Tweeting From Marrakech - An Expat's Story
This week's guest blog has been provided by Andy Robertson of Splash Morocco, an adventure company and riad in Marrakech, Morocco. I met Andy through Twitter when I tweeted that I was reading Peter Mayne's "A Year in Marrakech". Andy soon replied, offering assistance if I ever needed it, and I met him for the first time last week on a trip to Marrakech. A seasoned Twitter user, he agreed to write about his experiences from an expat's perspective on marketing his successful business.
"When a colleague told me that Twitter was the future for web-marketing I rolled my eyes but was prepared to hear him out. A year later, after giving it some time and effort, I'm forced to agree with him - Twitter rocks!
I use social media as a way of attracting clients, building contacts and providing free information to prospective travellers. The cost of using this medium? Absolutely nothing! The benefits? Several thousand pounds worth of bookings and all for the cost of some of my time each day.
I'm lucky that here in Marrakech, there aren't that many other businesses that are tweeting on a regular basis, so slowly I'm developing into an authority on travel and information in the area. I use TweetDeck and have various search terms set up to allow me to filter through the myriad of information out there and capture the useful data which I can directly respond to.
Tweets I love seeing are things like "Just booked my flights to Marrakech - anyone got any tips on things to do?" or "Looking for an adventure in Morocco". With these, I can send a speedy response speaking about the riad (small B&B in the heart of Marrakech) or the adventure activities and tours I offer. These vary from white water rafting, canyoning and quads to the more gentle sightseeing tours of the High Atlas Mountains.
Any business can use this as a method of not only sharing information about their products on the web, but of also directly interacting with their potential clients and even acting as a gratis information service, building trust and reputation amongst followers who otherwise may have never considered or found your business.
The possibilites are endless and marketing, networking and customer service are changing forever. Join the revolution and trust me, Twitter is the future!"
You can catch Splash Morocco's river tube adventure on Channel 4 in March 2011, when they air a new holiday programme hosted by Kirsty Allsopp and Phil Spencer.
Visit the Splash Morocco website
Follow @MarrakechAndy on Twitter