ll still be miles away from the big brands.
There is a solution though. Just buy your followers. It’s cheap, easy and, on the face of it, has few negative consequences. It’s not as if Google will penalize your website for it (or at the time of writing it won’t), and you’ll boost those follower numbers by thousands. All you need is pocket change. You could literally search your couch for the five dollars some of these services charge.
Okay, so now you’ve beefed-up your numbers. Welcome to the big leagues. Yeah, you might get a few hundred bots and fake accounts, but that doesn’t matter.
True, you probably will need to update your website’s security and make sure every form has a captcha – easy. There might be a little extra spam but you have a dedicated folder for that. Viruses, pshh, you have a pretty good antivirus running 24/7. And fine, your Twitter feed is a mess of unintelligible characters and links to dark places online, you just don’t have to click on ’em. Plus there are always filters, you just need to build and maintain them. See it’s so much easier to buy followers.
Except…
What about that small dedicated following you had? Fine it was only a couple hundred people, but they actually retweeted and interacted with you. I mean it sure beats plugging holes in your social strategy due to spam, bots and the such. Wouldn’t it make more sense to build a strategy that actually helped your guests?
Growing Your Hotel’s Twitter Following: The Way That Works
The trick is simple: give your guests a reason to follow you.
Increase Followers by Adding Value to Your Brand
Customer Service: Invite your guests to tweet for assistance. Think of it as a different way of reaching the front desk. If they have a problem or issue, you can instantly reach out. If you’re especially clever, you can monitor your competition’s activity online; e.g., one of their guests is annoyed or disappointed, a simple tweet from you couldn’t hurt.
Reputation Management: If someone tweets something good about their stay, retweet it. If negative, address it and try to fix the problem. This is an offshoot of customer service, but the important benefit is you reward your followers and guests by giving their input validation. If they know they can reach you through your profile, they will do so, in ever-increasing numbers.
Give Your Followers An Incentive To Stay
Promotions: A traditional approach, but a good one. While it likely won’t drive millions of followers to your account, it’s a great way to keep your current group up to speed. Think of it as a retention strategy. Tweet out a special a few minutes before it goes live to the rest of the public, that really gives your followers a reason to stay.
Events and General Announcements: Keep your guests up to speed with the day-to-day at your hotel. Some of us get our news online and your Twitter feed can easily turn into a 24-hour ticker tape of it. Breakfast from 8 to 10, happy hour 4 to 6, whatever activities you have planned just tweet it; it’s a zero cost way to keep them informed.
These are just a few examples and they can all be implemented with ease. Get creative with them, you’ll quickly find unique value for your establishment. The only thing to keep in mind is make your followers feel that following you has value.
Creative Ways to Not Not Buy Followers
So here’s the thing, there’s a way to invest in your digital presence to attract new followers. Before going on, I do want to stress that this isn’t buying followers. They have a choice whether to follow you or not. Bought followers have to follow; it’s in their contract right above spamming health supplements every ten seconds.
Twitter’s PPC service (Twitter Ads) allows you to create a campaign that advertises on the platform. You can select various metrics and demographics, create some ads and advertise to specific users. In fact, you can actually target your competition’s followers.
Remember you are not trying to trick people into following you. You are just spending some dosh to talk to interested users who, for whatever reason, might not have seen you in the past.
The Central Social Media Message
It takes effort to do anything right. If your social media strategy is about getting more internet points than your competitors, then feel free to buy as many followers as you want, I wasn’t lying when I said it was easy.
But the thing about social media is that when you have a good plan the execution isn’t that taxing. It becomes second nature so quickly you’ll barely notice it. Active Twitter users want to follow interesting accounts; all you have to do is give them something deserving of a follow. If you go with that gram of advice, you’ll naturally see those numbers climb.
What do you think? Would you rather have a million bought followers or twenty enthusiastic ones? Share your thoughts below. If you’d also like to learn more about social media monitoring and reputation control check out: Brand Protector Reputation Marketing.