The Good

This is a brilliant idea to get everyone associated with the travel & hospitality industries involved and engaged. It’s working. It’s a friendly competition and visitors bureaus, hotels, ski resorts and local businesses are showing their support and posting the contest on their own websites and Facebook pages.

At the writing of this post, the Travelocity Gnome fan page had 36,277 fans. Not bad at all. In addition to generating fans and buzz on social media, Travelocity is promoting their iPhone app on the page.

The Bad

1. You can vote as many times as you want. I can just imagine people sitting in their offices and clicking away on that button.

2. Travelocity is giving away a ski trip for two as an incentive for people to participate. Excellent idea! The bad – the contest is between Lake Tahoe and Utah and the ski trip is to Colorado??? I feel like they are sending me the message: Don’t go to either Utah nor Lake Tahoe. Head to Colorado – that’s where the best snow is. Very confusing to say the least.

3. My friends in Utah couldn’t access the Facebook page for a while – the application had some bugs that shut it down for some time. Technical difficulties or simply traffic overload.

4. My biggest problem with the contest – Lake Tahoe is only a small part of California and Nevada. Lake Tahoe VS Utah? It doesn’t seem fair to compare a ski destination against a state? Does it?

Overall, the contest is a very good idea for creating buzz on social media. It’s lacking however a little bit in the overall strategy and execution. I’m looking forward to see who’s going to come ahead. Currently, it’s 50% / 50%. Go vote today. I’m also looking forward to seeing the results of how successful the contest is for Travelocity.

Your turn. Did you vote? Do you like it? What do you think?

Cross country skiing Lake Tahoe

Winter is definitely here and it looks like it will be a nice White Christmas for everyone in Lake Tahoe.  Let’s see what Lake Tahoe ski resorts are reporting for snow accumulations on their websites:

On the North Shore:

1. Alpine Meadows reports 54″ of new snow.

2. Squaw Valley reports 42″ of snow storm total.

3. Sugar Bowl which usually tends to get the most snow as it gets hit first with fronts from the West is reporting 29″-44″ of snow storm total.

4. Northstar at Tahoe website reports 43″ of storm total as of the writing of this post.

5. Mt Rose is reporting a snow storm total of 32-42″.

6. Diamond Peak received 30″ – 40″ of snow. As we are not open yet, we haven’t started to report conditions on a daily basis. I  know I have been shoveling and blowing the driveway for the past few days and my arms are so sore that I can barely type on the computer. I received 32″+ at my house which is is at 7,800 feet.

On the South Shore of Lake Tahoe:

1.  Sierra at Tahoe seems to have picked up the most, a total of 71″ of snow so far.

2. Heavenly appears to have received a little bit less than Sierra at Tahoe, 35-60″ of snow storm total.

3. Kirkwood is reporting 36″-48″ of snow storm total.

Now, let’s take a look at how lake Tahoe ski resorts are getting the message out with using social media.

On the North Shore:

1. Squaw Valley’s latest update was from Thursday. They must be too busy skiing or shoveling.

2. Alpine Meadows, Sugar Bowl, Mt Rose and Diamond Peak are on top if it with recent updates.

3. Northstar at Tahoe is definitely behind. Last update from last Tuesday. Come on people, this is your chance to get the message out to your fans.

On the South Shore:

1. Heavenly has a nice video with the snow report on their fan page. Good job!

2. Kirkwood has recent updates but they are about the Tahoe film festival and not snow conditions.

3. Sierra at Tahoe is on top of it with recent updates and actual photos. Nice!

Now let’s take a look at

On the North Shore:

1. All ski resorts are updating their Twitter accounts. It would be nice to see more pics and videos attached with the updates and more emphasis on conditions and less emphasis on the greatest and latest marketing program they have going on.

On the South Shore:

1. Kirkwood, Heavenly and Sierra at Tahoe are updating their Twitter accounts. I’ d like to see the same change on social media messages: more updates with pics and videos and less talk about the latest marketing ploy.

