Twitter 101 at the Annual Conference

Kelly Earnest (shown in the photos below) of the Peabody Memphis (along with Nicole Di Benedetto of HHA/Preferred) talked to us about Twittering that she does for her property.

• If you are tweeting about this conference, please use this hashtag: #HHA09

• What does Twitter do for a business:
  
  Connect and network with others in the industry.
  
  Instant access to what is being said about your hotel, the industry, specific brands you are curious about.
  
  Share updates with a broader audience
  
  Follow travel news and trends
  
  News about other hotels and associations.
  
  The real reason is Social Media is not a fad (video)
  



• Some key terms:

Profile – who you are

Handle – name

Followers – who is listening to you

@ talks directly about

# - a grouping of a topic, use to connect with trending topics on the Twitter homepage for hot topics

DM -- direct message

RT – retweet or rebroadcasting tweet

Tiny URL – a long URL made shorter to fit in the 140 characters to create hyperlink

• Sometimes following other people is a great way to attract other followers.
  
  Tweet jobs
  
  Destination
  
  TweetDeck is the key to monitoring Twitter

There will be a complete set of all the meeting PowerPoint presentations from the sessions posted on the members' portal of the HHA website within the next few days, so watch for the detail there.

Twitter is one of the simplest things a property can do to promote themselves, at no cost other than a little bit of time and interest.

I hope to see you on Twitter. (BTW, if you want to follow Kelly, her 'handle' is PeabodyMemphis. If you want to follow Nicole, HHA's Director of Public Relations, her 'handle' is HistoricHotelAm. If you wish to follow me, my 'handle' is HawthorneHotel. )

Juli