Social Media Masterclass at United Kingdom Housekeepers Association (UKHA) Event

In early May 2015, Kelly Vadukar and Christoph Hoffmann were invited to deliver a social media master class on LinkedIn – how and why? at the United Kingdom Housekeepers Association’s (UKHA) meeting held at The Ace Hotel in Shoreditch, London.

The subject of social media can be quite confusion, as there are multiple definitions given of social media: researcher Brown (2012) defines it as the web 2.0 generation that refers itself to a collection of web pages, application and social tools that provide the processes of interaction and conversation between users and friends. Anderson (2007) examines social media as “the sites with user generated content such as videos, music, blog text and photos’’. Both of these terms are correct with social media being branded as the ‘future of all communications’.

Yet with the term being so ambiguous one must break down key channels of social media, these include social bookmarks where users can tag websites examples include Blinklist or Endnote, social news reddit, where users interact and vote/comment on articles, social photo and video sharing: Youtube and Flickr, social forums such as hsk-knowledge.com or social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

LinkedIn as a social network allows users to manage their personal identity (LinkedIn, 2015) and to build and engage with a professional network. One such professional network is the United Kingdom House Keeping Association (UKHA), who work closely with hsk-knowledge.com to set up a UKHA LinkedIn discussion group to engage with their current and future members.

During their talk, Kelly and Christoph aimed at providing some guidance on social and give some useful hands-on advice on how to set up a LinkedIn profile.
The audience of over 100 UKHA members listened carefully when Kelly began discussing how to project one’s personal brand onto a social networking site and maintaining a difference between a site such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
Christoph then gave an overview of his website and online forum hsk-knowledge.com to showcase how online networking can work for housekeeping professionals.
Finally 13 steps to creating a LinkedIn profile were outlined by Kelly to enable all attendees to set up their LinkedIn profile and to join housekeeping related online forums.

For further details please download the presentation here.

About the presenters:
Kelly (kvadukar@edgehotelschool.ac.uk)is module leader for the Guest Experience and marketing lecturer at the Edge Hotel School. The Edge Hotel School opened in 2012 as the first hotel school of its type in the UK; where students have access to a unique learning experience as they aim to deliver service excellence, and gain managerial experience in a 4* country House Hotel setting whilst studying for a degree at the University of Essex, and going on to become future hoteliers and leaders in the industry (Edge Hotel School, 2015).

Christoph (christoph@hsk-knowledge.com) is the founder and manager of hsk-knowledge.com.