5 quick lessons based on today’s research:

1. Social media is instantaneous and people expect constant updates.
2. Social media is transparent. If you are reporting 7 feet of snow and you only received 5, people will find out that you are being dishonest and will do the reporting for you with photos and videos. Don’t lose their trust.
3. Make updating of social networks a daily task.
4. Being honest and transparent is the best approach on social media.
5. Keep your social networks fresh with up to date pics and videos. People want to see for themselves the conditions. Especially important when Lake Tahoe is on the national news!

Deep snow means happy holiday season for the ski resorts. This storm couldn’t have come in a better time, right before the holidays. Enjoy the powder and have a great holiday season. Hopefully, the ski resorts will beat the recession and the economy concerns this holiday season with  help from Mother Nature.Keep it real, stay honest and bring people back this season by providing a great experience.

Your turn. Where do you go get updates about a ski resort?

Happy Holidays from Out&About Marketing, An Inside view on the Outside world!

Click Here to See the Video

In summary:

1. Decide faster. People are making decisions a lot faster than they used to. Instead of booking their vacations 6-8 months in advance they are waiting to book up to a week in advance. Vail Resorts experienced a boost in their lodging occupancy from 50% to 80% in just one week before Christmas. As a result, they decided to change the way they advertise the mountains as well. Good thinking!
2. Adapt or die. Vail Resorts realized that they need to adapt together with the consumer or face the consequences. People want to receive information faster, make decisions faster, get the deals now. Instead of committing to messages 6-8 months in advance, it’s smarter for a business to wait and see what message they want to put out there next week. It will be more relevant to your guests, more real and more in line with the state of the economy. You don’t want to leave money on the table yet you need the business.
3. Traditional media is being replaced by social and online marketing. Vail Resorts reduced their print budget by 80%. Wow! They are still planning on spending it just in different places. I hope they do because now is the time to build mind share. Be smart about your marketing, stay aggressive and continue to remind your guests about your brand. The companies that manage to do this wisely will win when the economy improves.
4. Work together as a team. By getting the message out online and in social media you can constantly change it to report conditions, tackle slow periods, get the word out about a special event you didn’t anticipate having. Get your departments to work together as a team to have one consistent message. Your social media, PR department, web department and marketing department need to work all together to produce one strong and memorable message. Smaller businesses have the advantage of being able to coordinate this faster as they don’t have that many departments to begin with.
5. The importance of the message. Brand advertising is being replaced by a shorter term, more sales oriented message. People are interested in deals and having a more retail approach is key in this economy. Incorporate your brand with the message and always have a call to action in it.

How is your business changing to the economy and the recent marketing developments? Are you adapting or getting ready to close the doors? If you were the Vail Resorts CEO what would you do?

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Photo credit: Jeff Engerbretson

I’m speaking tomorrow at the North Lake Tahoe Chamber of Commerce Breakfast Club. I’m looking forward to hearing the key note speaker, Bob Roberts from the California Ski Industry Association as well as seeing my colleagues in the industry. I hope everyone is as excited as I am about the start of a new season. In my presentation I’d like to make three points that I’m passionate about and keep me up at night.

3 things that in my opinion can help your ski resort in today’s economy succeed. 3 things that we as marketers and business owners need to invest in, understand and encourage.

