Tag Archive for: Twitter

HOW TO POST LIKE A PRO: 6 TIPS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS

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Creating great posts are one of the most important activities you can do on social media. (next to listening) Post are the basic tools of communication on social media, so brands need to make sure that theirs have a level of professionalism that reflects well on them.

If you are posting for a company or organization, make sure your posts look professional with these 6 tips. 

1. Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar

The Problem: Typos and poor grammar are one of the quickest ways to make your posts look unprofessional. Just because social media is a less formal way to communicate doesn’t mean you get to skip the fundamentals!

The Pro fix: WAIT… Before you click post,  make sure to step back and re-read what you just typed. Start with spelling, since that will be the most obvious mistake to your audience, then move on to grammar and punctuation. A little attention to detail can go a long way.

Twitter is a bit of an exception however. There’s a bit more leeway when it comes to using abbreviations and shorthand in tweets due to the length limitations. As a rule of thumb, it’s fine to use abbreviations as long as you don’t compromise clarity.

For instance your post will still look fine if you use RT instead of Retweet

2. Use Photos Responsibly

The Problem: Using low quality images will not only make your social media presence look unprofessional, it will annoy your audience and decrease interaction. No matter how good your content is, if it doesn’t look good it won’t get clicks.

The Pro Fix:

  1. Subscribe to a stock photo site
  2. Crop your images to correct dimensions

Using royalty free stock photos will not only give you a library of high resolution images to choose from, it will keep you from committing copyright infringement. Most images found on google image search or pulled from the web are copyrighted, and if you’re posting for a company it’s extremely important to avoid using them.

The second part of this fix takes a little effort, but is well worth it. Find out the exact size specification each social media site uses so that you know exactly how to crop your images so they will look as good as possible.

For example, If you upload a photo to Facebook that doesn’t have the right dimensions, it will get resized.

Wrong Dimensions: Logo squished and hard to see.

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Correct Dimensions: Nice big eye-catching image.

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3. Don’t automatically cross post content

The Problem: It’s tempting to have your Facebook posts automatically published to Twitter, unfortunately the time you save isn’t worth the ugly tweets you’ll generate.

The Pro Fix:  It’s definitely okay to post the same content to all of your social media sites, just take the time to craft each post for the site it’s going to be shown on.

A Facebook post is too long to put on Twitter and vice versa. Not to mention the fact that Facebook allows you to  hide links and Twitter does not. (See the next tip)

4. Hide those links

The Problem: On Facebook, posting a URL automatically generates a link preview, which usually contains a picture and a short piece of the content of the link. Unfortunately this will give you a cluttered post.

The Pro Fix: When posting to Facebook you can actually delete your original URL without eliminating the preview. Posting links in this way results in a much cleaner look.

For example: With link (messy)

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Without link (clean)

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Unfortunately, on  Twitter , links have to remain part of the body of a tweet. However, there is a simple way to make your tweets look cleaner while saving some of your 140 characters. Use  a link shortener like Bit.ly. Bit.ly will not only shorten your links but it even gives you the option to create custom links that are easy to remember as well as track links you’ve already made. 

5.Use an optimal post length

The Problem: Posts that are too long or short not only look bad, but result in less engagement.

The Pro Fix (For Twitter): It sounds too simple, but one of the best ways to increase your number of retweets is to make your tweets more easy to retweet. Do this by  leaving enough room in your tweet that someone can retweet your post without exceeding 140 characters.

The Pro Fix (For Facebook): Having the correct length isn’t nearly as important on Facebook as it is for Twitter, but it’s still worth paying attention too. According to Fastcompany.com the best length for a Facebook post is just 40 characters. If that seems too short don’t forget that images are a powerful way to get your message across.

6. Remember who you’re representing

Without getting into an entire content strategy discussion, here’s a good rule of thumb for professional level posts. Don’t forget that your posts aren’t coming from an individual they are coming from a brand, company or organization. Be sure to post appropriate content that represents your brand well, and never be negative!

 

Need help with your brand’s social media strategy? McConnell Marketing offers full service social media services from basic strategy to dedicated account management. Email us: info@mcconnellmarketing.com

Why are Las Vegas Hotels Dominating Twitter?

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Real world fame usually carries over to the world of social media.

Celebrities don’t get millions of followers based on brilliant content they get them because they are famous.

Does the same thing happen in the hospitality industry? Are the biggest, most popular  brands the most successful on social media. 

We decided to find out.

We started by comparing the top ten largest hotel brands in the world, with the most popular twitter accounts in the hospitality industry. 

For only included Twitter for the sake of simplicity.

