Hilton Worldwide faces a huge challenge in aligning social media across the company — 10 brands and 3,500 hotels, all spread over 81 countries. Hilton needs a policy that works for both the Waldorf Astoria in New York and a Hampton Inn in west Tennessee.
Sounds impossible, but Shannon McDowell and her team at Hilton are making it happen. In her presentation at our recent BlogWell event, she offered a bunch of details on how they’re doing it.
A few of her big ideas:
- It’s never too late to set goals. Some hotels within the Hilton family are already engaging in social media, but they’ve still found it helpful to take a step back to define their goals and determine which tools can help them the most.
- The Air Force’s blog-response flow chart is a great guide. In her presentation, Shannon mentioned that the Air Force’s diagram for responding to blog comments was something they used to help them build their guidelines.
- The percentage of content creators is going to increase. Though only about 1% of your customers are actually creating content about your brand (positive or negative), Shannon predicts that as more people become comfortable with social media, that percentage is likely to increase. Now is the time to start planning and training for it.
If you like this presentation, check out our upcoming BlogWell event in Seattle on May 5.
Disclosure: Hilton Worldwide is a Social Media Business Council member (of which I am the CEO). Learn more about it and our members: http://www.socialmedia.org