Rural Cheshire business use internet phenomenon Twitter

Feb 27 2009 by Paul Mannion, Chester Chronicle

Rural Cheshire business use internet phenomenon Twitter

PIONEERING businesses in rural Cheshire are using online social networking to build better connections with each other and the world.

A pub, a brewery, holiday cottages and an events company in Frodsham and Helsby are all logging on to www.twitter.com, the micro-blogging sensation taking the internet by storm.

Using the site, made popular by celebrities including Stephen Fry and Jonathon Ross, the ground-breaking businesses are regularly updating their homepages with up-to-the-minute text-based messages and pictures – known as tweets – and advertising their services to the whole world.

Roger Maher, of luxury self catering cottages the Courtyard, Helsby, said: “It is another way for us to communicate with people interested in our business. It allows us to send out little snippets of information to people who are interested in us and, best of all, it’s free.

“We have a website too, but a website is a static shop window, with twitter you can interact more, you can get fast feedback and ask people questions. It’s more touchy feely.

“When there is a new technology you need to adopt it quickly. We see social networking as a big step forward. If you go back about 15 years people were saying the internet wouldn’t work.”

Roger and wife Jill regularly update their site with messages, for example “successful meeting at Cowards the butchers. Will be making hotpots available for our guests to order.” And “spring is on the way...the lawns to the cottages need the first mow of the year!”

They have also joined travel and tourism websites across the world, allowing anyone searching for places to stay to find them with only a few easy clicks of a button.

Roger added: “We are twittering all the travel and tourism sites in Britain and further afield so that people can find us after looking at them.

“With Twitter we can contact people interested in the businesses, who can be anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world.”

For more information, visit www.twitter.com/thecourtyard or visit www.thecourtyardhelsby.com.

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