This morning I wanted to share with you, how I have engaged with a new community for a project that I am busy working on. When I started using Twitter I never had to promote that I was using this network to promote Travel Rants; people were either attracted by the branding (ranting man! ) or knew me from the blog and followed me.
Interacting with people on Twitter
So, when I started working on My Life in Leeds, the challenge was to engage with people who were my targeted audience and get them following and interacting with me on Twitter.
I like my branding, but I do not think it is as striking as Travel Rants, so I had to sit down and think of a way to get people talking about the site.
Creating a fun way to promote a site
Then one day it came to me. I am promoting my home city, a city that I spend most of my life in, so, why not share what the city has to offer (and the bad bits too!) with people on Twitter.
So for the past two weeks I have used my mobile phone, Twitpic and Dabr (a mobile twitter client) to take photos and then ask the people following on Twitter, where am I? The response at first was small, but then more and more people started to join in.
Every day I post one or two new photos and ask them tell me where they think I am in the city, this got people interacting with me (and visiting the site) and I have found during this period that my Twitter followers has doubled.
Make Twitter fun
Local’s love that they can play the game and test their knowledge of the city and others love looking at photos of Leeds, especially, if they have followed me because they intend to visit.
It’s such a simple game, and idea. So, if you are marketing a destination, or have a blog on specific destinations, think about how you can use Twitter to make it more engaging, but more importantly, fun!
Using Twitter for discussing events
I find that I am using Co-Tweet more as an online Twitter client because I can track clicks to my site easier and also manage searches. For multiple accounts it makes life easier too.
It’s the searching and getting involved on Twitter that has helped raise some of the attention in recent weeks. As a destination many events are happening, so I write about them on my Daily Leeds Blog, and then, interact (without being pushy!) to tell them about my site. I have not yet to come across anyone who has ignored me or told me to go away!
It’s really nice you share your experiences Darren!
And the ideas are really good
We all should share a lot more about the experiences promoting a site, the sucess but also the things that don’t work well, we all could learn so much from each other.
A couple of weeks ago I was speaking about this with a friend and decided to write a post on my personal blog explaining what things weren’t working and why we changed them on iwannagothere and it looks like people really liked to read about the bad things, you learn a lot more than from the things that work
The article is in spanish but here is the link if anyone is interested: http://www.limalimon.com.es/2010/02/11/mejoras-en-iwannagothere-el-como-y-el-por-que/
Hi Maria
Thanks for commenting! Yes, I think traditionally people are very cagey about sharing their business experiences online. I have found that when you share information, you also learn something yourself. That’s the concept really behind the Learning Camp that I held last week (I wrote about it on another post) and it was good to see travel companies sharing experiences.
We all left learning new skills and ideas for improvement.