1. Invest in Customer Service. This is one sure way to generate positive word of mouth. In this tough economy our customers demand better than ever customer service. I continue to get disappointed every time I go to San Francisco and visit the retail environment there.  Invest in customer service training for your employees. It will pay off for your business in the long run. Track customer service with surveys. Award your best performing employees.  Establish benchmarks. At Diamond Peak we have a mystery guest program where I personally select a customer for the day to keep an eye out for employees going above and beyond their regular line of duty. Once they spot this special employee they hand him/her a card with $25 bucks they can use anywhere at the resort. Coming from the customer, the message is a lot stronger than coming from their supervisor. We don’t announce the program to our employees; we let word of mouth spread it every year.  This program is extremely successful. In addition, we have mandatory customer service training that is taught by our General Manager at the beginning of the season. With every ticket purchased we hand out a card asking our skiers to go online and fill out a survey. We pride ourselves on high customer service and it’s one parameter in the customer experience we feel is within our control. People like to be treated nicely. They expect it and demand it. They tell their friends about it. Don’t disappoint them. Understand the Power of One – that one individual can make or break their day and you can win or lose a customer for life.
2. Understand the power of Social Media and Word of Mouth Marketing. Now is the time to embrace new technology and the new ways people are demanding information and seeking to engage with brands. 44% of the online population is engaged on social networks. Close to 20% of the adult online population are word of mouth marketing influencers and this number is expected to grow in the coming years. Facebook is the number 3 website in terms of traffic, just past Google and Yahoo and before MSN, Live.com, Amazon, eBay and Graigslist. Your business needs to have presence on social media networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, FourSquare. You need to have a blog. Start building your online community. Start practicing “permission marketing” like Seth Godin refers to it. Ask people for permission to market to them. Stop interrupting them. It’s a vicious cycle when you try to shout at people and interrupt conversations. Don’t use the traditional marketing approach in the new media – it won’t work. People will turn you off. They will stop following you and stop being your friend. The ski resort industry is in a good position to show how fun and memorable the sport is. Use new media to get the image out and tap into people’s emotions with videos, photos and more user generated content. At Diamond Peak we are actively engaging with people on social networks. We are having fun doing it while establishing trust with our customers. Once they trust us they will be more likely to come and ski at our resort too.  Join in the conversation. Friend us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and watch our videos on YouTube. Let’s have some fun. Skiing is about fun.
3. CEOs and Business Owners – Encourage Smart, Honest, Aggressive, Transparent, Permission Marketing. Marketers – get 5-6 smart people in a room and start brainstorming how to increase your market share, create memorable programs, cut cost and stand out. Let’s be honest about our snow reports and ski conditions. Guess what? People can and will report ski conditions for us, right from the slopes. They will post videos, Facebook updates, Twitter posts, photos and write blogs about their experience. Now is the time to be more aggressive with our marketing efforts. The Bay Area is close and yet miles away when it comes to trying to convince a family to come and ski. We are competing for attention with other industries, other brands, other ski resort destinations.  It’s easier for a family to put the kids in front of the TV and play Wii or in front of the computer than to plan a trip to Lake Tahoe. Now is the time to build mind share. When the economy improves, and it will, they will remember us and the mind share will turn into a wallet share. Diamond Peak is known as Your Tahoe Place for kids and beginners. Diamond Peak has friendly staff. Diamond Peak created a new product this year called The Holiday Season Pass. Instead of blacking out the pass during the holidays when it may be the only time people can drive up for a ski vacation, we developed a product that’s good only during the holidays – 28 days for $249. That’s less than $9/day. Unheard of, right? Different? And finally, Diamond Peak has the most unique event in the Tahoe Basin – Last Tracks. We have some great programs in place for our customers to start the word of mouth marketing. You can discover them all at diamondpeak.com and help us spread the word – tell your friends and family about them.

To help with the networking and learning from each other I started a marketing chat room on Twitter with the hashtag of #mrktchat. It runs for an hour every Thursday at 2pm  PST. I hope you can all join us and we can all learn together as we are trying to figure out the new technology and tools available to us as marketers in the travel and tourism industry.

What are your thoughts? How are you getting ready for this season and this economy? What are you doing differently? What keeps you up at night?

