Engaging with social media to promote one of the happiest places on earth

Written By: Rachael Zylstra

Disney Parks—including Florida's Walt Disney World—are known to be some of the happiest places on earth. But is Disney World still thought of that way when put to the social media test? 

Get social with Disney World: Walt Disney World, part of Disney Parks, is on board with new media. Screenshot from Disney Parks website.

In the past week, even socialmention.com’s 27 negative sentiments about 'Disney World' weren’t all that negative—in fact, most were only negative because it was coming from user sentiments wishing they were at Disney World, or cannot waiting to get to Disney World. Most other negative sentiments on social media were coming from Prince of Persia videos or coupon discounts. With 116 positive and 279 neutral sentiments in the past week (according to socialmention.com), Disney World on social media is keeping in good light. ‘Disney World’ has a 34 percent passion rating—defined as the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly. I think this should be a priority goal in social media—to build brand ambassadors that will reinforce and carry the brand and messaging beyond what you do on your own for the company. 

As far as Disney World acts with their social media accounts, they’re extremely proactive in messaging. As a whole, Disney Parks maintains a blog—writing about everything from park events to movie products. Bloggers range from the social media director to photographers and project managers. Duncan Wardle, VP of Global PR for Disney Parks, says he thinks Disney employees should be allowed to blog in order to convey their enthusiasm for Disney. I think blogging gives a great, insider’s feel at the Disney name, and allows the audience to feel a personal connection with the people behind the scenes.

On Twitter, @WaltDisneyWorld tweets on a regular basis, but doesn’t seem to interact much with its customers. With just over 67,000 followers, TwitterGrader gives @WaltDisneyWorld a 100 out of 100 grade. I would suggest, however, that Disney World utilize their Twitter account to interact with their audience in a personal way, reinforcing the Disney brand. If someone on Twitter says they can’t wait to make it to Disney, @WaltDisneyWorld should answer right back with, ‘We can’t wait to have you! Make sure to check out this going on next week.’ Showing customers that Disney cares enough to make a personalized response to their tweet would reinforce Disney’s collective feeling.

One negative tweet I found, however, went unanswered now 18 hours later. It’s a tweet from a user suggesting Disney World work on traffic flows out of parks. Even on a holiday weekend, Disney World should be on top of their tweets to show they care about their customers, and that they’re working on the issue—or maybe provide an alternative route for the customer for next time.

On Facebook, WaltDisneyWorld keeps consistent with their messaging as well. With more than a million fans, they post interactive comments and questions that engages the audience, and post the latest events, promotions and happenings going on at the parks. The downside, however, is that fans aren’t proactively writing on the page’s wall—it takes a post from Disney World to get the interaction going. This is fine, but the ultimate goal should be building brand ambassadors who enjoyed their trip so much at Disney World to come back to the fan page and write about their experience, share tips, etc. People more often trust advice from others like themselves rather than the company…which is why getting individuals to come to the fan page to leave comments would be extremely beneficial. One way this could get started is to by default have users land on the ‘Walt Disney World + Others’ wall, which can be set up via filter settings.

DisneyPark’s YouTube channel is great—playlists range from park tours to Disney Cruise Line tours. It’s updated almost daily and has a lot of traffic to the page. Many subscribers leave comments on the channel’s page, but DisneyPark doesn’t respond back on the page. It’d be beneficial for Disney to interact with the subscribers, too, by leaving comments on the page.

One thing I learned about the brand is that its audience seems very engaged in social media, and they know how to mention them on Twitter or comment on their YouTube channel. By social media monitoring Disney World, I found a lot of park-goers check-in to parks and rides using Foursquare and Disney World could take advantage of the platform by offering incentives for most check-ins, or create a scavenger hunt of some sort throughout the parks in Orlando.

I also learned that Disney World is engaging in other ways with new media. From a Walt Disney World Resort Moms Panel (providing information from moms in the know of all things Disney World) to a mobile apps and services (via text messaging), Disney World is working to engage with those already tuned into new media.

Overall, Disney World is doing a great job in the social media world. With many product names going on under the Disney name (Disney Land, Disney Cruise Line, etc.), I can imagine it’d be hard to narrow in on one audience and get them engaged, but it seems like Disney World has a good grasp at this. My biggest suggestion is providing a bit more one-on-one personal interaction to build the brand ambassadors that can carry out the Disney World messaging.

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