My little list of Top 15 Travel Twitterers seems to have got itself a fair bit of attention. Interestingly, a lot of comments have centred around my reasons for unfollowing someone.
To summarise, if I find a Twitterer dull, irrelevant or overly irritating, then I see no reason to keep following them. Nothing personal – it’s just not to my taste.
As part of this, I touched upon travel PR companies. I have unfollowed a couple because all I see from them is a stream of promotional material about their clients. Others (who I am still following or I wouldn’t have seen it) have questioned whether they do this too.
So how can travel PR companies, marketing people at travel firms and tourist board types best use Twitter? Well, my opinion isn’t necessarily representative, but from a travel journalist’s perspective, I’d say PR peeps should bear the following points in mind…
ONE: Go easy on the press releases
Sorry guys, but I rarely give your press releases more than a cursory glance. I get them via Travmedia, I get them via e-mail but the simple fact of the matter is that they are rarely relevant to what I am writing about. Perhaps one in 300 contains a story that makes me think: “Ooh, I could get something out of that.”
Most contact I have with PR companies is when I am searching for a certain piece of information. I know who represents where, and will contact as needed – I know clients require you to send out press releases, but from the writer’s end, these are the least important part of your job.
Twitter should not be seen as an extra route in which to push press releases out. When I get annoyed with them in my email inbox, I have to delete them, but they don’t really get in the way. On Twitter, they’re intrusive and clog up my screen. There’s a simple way of dealing with that: I just stop following, and the noise goes away.
There’s no harm in sending out the odd press release on Twitter, but if the majority of your Tweets are about clients and their new projects, then it quickly becomes spammy.
TWO: Approach Twitter as a human, not as a PR firm
Part of what I love about Twitter is that it acts as a discussion forum. People talk about all manner of events, developments and trends. They occasionally indulge in light-hearted banter too. It’s something of a big talking shop, featuring people from different sectors of the industry that I would have probably never met in real life.
The people I like to follow are the ones that will join in that discussion; they’ll add to existing debates, bring up new topics and respond to my own thoughts. And they do so as a human being rather than as a corporate mouthpiece.
Few PR firms seem to do this – perhaps because they’re not sure what they should be saying under the company banner.
But one thing’s for sure – when they slip out something about their client, I am far more likely to pay attention to a PR firm which does join the debate. It’s the difference between mentioning something in conversation and barging into a conversation, shouting about something like a scary tramp in a doorway.
THREE: Retweet our articles
As a rule, writers are ridiculously shallow individuals. If we have an article out, we like to think people have noticed it. And it’s a nice ego massage to read someone saying: “Really liked the piece on Xville that @mrdavidwhitley wrote in Publication Y this week.” It’s even better if you can provide a link so that others can read it. As long as it’s not done too often and it comes across as genuinely meant, this is a pathetically excellent way of both tickling our tummies and – ta da! – getting a few more eyeballs looking at something about your client.
FOUR: Share links to something interesting
If you find something on the internet that’s quite interesting, something you think your followers may enjoy too, pop a link to it on Twitter. If it’s nothing to do with your clients, even better: you’re building up the brownie points for when you do need to talk shop again. Again, it’s about acting like a human rather than a corporate automaton.
FIVE: Track mentions of your clients
Periodically using search terms is (ie. Xland, Y Safaris, Z Cruises) to check what people are saying about your client, I assume, is standard practice. The skill is in how you use that information – a tailored on-topic response such as “Re: Y Safaris in Xland – they’ve got a sale on at the moment” or “Re: Z cruises complaint – I’ll mention that to the management for you if you like” can be really effective.
SIX: Respond to requests with relevant information
Surely the most effective way that travel PR companies can use Twitter is to respond directly to requests or musings from writers with something relevant.
I saw a classic example of this earlier today. One writer stated she was looking for European hotels that have opened this year for under £150 a night.
Soon after came a response from @SaltmarshPR. They’d found one that fitted the description in Slovenia. That’s exactly how Twitter can be used for PR good – the response was helpful, relevant and will hopefully get a bit of publicity for a client without annoying everyone.
Earlier, I tried this myself, putting out a request for tips on travelling independently in the Seychelles. I’m heading there in November, and am currently in the process of researching and lining up commissions. About half an hour later, I got a detailed email from Richard Mellor (@Travel_PR) detailing the small guesthouses and lodges that one of his clients – Expert Africa – use. Just what I wanted – and a great example of how PR can work well on Twitter.
Tags: Etiquette, marketing, online travel, PR, Travel Industry, Travel Writing, Twitter
Thanks for the mention of @SaltmarshPR. Very interesting to hear from a journalist’s point of view what you like reading and what you don’t since I guess we’re all still testing the waters to some extent. I’m certainly happy to take leads from others on best practice. Like you, we’ll stop following people who tweet random musings since those messages do squeeze out the really interesting/relevant things.
In quick defence of the travel PRs though, if our Twitter stream is representative of the norm, we’re being followed by as many travel enthusiasts as writers, so while we take the point (and largely agree) that summarising press releases might be overegging the pudding for journalists, there will be times we’ll want to tweet about great deals or big news since we’re aware those notifications are being seen by potential customers as well as the media. Now we’ve got these methods of targeting consumers directly, our clients (and we ourselves) are keen to take advantage of that.