Sliding on The Cheap turned to Out&About Marketing for help with social media. Kevin Tinto, a great businessman and founder of Sliding  on The Cheap could see the potential for using social media for his business. His website, http://slidingonthecheap.com offers discounted skiing and snowboarding lift tickets, ski&stay packages, ski deals, ski shop sales,  ski resort events and killer deals from around the country. Sliding on the Cheap has solid email following (30,000 subscribers+) and many businesses report a spike in phone calls the minute their newsletter goes out. Kevin, who lives part time in the Bay Area and part time in Truckee is a hard core skier and really passionate about skiing, snowboarding, motorcycles, wakeboarding, biking and anything outdoors. He’s determined to spread discounts and insights from the ski resorts to his loyal followers and help making skiing and boarding more affordable – a great idea in this economy. If you are not already a fan of his newsletter, join today and watch for it to hit your Inbox – you are guaranteed to read something that you will like and use for your next ski/board adventure.

Here’s what Kevin Tinto said about this custom created social media strategy for Sliding on The Cheap:

“As one of the largest Ski/Snowboard informational services with more than 30,000 weekly email subscribers worldwide,  we sensed that Social Media was critical to the continued growth and success of our business, but had no idea how to implement on a large scale.  With limited knowledge of this new medium, we turned to Milena Regos.  Her charge:  Develop in a matter of weeks, a complete and professional Facebook and Twitter Strategy. Within two weeks of launch we had 345 Facebook Fans and we are adding new Fans and Email subscribers daily.  We fully expect to add thousands of email subscribers by season’s end, and expand our business in directions we couldn’t have even contemplated just six months ago. As Managers, you have two choices: use Out&About Marketing to work on your Social Media Strategy, or find yourself  outgunned in a complex and changing Internet environment”.

With the launch of Sliding on The Cheap social media strategy, they are off to a great start. Within days, they accumulated 345 Facebook fans and continue to grow fast thanks to an easy and engaging Facebook contest.

It’s the perfect business to engage on social media with their fans. People love discounts and freebies and they will help spread the love from Sliding on The Cheap. Fan them on Facebook or start following them on Twitter today. Although, we can’t disclose the specifics of their social media strategy, here are some tips that any business can utilize to become successful:

1. Create a solid word-of-mouth campaign. Word of Mouth is your best marketing vehicle. If you have happy customers, they will talk about your business to their friends and spread the word for you – for free. If you need help creating your Word of Mouth campaign, Out&About Marketing can help.
2. Explore the possibilities of social media. Find the networks that make the most sense for you. Not everyone needs to be on Twitter and not everyone needs to be on LinkedIn. With more than 300 million active users on Facebook you can’t ignore it but you still need a plan on why and how you are going to engage. Have you heard of Foursquare? It may be the next Twitter.
3. Understand that once you commit to being on social media, you need to keep your content fresh and engage with your followers. There’s nothing worse than seeing a blog that hasn’t been updated for a year or going to a Facebook page that’s been non-existent for months.
4. Think of fresh and engaging content. Make sure you provide value and not just sell your business.
5. Listen to what your customers are telling you and address their requests in your business. Use social networks as a research tool to make your business better.
6. Adjust your strategy as you learn more about the social media environment. You will make mistakes. Apologize quickly and publicly when you make a mistake and move on.
7. Hire someone with experience that can help you get your social media off the ground. This new marketing medium is changing too fast and you need someone who’s staying on top of it, understands how it all works and can recommend the best approach for your business. You are probably not going to hire someone full time to learn and maintain your social media effort, but you can outsource some of it and commit to doing some of in in-house by spreading the responsibilities to people within your company. Social media can be very powerful if used well and any company can benefit from it. Social media does take knowledge and time. The knowledge required is not just about social media, but also about online marketing in general and how customers behave online. If you get stuck, Out&About Marketing is here to help you!

Share some excellent social media stories here or tell us what you need help with. Do you know someone who wants to explore the endless possibilities that word-of-mouth and social media present? Send them this post today. (Full disclosure: In case it’s not clear until now, Sliding on The Cheap is my client).

