Back in March at SXSW, Twitter made an official announcement of their @anywhere platform which would bring Twitter integration tighter into your hotel website.¹

(If you're not yet active on Twitter – be sure to read our getting started tips click to read first.)

If you're an active user, then you probably no doubt know about or have installed one of the scrolling widgets on your website, one of the ones that feature your most recent Tweets. 

That's not changed and depending on your twitter activity, this can be an interesting way to drive interaction.  What @anywhere does is bring more Twitter features onto your website without you users even having to go to Twitter itself. 

The perfect example is a "Follow Us" on Twitter button which users could click and follow you right from your website.

So, How Do You Set It Up?

Ok – you need to know how to change the code templates on your website – including some Javascrpt setup.  If you don't know how to do these, you'll need to talk to your webmaster.  First, you'll need to get a API key from Twitter website.  You can download that here:

http://dev.twitter.com/anywhere

Once you do that, you can download the ‘widget' code from the same website.  Some of the options include:

• More ‘interactive' tweets boxes than the widgets you are already used to.
•  "Hovercards" – which you can setup so that by hovering over your Twitter username, a pop up box will appear (or hover, I should say) where a user can click and Follow you without going onto the Twitter website.  Or alternatively, if you have several staff members, each can have a profile which has a different follow button.

Expect more features and innovations to be made available as this new technology matures.

Do You need them?

I think these options are fantastic, but they're only for the confident webmaster – I don't think they are for everyone.  The first requirement is to be an active Twitter user; there's no reason to setup these features to encourage people to follow you if this isn't an active channel for you.  

And by active – that means you're on Twitter encourage discussion, answering questions, and not just pumping out deals and discounts.

But, if you're making the effort on Twitter and you're really trying to make it a marketing channel that adds value to your customers and brings in some extra business, then these tools could very well be what you need to take it to the next level. 

So check them out and see what they can do for you.

¹ - http://blog.twitter.com/2010/03/anywhere.html

Andy Hayes is the Managing Partner of Travel Online Partners (TOP), a company focused on helping for small businesses in travel and tourism with online technology. 

To find out more about their do-it-yourself guides, coaching and consulting, visit the website www.travelonlinepartners.com