Here are the top 10 largest hotel brands (by number of properties) via hospitalitynet

  1. Intercontinental Hotel Group
  2. Hilton Hotels
  3. Marriot International
  4.  Wyndham Hotel Group
  5. Choice
  6. Accor
  7. Starwood Hotels and Resorts
  8. Best Western
  9. Home Inns
  10. Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group

Twitter top ten list (by number of followers)

  1. Wynn Las Vegas
  2. The Cosmopolitan
  3. Marriot International
  4. MGM Grand Hotel
  5. ARIA Las Vegas
  6. Hotel Bl
  7. Hilton Hotels
  8. Caesars Palace
  9. Luxor Hotel & Casino
  10. Mandalay Bay Resort

Size didn’t matter, but location did.

Surprisingly, The list of top ten Twitter accounts wasn’t populated by large brands.

Yes, the giants Marriot and Hilton made the list but ranked #3 and #7 respectively.

What’s more surprising are the hotels that did make the list!

Six of the ten most popular twitter accounts are Las Vegas hotels/casinos (in bold).

Not brands, not hotel groups but individual properties.

Hilton had 3,992 hotels as of 2013, yet five hotels in Las Vegas each separately had more Twitter followers than them. Marriot fared slightly better in the rankings but still couldn’t break into the top two.

Is there something about gambling that compels guests to follow their favorite casino and hotel on Twitter? What’s really going on?

Looking at a basic account comparison for the Wynn Las Vegas and Marriot doesn’t reveal much, in fact by most measures Marriot should have more followers. Marriot has tweeted more, has an older account and follows more people… they should have more followers.

Followers Following Tweets Date Joined
@WynnLasVegas 536,000 8,684 10,800 Aug 2009
@MarriottIntl 308,000 15,900 17,600 March 2008

 

After some more digging we discovered that weren’t the only ones to identify the Twitter / Las Vegas connection. The Wynn Las Vegas made a splash in 2010 when they acquired over 300,000 followers in just six months!

Simply a matter of being endorsed by Twitter?

Hotelmarketingstrategies.com accounted for the Wynn’s success by noting that it  was placed on Twitter’s “suggested users list” which had a huge impact on their popularity.

Aha! So what is this magic list and how do you get on it? 

Being on Twitter’s suggested user list provides a huge boost to any account listed because it’s shown to every person who creates a new account.

According to a 2009 New York Times article the criteria for becoming a “suggested user” isn’t exactly scientific.  Apparently a team of twitter employees puts together the list based on “ fast growing accounts.” as well as additional subjective measures.

According to Twitter, some of the criteria used to list accounts includes: “is the account a good introduction to Twittering for a new user?” “Does the person or organization running the account have fairly wide or mainstream appeal?”

What about the other Vegas hotels?

So being on the suggested user list probably had a lot to do with the Wynn’s success. But what about the other Vegas hotels? Did Twitter feature all of them?

It seems unlikely that Twitter would choose to put 6 different Las Vegas hotels all on their “suggested user list”. We have a different idea. 

 Our Theory : AKA how to Wynn at Twitter 

In 2012 Twitter replaced the “Suggested user list” with a customized list that would suggest accounts for people to follow based on their Twitter activity including who they were already following.

Twitter’s customized lists probably suggested other Vegas hotels to users based on the fact that they were already following the Wynn.

The Wynn’s success artificially inflated the popularity of other hotels nearby.

We admit there’s no way to prove this theory, but it makes a lot of sense to us. At least more sense than the idea that Las Vegas hotels are just social media geniuses. (No offense Las Vegas hotels’ social media managers.)

What does this mean for other hotels on Twitter?

The good news is you don’t need to be a giant multinational brand to be successful on Twitter . The incredibly ironic bad news ,since we’re talking about Vegas, is that you need to be pretty lucky to replicate the success of the Wynn.

It’s important to keep in mind that although being directly endorsed by Twitter is what got the Wynn Las Vegas to the top, they needed to be a great account to get Twitter’s attention in the first place.

The Wynn responds to pretty much all tweets directed at them, they constantly post useful information for guests and overall have a good content mix.  That holds true for most of the other accounts on the list as well.

In the end, content is still king. Put yourself in the best possible position to capitalize on an opportunity like the Vegas Hotels experience by being a Twitter account people want to follow!

 

 

We’d love to hear your theories on why Las Vegas hotel’s are dominating the hospitality industry on Twitter. Please leave us a comment below!

 

 

Hotels will be Twitter pros in 2014: 14 Posts to Prove it!

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It’s only a matter of time.

Twitter’s not nearly as straightforward of a social network as Facebook, Google + and Linkedin. Its short-form style can be tough to get the hang of, especially for industries used to older forms of communication. Hotels however, have had no trouble adapting, Here are 14 great tweets that show that the hospitality tweeting is off to a great start in 2K14.

One of the major themes of this post is going to be value! Even though “Content is King” has become a cliche, it’s still true. Providing valuable content to twitter followers is the most effective way to a successful account.  This historical fact post by the  Willard is a perfect example. While not directly “selling” their hotel, this tweet provides an interesting tid-bit about their property that’s fun to read yet bolsters the hotels reputations at the same time.

 

Pictures are becoming a more and more powerful medium on Twitter. Ritz-Carlton did a great job of using this stunning picture to promote one of their properties in this tweet! 