Based on our Google Analytics reports, Facebook surpassed traffic from Google and from our own domain name in the past one month. How did we accomplish this success? I can’t give you all the details, as the information is confidential but I can tell you that traffic from Facebook surpassed traffic from online places where we actually spend money promoting the resort. I should also add that we purchased pay per click advertising on Facebook for our season pass sale yet the total amount doesn’t even come close to the overall advertising budget we have allocated to promote our season pass sale. Considering it’s season pass sale time and we actually invested marketing dollars to promote it,  I consider the incredible amount of traffic from Facebook as a proof that social media really works. Some of the important elements that went into creating this successful campaign were:

1. Social Media Strategy – We spent time creating a social media strategy based on our business and marketing objectives. And I don’t just mean spend a day. We spent months creating our social media strategy. We didn’t just create a Facebook page for the sake of using this new tool. We actually thought about it first,  created a strategy with our objectives in mind and executed it well.

2. Staff involvement – social media is free but it takes time. You will need to find people on your staff who can help with the content. You can’t do everything on your own. Teamwork is important when it comes to continuing the conversation on social media.I have to thank my team for seeing the value in social media, putting in the hours to really understand it and staying on top of it. You guys are great!

Diamond Pete on Ellis Peak

3. Engaging content – we ran a contest on Facebook for a month with “Where is Diamond Pete“, the mascot for the resort. Pete went to different places, such as Hawaii, West Shore of Lake Tahoe, the Reno Air Races,  all along North Shore and various places in Incline Village and Diamond Peak. We took photos of Pete and posted them on Facebook. People guessed where the photo was taken and the winner of the day received a small gift of appreciation from Diamond Peak. At the end of the month (the contest is not over yet), we are going to pull one winner – the person who had the most correct guesses each day and was the first to identify the location. This person is going to win a Holiday Pass to Diamond Peak and a season locker to their favorite ski resort.

4. Giveaways – although they are not mandatory for engaging content, people love getting swag. As there is a chance to win something much bigger at the end of the month, there is even more motivation to participate every day.

5. Follow up – On a daily basis we log in and engage with our followers. Our followers have increased dramatically since we started running the contest and they engage with Diamond Peak daily. It doesn’t take much time to monitor the contest and respond to people. It shows that you are actively engaged and excited about the contest.

We have planned some excellent contests for the near future. Become a fan of Diamond Peak on Facebook today so you don’t miss out.

Let’s discuss social media measurements. You can measure many things in this example: number of fans on Facebook, number of people who participated in the contest, traffic to the website, and by using the Facebook insights you can get a lot more hard data on your visitors. I’m not sure how to put hard numbers behind people’s engagement with Diamond Peak in Sep. It’s still summer and besides our season pass sale, there is not much else going on right now on the mountain except for the busy work that goes into making sure the mountain is ready to open. We are keeping in touch with our customers, listening to their suggestions and getting them excited about the ski season. We are creating relationships and strengthening existing ones. That’s why it’s called Social Media – Social.Media.

What do you think about this contest? Have you heard about any other fun contests on Facebook or on social media that have been successful? How do you measure your efforts?

You can see the entire interview on the Tahoe Ticker website.

I was invited to present on the social media panel together with David LaPlante from Twelve Horses (Twitter handle @davidlaplante), Michelle Evans from Grouse Mountain and Eric Hoffman from Park City. You can read the blog posts that Eric Hoffman and Michelle Evans wrote about the ResortXpo in the links above. They are both excellent posts.

I thought the ResortXpo was a valuable industry show and a place where people in the industry can connect, network and learn from each other. I enjoyed the presentation from John Siewierski on Email, Social Media and SMS texting and Steve Pope’s presentation on Using Website Videos Successfully. These presentations are still live and you can see them online for a few more days at the ResortXpo website.

Our Social Media for ski resorts presentation was a great team effort and one worth noting. I learned a lot from working with David LaPlante, Eric Hoffman and Michelle Evans. They are all truly engaged in social media (you can just take a look at their blogs to see a proof) personally and for their companies. Kudos to you guys!

You can see our presentation on SlideShare below.

