Web 2.0 marketing for hostels, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

Thanks for listing your hostel blog.

For anyone interested there is also a hostel blog poll. Do any other hostels here have a blog?

I'm currently working on a tutorial for hostel blogs that shows how to significantly increase bookings through use of a hostel blog. I'm surprised that so few hostels have them.

More tools for Twitter:

twhirl is a free program to manage your twitter profile:
http://www.twhirl.org/

You can alternatively use your chat program like Gmail or Pidgin/Jabber/AIM to interact with Twitter. I like the chat method because it allows you to follow certain keywords (like "hostels") and get a message whenever someone mentions that keyword.

There are also ways to integrate Twitter with Facebook accounts:
http://explore.twitter.com/

There are also badges that can be displayed on Web sites or blogs to post your twitter updates:
http://twitter.com/badges/

Another advantage to the exposure on those "Web 2.0" sites is the piggyback content effect (also mentioned in my free ebook on hostel marketing).

"Piggybacking" is when you put your content on other Web sites in order to get more exposure in the search engines.

Here is an example where a hostel is piggybacking content on the social networking sites, which has pushed down the rankings for the booking engines on that query.

That means that backpackers who are searching for the specific hostel by name are more likely to land directly on the hostel's Web site and avoid booking commissions.

There are many fun applications for this technique :)

An interesting article about Twitter getting $15 million investment from Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com)

I've found Twitter to be very good for networking. If you haven't seen it, there is a "Travel Twitterati" list here (Twitterers from the travel industry).

And an interesting article about how the t-list uses Twitter. A hostel, Hostel Colonial, is one of the top travel industry users by Twitter followers and updates.

I stopped using Twitter for a while because the IM support was broken, but I've started using Twitter with a program called Twhirl and it's working well.