A year ago I embarked on a new journey with Out&About Marketing. The results have been very,very positive. I accomplished many of the goals I set for myself and learned a few lessons along the way. Overall, I have no regrets and I’m proud of the accomplishments.

Thank you to all of my clients who keep me on my toes, open my horizons and challenge me to learn more. You are all the best!

Thank you to all of my readers who visit my website, read and comment on my blog. Let’s keep the conversation going.

I learned so much throughout the year thanks to all of you – my clients, my readers, my social and real life friends and the hundreds of new friends I met online.  It’s been an absolutely incredible and motivating journey. Here are 10 lessons on starting a business, marketing for small businesses and social media marketing a year later:

1. The busier you are, the more you learn how to prioritize and optimize. I learned how to filter and aggregate content and how to go from spending hours online to only a few minutes a day. Social media can be a huge time investment. Learn how to manage your time and balance your day. And the most important skill of all is to learn to balance work with life. I have to say I managed to stay sane and have sufficient time to play and enjoy my life outside of ” computer time”.

2. Learn to elliminate 80% of the time you spent on unnecessary and non-important tasks and concentrate your effort on 20% of the things that are truly important for your business and for your life. It’s hard some days but you can do it. Limit your time to what’s truly important and get rid of everything else.

3. Social networking is great and really works when done correctly. One of my biggest appeal to social networking is the opportunity to make friends in real life. It’s rewarding to know you met someone on Twitter first and eventually you got to shake their hand in person. Introduce people to each other. Never forget that the Internet just opens the door for real relationships and true networking.

4. Never stop learning. Pick a tool each month and learn it. Maybe it’s WordPress, FourSquare, Evernote, Dropbox or Groupon. Whatever it’s the latest and greatest tool, invest time in learning it and seeing how it applies to your digital life or business. Don’t jump at all tools at once.

5. Every 6 months revisit your business plan/social media/marketing strategy and adjust as necessary. It’s one thing to have a plan. It’s different to actually follow it, measure your goals and adjust your strategy. Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. Learn from it and keep moving. Don’t waste too much time on worrying about being perfect. No one is.

6. Celebrate. Small things matter. Set monthly and weekly goals that you can measure and when you achieve them, congratulate yourself. Set the bar higher for the following month.

7. Create a compelling story. People don’t care about your product. They will identify with a good story and if they believe it they will consider purchasing your product. Don’t just sell them your stuff. Provide interesting and engaging content. Ask yourself not what you are going to gain from social networks but rather what are you going to contribute. What’s your story? How do you fit it?

8. Find your niche. Find your niche and your voice. What are you knowledgeable about and have an expert opinion on? What do you know that people want to know? What can you be the “google” of? Without a very targeted niche approach your marketing will get lost. Start small and think big.

9. Before jumping in social media – educate yourself. Read blogs, learn new tools, develop a strategy and adapt it. After a few months revisit your measurements and adjust as necessary. Start small and grow your efforts as you become more proficient with each network. Social networking works. Period. But don’t expect to see overnight success in terms of sales. Be patient. You didn’t wake up one day to a full house of kids. Or maybe you did. Most likely you went through the dating stage, the wedding, and eventually the kids. It’s the same with social networking.

10. What are you passionate about? Do you have passion for what you do? Can you carry your passion online in your blog, tweets, Facebook updates? They say Content is King. If you don’t have passion, content will be a chore. If you have passion, get yourself a Flip camera, start a blog and start producing quality content. You will start building an audience. Just remember #8. Find your niche.

What would you like to get from Out&About Marketing? How are you using the site? What advice do you have for the blog and for me? What is your biggest marketing and social media challenge?

Thank you for your feedback and for your time. Now I’m going to celebrate being one year old!!!

1. Video – YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Hulu has grown from 63 million streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009. (from Social Media Revolution video). 77% have watched an advertising on YouTube. (from Razorfish Digital Report 2009). 13 hours is the amount of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. 412 years is the amount of time it will take you to watch every video on YouTube. 100 million is the amount of YouTube videos watched daily. These and more interesting stats from What The F**K is social media presentation.  Video is here to stay. You can use it to sell your product, explain your idea, showcase your property. People prefer to watch instead of reading.  As a business, figure out how to embed video on your website, use video to sell your product or service, use video on online ads, explain your product and make sure your video is compatible on mobile phones.
2. Mobile - According to the Mobile Marketing Association total U.S. spend on mobile marketing will grow from $1.7 billion in 2009 to $2.16 billion in 2010. More and more companies are looking for ways to get to consumers on the only device they always carry with them – their cell phone. According to the Razorfish Digital report 2009, 57% access the Internet from their phone, 50%  have downloaded an app for their phone and 30% have interacted with an ad on their phone. Two major trends for mobile marketing this year are going to be Mobile Money and Mobile Ticketing. You will be able to send money abroad from your cell phone as well as purchase airline and other tickets on your phone and not have to carry paper print out with you. Mobile applications for businesses are huge – from text messages for your business to iPhone apps, this is going to be an exciting year for mobile marketing.
3. Location/ Social Networking – this trend focuses on geo enabled games and software from companies are Foursquare and Loopt. Social network sites where people (and companies) are going to be aware of each others surroundings. People are going to be able to connect with friends near you and companies are going to be able to provide relevant coupons and messages. You will be surrounded with information stream that is relevant to your behavior and current location. Twitter may be overtaken by these technologies in 2010 as companies try to attract people who are physically closer to their location. A very interesting and somewhat scary trend to watch in my opinion.