 

Another example of using a visual this time Hilton does a good job of bringing in a pretty cool historical moment!

 

Who doesn’t like a free playlist?  The W Hotel did a great job of taking advantage of new music technology to deliver some compelling content to their followers. 

 

The InterContinental would have done better to use the Twitter handles @TheTimeMcgraw and @FaithHill , but the concept of this theme still works because they provide useful information.

 

As you may have noticed, a major trend in Twitter (and social media in general) has been the move toward more visual forms of content. That’s why Snapchat, instagram and vine have become so popular. Any time an account is able to post a cool original photo is good! 

 

This post succeeds on three levels, interesting fact, beautiful picture, and hotel reputation.

 

Posts like this are good for building trust with a follower base. Constantly selling and promoting is a sure-fire way to lose followers. That’s why this photo of an old general store in Mast is a great tweet.

 

Even though it’s a straight promotional post the Magellan Hotels capitalized on a current event well. Of course people are going to be booking hotels for New York now that the superbowl mathcup has been set!  They couldf have been more successfull if they would have specifically mentioned the seahawks or broncos though.   

 

We’re not sure what a skittle alley is, but this post get’s it’s point across.

 

MO does a couple of things right , they us an original hashtag and link to an original article about someone in thier organization.

 

Another great photo! Good job to Loews for recognizing MLK day with something other than a quote.

 

Maybe we’re just suckers for historical photos but this is a pretty cool picture.

 

If I was hungry I would definitely want to order something from RitzCarlton right now!

 

Have you seen a tweet that shows a hotel brand or property really gets twitter? Let us know in our comment section below!

Alexis Listens to Twitter CEO Speak at University of Michigan 2013 Spring Commencement

Hopefully the title of this post hasn’t turned the Ohio State fans away from reading this blog already.

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Three weeks ago, my parents and I headed to Ann Arbor to watch my brother receive his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan. Now attending a commencement ceremony for a class with a few thousand students doesn’t seem like the ideal way to spend your afternoon (it took an hour and a half for all the graduates to walk into the Big House and take their seats). But when I heard that Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO, was the guest speaker, my interest quickly sparked. Seeing that I had just given a lecture on Twitter through the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber the week before, as well as being the one logged onto social media the most in the McConnell office, I was really excited to hear what he had to say.

“You know I have to start with by tweeting this, so just give me one second. I’m a professional so this will only take a second.” Costolo, a graduate of UM, pulled out his smartphone, snapped a picture of the graduating class and tweeted it. Naturally, I hopped onto Twitter to see if my section made the photo, and of course, my parents and I just got cut off.

“When I was your age we didn’t have the Internet in our pants,” Costolo joked. “We didn’t even have the Internet not in our pants—that’s how bad it was.”

Not only did his humor grab my attention, Costolo’s speech was also inspiring. After graduating with a Computer Science degree, and with three job offers from technology companies under his belt, he moved to Chicago to pursue his dream of stand-up comedy. As he is now the CEO of Twitter, fame in the comedic world didn’t work out for him like his fellow Second City classmate, Steve Carell. He explained, “You cannot draw that path looking forward. You cannot draw any of your paths looking forward. So you have to figure out what you love to do and what you have conviction about and go do that.”

“There are no expectations. There’s no script. When you’re doing what you love to do, you become resilient because that’s the habit you create for yourself. You create a habit of taking chances on yourself and making bold choices in service to doing what you love. If on the other hand, you do what you think is expected of you or what you are supposed to do, and things go poorly…as surely it will, you will look to external sources for what to do next because that will be the habit you’ve created for yourself.”

There are so many highlights, I would basically be writing the manuscript of his 17-minute speech for you to read. So you should probably just watch it instead.

As I watched and listened with a smile on my face throughout the entire time, Costolo couldn’t have ended his speech more perfectly—“hashtag go blue!”

So What Exactly Is Vine?

Screen Shot 2013-02-06 at 10.21.40 AMYou have probably heard everyone talking about Vine, Twitter’s “amazing” new app. The app has arrived on iOS, and you may have even downloaded it—but you’re probably wondering, “What exactly is it?” Alex Hern at NewsStatesman.com has all the answers:

Vine is an app—currently only for iOS—that records six seconds of video and posts it on an endless loop to your Twitter account. If you are familiar with the animated gif, this is very similar. The videos automatically start playing, are muted by default, endlessly loop and must be between three and six seconds long. “You aren’t going to be making movies with these, or even any sort of narrative video clip at all—it’s purely for sharing “moments”,” Hern said.

There are limitations, however. Hern said, “Vine offers no option for editing after you’ve recorded, nor does it let you import videos taken or downloaded elsewhere.”

So how does Vine work with Twitter? You can sign up with your Twitter account and share every post to Twitter by default. It’s also possible to use the service without Twitter at all. One can sign up with an e-mail address and then not export any video from Vine.

So what do you think of Vine? Will you be signing up?