The old adage of "any press is good press" may have a few exceptions when it comes to big brands. For example, it’s doubtful Toyota is thrilled with the press it has been getting lately regarding recent recalls and, although Southwest Airlines did its best to diffuse the Kevin Smith debacle, it probably would have preferred to have skipped that particular incident of celebrity displacement.

In the hospitality industry, the recent news about ESPN reporter Erin Andrews and the hotel room peephole videotaping story certainly brought into question the security practices at two major hotel brands. Therefore, the question becomes, what control does an individual property have when the brand is the center of a scandal?

You know social media can be your customer service desk. There are countless stories about progressive companies picking up on an unhappy customer via Twitter and responding quickly to turn his or her negative opinion into a positive one. You know social media can be your public relations arm, but can a well-implemented social media plan also act as insurance against a parent company misstep? While bad news seems to go viral faster than good news, it’s possible for a property to respond quickly using social networking and have legitimate conversations with their customers—and their employees.

There are three steps properties should take to establish a social media presence that can serve as insurance when unfavorable news from the brand hits. Developing this support system involves engaging your social media followers, establishing the loyalty group and developing the employee link.

Step one: Engage your Facebook and Twitter followers
You immediately have a captive audience in your property's Facebook fans. At this point, most hotels have established a Facebook or Twitter presence and have collected some followers. But what should you post and how often? The first key to using social media is to remember that it is all about having a conversation, not making a statement. The second key point is to be genuine, even if that means being imperfect. The brand will issue statements and run a professional PR campaign, but it's the role of the individual property to actually talk to its customers. Ask for their thoughts, talk about precautions you have taken and uncover expectations. You will likely want to run your responses by legal counsel, but asking for input from your followers will help you quickly gain credibility and support.

Step two: Establish the loyalty group
If you are a loyal or frequent hotel guest, you want to be reassured your hotel isn't guilty of the brand's alleged error. People generally avoid change, and if they have always stayed at your property, they would prefer to continue. If you’re frequently communicating with your guests, it should be easy enough to give them that reassurance.

While many properties have set up a generic Facebook page, more advanced hotels have a separate group strictly for their most loyal guests. They use Facebook as a way of engaging, on a regular basis, those guests who have some allegiance and valuable insight into their hotel. In the Andrews case, a quick posting telling your loyal followers that your hotel takes extra precautions to safeguard their privacy can alleviate any concerns they might have. Giving them the opportunity to talk with each other and sharing examples of their confidence in your hotel can also reassure.

Step three: Develop the employee link
Once a story breaks nationally, local news channels inevitably send an undercover reporter out to hotels to see how they respond to a similar situation. Several years ago, there was an investigative report on the television news program “20/20” about how hotel guest service agents were sharing guest room numbers across the front desk within earshot of anyone else standing in the lobby. At the time, I was running several hotels in one city and sure enough, all three local news affiliates had stories, with video, of local hotels repeating the negative behavior. How can social media help here?

Most of your guest service representatives are probably using some form of social networking, but have you considered using it as a quick communication channel? Similar to the loyal guest group, hotels can set up a controlled Facebook group for employees.

With this group in place, if news broke about the security error, you could use Facebook to make sure your guest service representatives are aware of how to properly convey room information during check-in. You could easily create a role-play between a guest and your guest service representative, film it with your video camera, and post it to your employee communication channel, along with a narrative of the background. Had that step been taken by countless hotel front desks that were subsequently mystery shopped by local news agencies, a lot of bad publicity might have been avoided.

Having a direct line of communication to your guests, your most loyal guests and your employees has a multitude of potential benefits besides serving as insurance against a brand scandal. In addition to having access to these groups, having a framework that allows immediate exchange of information via surveys, polls, photos, audio and video is invaluable. But even with all this technology readily available, how many individual hotels are actually taking advantage of it?

Recognizing that social media has an ROI beyond simply acquiring new customers is a concept that has been slow to circulate throughout the hospitality industry. Properties are leaving this "new technology" up to the brands because it seems overwhelming and simply too much work. But, in the examples above, setting up and maintaining a few specialized groups on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Ning is well worth the time investment.

Hopefully you will never need to use those channels of communication to recover from a brand scandal. But if you have those social media channels and strong virtual relationships established, and a scandal hits, you can rely on them to see your individual property through a potential PR storm.

Holly Zoba is senior vice president of sales for the hospitality division of Signature Worldwide, a leading provider of training solutions for the hospitality industry. She has more than 20 years of sales and marketing management experience in the hospitality industry and is responsible for managing Signature Worldwide's sales effort by determining best-fit solutions for hoteliers—helping them improve customer service and increase revenue. She can be reached at hollyzoba@signatureworldwide.com or (614) 766-5101.