I promised a few people in the UNR social media class that I will make the stats available. So here you have it. Your turn. What trends and interesting social media or online marketing stats do you want to share?

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?

1. Community – it takes a community to make Burning Man special. From its inception in Stinson Beach, it took creativity, imagination and pushing the norm to create, continue and grow this event. It took different organizations getting involved. Various volunteers helping out and donating their time. It took passion and devotion.Individuality and cohesion. Synergy.  Can your business say it has loyal followers who would devote hours to making this event happen? In the world of social media, community is vital to the survival of any business. Burning Man has managed to create a vibrant community with loyal followers. Just take a look at their Facebook page. Can you say that your business Facebook page gets so many posts and involvement from your customers?

Photo credit: Flickr - Tristan Savatier

2. Creativity – There is amazing imagination and creativity in this event. From organization and annual themes (this year the theme was “Evolution”, next year is “Metropolis”) to the amazing art that people dream up and build in the Nevada desert, from clothes and costumes to theme camps, creativity abounds. Burning Man gathers people from all disciplines and professions who love, breathe and live art. It offers plenty of wide open spaces where the craziest contraptions can be built only for one week of enjoyment. Creativity keeps this event vibrant and people return for more each year. Participation is key. Individuality can be seen in every person. As a business, remember that one size does not fit all. People want to be different. They want to stand out and be themselves.

Burning Man 2009

Burning Man 2009

3. Passion – people have passion for this event. They talk all year about it and get ready for it. They stand by online when ticket sales first open to be the first to grab tickets and confirm their participation. They shop for clothes, accessories and supplies for Burning Man. They talk to their friends about it. Post photos and videos online. Share content. Spread the word. Meet other “burners” and feel immediate connection with them.

Happy Burners

4. Loyalty – I met people at Burning Man who have been going to it for 16+ years. Every year, the week before Labor Day, they pack their camps, food, water and drinks and any art cars or art they’ve dreamed up and head out to the middle of nowhere – Gerlach, Nevada to be in the cruel, harsh desert for a week where it’s incredibly hot during the day and cold at night. And they love doing it, year after year, because they have loyalty to Burning Man. They volunteer to do things for this community all for the same goal. How many businesses in real life can claim the same loyalty from their customers.

Nightly ceremony to light the streets

5. Word-of Mouth – I’m starting to repeat myself but burners love to share their experience – offline and online. There are 471,792 photos on Flickr for “Burning Man”. They have 47,576 Facebook Fans. There are millions of conversation happening on Twitter, in blogs, on websites and forums. Word-of-mouth will make or brake a business. Have you been able to embrace, create and share word-of-mouth yet for your business?

6. Self survival and self sufficiency – Burning Man prepares you and teaches you to be self reliant. You are completely on your own (unless you have very good neighbors) when it comes to your survival. You need to bring all your water, food, gasoline, shelter, clothes. The only things you can purchase at Black Rock City are ice and coffee. On top of everything, the event is a Leave No Trace event. Pack it in and pack it out. And when everyone leaves, there is nothing left at the Playa but dust. As a business, these values should be incorporated in your business plan. People should protect our only planet. Eco – awareness and working together as a community to create a city in a week can be a valuable skill. Just take a look at what happened with Katrina. Surviving in harsh environment is a necessary skill for every person and for every business that is feeling the recession.

7. Communication – Burning Man does a really good job at preparing everyone for the event. From their website and newsletter to handing out brochures at the gate containing all the information you need, it really makes things easier for newcomers as well as old time burners. The logisitcs for this event are absolutely amazing and the event seems to go without a glitch. The volunteer rangers help control the peace and everyone seems to get along fine. That’s 48,000 people living together peacefully for a week!

And finally, direct from Larry Harvey, the organizer of Burning Man an interview on 5 things cities can learn from Black Rock City.

Let me know what you want to add to this list. There are many lessons every business and every person can take away from this amazing event. What do you think? Let’s create a list of what every business can learn from Burning Man.

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?

King's Beach Fireworks Lake Tahoe

4th of July is a busy weekend for all of Lake Tahoe. Many of the areas offer fireworks and family activities. This year I witnessed the fireworks in King’s Beach, North Shore of Lake Tahoe. It’s been a few years since I’ve  seen them. We usually go backpacking on 4th of July weekend. I shot the grand finale of the King’s Beach fireworks and here’s the video in case you missed them.  Many boats were in the water and tons of people on the beach but they were hard to see in the dark.

Other places to see great fireworks on 4th of July weekend if you are in Lake Tahoe are Incline Village and South Shore. The Red, White and Tahoe Blue puts many fun activities for the community of Incline Village and Crystal Bay.  Among their activities are  a Parade, Rubber Ducky Race, Dunk Tank, Wine & Cheese Event, Community breakfasts, Ice Cream Social & Chalk Drawing Contest for kids and BBQs. You can visit their site for more information and a calendar of events.

South Shore, Lake Tahoe puts a spectacular fireworks diplay. As their website claims the firworks display has been voted by the American Pyrotechnics Association as “one of the top 5 displays of the nation”. Maybe next year, I’ll go and see it.Other fireworks in the area are Squaw Valley (pretty spectacular one mainly because of location however they were canceled this year due to fire concerns), Tahoe City, West Shore, Truckee (Donner Lake).

Do you know of any other spectacular fireworks in the nation? Where are they? Did you visit any of the fireworks mentioned above? What did you think?

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.