Twitter for Travellers
Christine Gilbert quit her job as manager at a Fortune 500 company to travel the world. She’s the writer of the recently published ebook, Twitter for Travelers which is available on her site.
About the Ebook
As a traveler, my tweets are often aligned with where I’m going next, where I should go, or how I’m getting there. However it wasn’t until I put out a tweet last fall about taking a bus from Cancun, Mexico to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala that I suddenly got it. Within moments, six other travelers who had taken a similar route were advising me. They looked up schedules and helped me decipher the bus terminal codes. The directed me to a tiny website that specialized in the exact bus route I would need to take. The owner of that site contacted me. In the end I got the answer I needed. What had taken me hours of research online was completed in less than 20 minutes on Twitter. I knew this was a new way to travel.
Twitter is like being able to shout your latest travel question out your window, only to find a crowd of your favorite travel experts, local guides, expats and fellow travelers responding from your front lawn. The key is in how you use Twitter, and the crowd (your followers) that you build.
- Connect with people in your destination before you get there. In this case, Twitter Search is your friend. Using shorthand such as near:dublin within:5mi will show you people based on their profile location.
- Get organized. If you travel a lot or you’re planning to hop across several countries, now is the time to download a third-party application like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite. If you’re not traveling with a laptop, use Twitter Lists instead. In either case you’ll be able to organize your friends by country or language they speak or how you met or any other way that helps you keep track of your South America friends vs your cousin in south Boston
- Ask away. The best way to get the conversation started? Just say it. If you’re not getting the responses you’re looking for, clarify. Or ask for referrals: ‘Does anyone know a good contact for questions about Greece?’ And it never hurts to ask your better connected Twitter friends to pass things on for you with a little ‘Pls RT!’
- Find last-minute deals on Twitter. The travel industry is starting to get wise to the huge buying power of the Twitter community, so take advantage of it. Twitter search will help you find deals, but also following your favorite airline or travel deal aggregator will get you deals never found on Google.
- Take the online offline. Tweetups are just folks on Twitter meeting up somewhere to hang out, get a few drinks and talk. They’re a great way to meet fellow travelers. You can search for tweetups near youor start one yourself. Just remember to pick somewhere with good drinks and better wifi.
This ebook is really just a compilation of every bookmark, trick, tip and solution I’ve ever found, used or just sounded cool to me—related to travel. I certainly don’t expect anyone would try to use everything in this book all at once. That’s not how I use Twitter. Instead, read through; pick out those things that sound the most useful. Hopefully I’ve included things that even the most experienced Twitterati might not have seen before. For those just starting out, I’ve included an extended appendix section with step by step instructions on everything from setting up your first Twitter account to using your phone to tweet to a cheat sheet for all those short cuts and abbreviations.
This ebook is for travelers, regardless of your destination. I have included tips for everyone, including:
- Business Traveler (check out the expense reporting and hotel sections)
- Backpacker (lots of resources to make things even cheaper)
- High Tech Travelers (yes, you can water your plants with a tweet)
- Two Week Vacationer (super easy to find those deals)
- The Expat (connect with folks where you are)
- And Everyone Else (now you can talk directly to travel experts)
Twitter for Travelers, 49 pages. Adobe PDF
Price: $7
Delivery: Electronic Download: Twitter for Travelers
Thanks to Lonely Planet blog: How travellers should use Twitter