Here’s in summary 7 highlights from the presentation:

1. Social Media is here to stay. There are more stats about how popular social media is. Companies can’t ignore it anymore. Now is the time to educate yourself and slowly start engaging and creating a community. Next year may be too late.
2. Listen first. Before you do anything on social media, engage in some listening activities to help you understand better what is been said about your company. There are plenty of free tools available for you to start listening on the web, such as Google Alerts, Twitter Search, review stes, social mention and more.
3. Seek to understand, then to be understood as Stephen Covey would say. Build your network first. Build trust with your followers, provide value and then you can tell them about what a great resort you are.
4. Align your social objectives with your overall business objectives. Think of social media as one portion of your overall communication strategy, a portion of your PR campaign, a must have customer service department, one part of the mix in your marketing strategy tool bag. They all need to work together in conjunction and complement each other.
5. Be prepared to allocate time and human resources. Social media takes time. Hard cash investment may not be too high but the time commitment and training is very time consuming. This is one more reason why you want to start slow. Reach for the lowest hanging fruit. Start with Facebook. Add Twitter. Build your blog. Look into Flickr and YouTube. Monitor how these social places are producing for you in terms of engagement, traffic, new customers.
6. Measure the right metrics.You need to decide what’s important to you and your business objectives to measure. You can measure traffic to your website, replies and retweets on Twitter, inbound links, comments on your blogs, RSS subscribers, customer service through a Net Promoter Score. Don’t get too hung up on measuring social media. Sometimes it’s hard to put a dollar sign to a relationship you have. As David LaPlante says: “How do you measure the relationship that you have with your wife? You probably have some quantifiable data on her like her birthday, what flowers she likes, wedding anniversary, where you first met, but how do you put a dollar sign to the entire relationship? You simply can’t.”
7. Be authentic and have fun. Social media is about people. It’s not about technology. Ski resorts are in a great position when it comes to social media as they sell fun, being outside, enjoying nature, spending quality time with your family.  Ski resorts make people feel good. It’s not hard to get this message to people online. Know who your are as a brand and use social media to extend your attributes. Have fun with it. Use humor. Engage employees who are already active on social media and have a knack for it. Create a social media policy to give them some guidelines on how to represent your company. You will make mistakes. Everyone does. Learn from them. Apologize and move on. Social media is about transparency and relationships. Get creative. Stick to great content to create viral buzz. And be original.

What recommendations do you have for ski resorts on how to use social media?

You can also use Twitter to connect with your customers and establish followers. I started the Twitter account for Diamond Peak Ski Resort and I have over 400 followers so far. I send updates on weather, deals, events, lift status, snow conditions, etc. People want to know what’s going on. You can use Twitter to direct people to your website, increase your ecommerce, increase your email list and more. It all depends on what your goal with Twitter is. It’s just one more place online to connect with your customers. You believe in the value of your website, right? Now, it’s time to start using Twitter.

Happy Twittering!

In my full-time job as a Marketing Director for Incline Village General Improvement District I deal with daily challenges on how to communicate better with our customers, how to engage them and how to listen to what they have to say. We adapt our marketing strategies based on our customer feedback. As the Marketing Director for Diamond Peak Ski Resort, The Golf Courses at Incline Village, The Chateau at Incline Village, The Recreation Center and Tennis Center I have a responsibility to serve our customers by providing the best products and services for their money. To achieve this I need to listen to our customers. I’m starting this blog as an opportunity to engage more effectively with our customers. I also want to provide lessons that I have learned, research I have found and real life experiences all in one place for people who are interested in Internet marketing, social media marketing and web 2.0. I will continue to update this blog with all things marketing, Internet marketing, web 2.0 and social media marketing that I find interesting and worth reading. This is my personal blog and my thoughts and opinions are not associated with the organization I work for (IVGID).

I hope you enjoy my blog. Send me your feedback and let me know how I can make it better, what interests you and what you would like to read about.