So I guess it’s a question of keeping the balance right, with occasional bits of news thrown in amongst more general debate, conversation and interaction. We definitely find direct replies work well and that Twitter is a great way of speaking to journalists for whom our emails are just a handful among hundreds.
Kate
Thanks for your comments Kate. Interesting to hear about it from a PR perspective. I don’t think anyone knows what best practice is at the moment, and as I say, my views may be entirely unrepresentative for all I know. All I’m trying to do is be helpful/ constructive by sharing my thoughts on the matter – and if it sparks a debate, then brilliant.
I hadn’t considered that you may have consumers following you as well as travel industry types. Perhaps it’s best to use separate accounts? ie. one for Montserrat, one for Dominica etc that have a largely consumer focus, and one for Saltmarsh that is more travel industry focused?
Oi! Don’t you go encouraging more accounts to follow. I spend enough time following the ones I do already!!
Seriously, I have to agree on the whole with David. Being constantly ‘spammed’ ends up turning me off going down the rest of the list of tweets since I last logged on. The same goes for publications that just automatically Twitterfeed their stories on the site and don’t include anything else.
I appreciate we all have a business view to get across – Lord knows I am conscious of representing Metro and that readers are also be following – but lack of interaction just cloggs the Twitterspace with a drone of noise, from both journos/publications and PRs.
We manage separate accounts for various clients too, but sometimes the news we include will be fairly similar, so there might be opportunities to distinguish the content further. Our consumer followers largely come from key words we use – I tweeted about Eric Clapton in Montserrat recently and got added by some Clapton fans. The same thing happens if you mention an activity, i.e. cycling/surfing. So while we weren’t actively seeking consumer followers, now they’re there in a significant number, we may as well publish news that will interest them too.
Like I said, it’s all a learning curve. It’s interesting to take note of how people respond as we go along so we can adapt accordingly and make sure we’re providing what our followers want.
As the writer of the twitter request for European hotels for under £150, I have to say well done to the PRs who responded, and that I totally agree with everything in this article. Also, I received several DM replies, as well as replies to my personal email address, which were great and very helpful.
My request was for a semi-pitch (the editor has requested I find some for him to consider), and TravMedia doesn’t allow you to post for pitches, so Twitter is very useful for this. Also, the PRs on Twitter so far seem a bit more savvy than some of the ones on TravMedia, and they never off-board bombard me with inappropriate answers (i.e. ‘I have no EU hotels for under £150, but there’s this great spa we’ve just opened in Oz…’).
Good work, Grumpy Traveller. Now let’s just hope all new Twitter PRs take heed.
Thanks for the reply and input Jill – really good to know that you got more responses.
I agree with you on Travmedia too. I’ll often only put an alert out there as a last ditch resort – the amount of clearly irrelevent emails you get as a result is astonishing.
Very interesting post with useful information! I’m sure it gets extremely frustrating having this wonderful tool to engage with people, yet so many companies just use it as another direct sales/push marketing ploy. Thanks for the tips!
Another great post, David – thank you. For me, Twitter is best placed to serve as a way to connect with other journalists: sharing experiences and hearing how other people go about things is invaluable. Far too few opportunities for this. To be honest, it’s not difficult to connect with PRs: if I need PR information, all I have to do is make contact and reams will be forthcoming…
Unlike many (it seems), I’m not bothered about my press releases being personally addressed – feels a bit creepy, actually – and I’d rather that PRs made it easier for me to hook into press releases (and/or client info) on destinations/subjects/entities that I know are within my speciality. Why not offer RSS feeds for each of your clients, so that I can subscribe to useful ones, and dodge irrelevant bombardment?
On that note I wish there was an easy way to filter my Twitter stream – is there? I tried Tweetdeck but didn’t like the interface or lack of customizing options. Same as travmedia gathers all PR releases into one convenient package which I can scan quickly twice a day and pick out useful stuff at a glance, I want to do the same with PR tweets. Suggestion for tweeting PRs: how about adding a hashtag to client releases – say #client? That way, we can all talk together about stuff of mutual interest, but when you’ve got a release to put out, add a hashtag so we can identify and filter it as such. Just an idea. Otherwise I have to filter everything emanating from your Twitter ID…
Hi David, thanks for the comment about the press releases. I hardly write press releases any more. it is helpful to have comments like yours from journalists to show our clients. They rarely work.
I agree with everything you write. Twitter is simply another a channel, and all the same behavior rules apply. Whether you’re at a cocktail party, on email or on the phone. You listen, engage, add interesting content when you have it.
Having said that, we all have a mix of followers. I tweet on business related items as well as my personal interests. All in moderation so never to bore one side or the other.
Thanks again,
Lisa
@lisagerber
Hi Lisa. Thanks for your comments – and interesting to see what you have to say about press releases. I’ve always had the suspicion that sending out lots of press releases is about being seen to do your job by a client rather than actually doing it. That’s probably not entirely the case, but there’s probably an element of truth in it.
I’d be interested to know the differences in travel PR/ journalist interaction in the US – my experience is largely based on the UK and Australia.