Ski Areas and Facebook Marketing

Ski areas are starting to add Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools to their marketing mix. Unfortunately, putting your name out there in the public sphere can also give members of the public–that is, your (would-be) customers–the opportunity to criticize you.

So how’s a ski area to respond? Somehow I don’t think that Welch Village, Minnesota, has the right idea. Here’s a notice from its Facebook fan page:

Attention Terrain Park Complainers: There are 60 runs at Welch Village that we are trying to open for all of our guests. We are taking advantage of this cold weather to make snow for the entire ski area, this maybe our last opportunity to do so. A lot of our park crew is working long hours making snow this year. We …will block users who only complain about the terrain park and erase negative and abusive comments.

In an earlier post, the Welch Village Facebook manager told customers, “You should just relax about the terrain park.”

Removing negative comments, from my understanding of online PR, is not the way to go. Announcing that you’re going to do it makes things worse. Telling customers to be quiet doesn’t help.

Welch Village has “fans” who defend it, and it ought to let them carry the load, while patiently explaining its plan for preparing the terrain for the season.