1. I enjoyed David LaPlante’s presentation.His passion for technology, social sharing, video, content and skiing is addictive and make a big impact on everyone who’s ever seen him speak. On the forefront of technology, geek by heart and skier for life, David talked about the past, present and future of technology. A lot of change is coming to us and it’s happening fast. Stay with the trends or be left out in the cold when it comes to how you do business online.
2. Jim Scripps gave a great overview of blogging – what it is, how to do it and best practices. It’s quick to set it up and businesses can use to engage online, deal with a PR crisis, help improve their search engine rankings, provide timely updates, use it as a hub for all of their social media efforts and engagement with bloggers.
3. Michael Kelly from ClickMail Marketing gave an extensive overview on how to best utilize email marketing for organizations with a ton of statistics and best practices. Knowing that the average value of an email address is $120 puts a different light to the email database list of any size.
4. Jake Fields, from Treeline Interactive spoke passionately about mobile marketing: iPhone apps, mobile advertising, text messages and various applications. Mobile holds a lot of opportunities for the future. As companies enter this new field with many unknowns it’s good to partner with someone that understands it and does it on a daily basis. Treeline Interactive seem to be completely at ease when it comes to speaking mobile advertising.
5. Finally, here’s the presentation I gave on Facebook and Twitter for business. Someone asked about social media ROI. Here’s a good video touching on the ROI question.

Look around your business for signs that may be sending the wrong message to your customers. They may be making perfect sense to you (are they really?) but you are turning away your customers by sending the wrong message out. Way too many businesses nowadays fall into the trap of announcing to to the world all of their rules, policies and regulations. If you have to have a sign, make sure you are informing your customers about something of importance to them and certainly not trying to tell them how unfriendly your place is or how many policies you have in place. Seriously, if I want to pay with $100 bill, be happy about it and use the opportunity to upsell me on something I didn’t expect I need.

A quick research revealed, Keva Juice’s website has not social networks available on it and a quick search on Facebook revealed 2 business fan pages with the official one being fanned by 1,839 people. It’s interesting to note that the “official” Keva Juice Facebook page is only geared towards 13 New Mexico locations. Now, I’m really confused as to what Keva Juice is really trying to accomplish with their brand. For comparison purposes, their main competitor, Jamba Juice has 375,887 fans. It’s possible they don’t have silly signs in their stores too. I know where I’m going next when I crave a smoothie. Your turn. Do you see signs (written or not) that leave you wondering if you are really welcomed at a particular business?

The New Customer is defined by the following characteristics:

1. I want it now and if I can’t have it now, I’m moving along. I’m certainly not waiting. I’m not waiting in line, I have no time.

2. I’m connected all the time – at home, at work, in the car, when I’m walking, eating out, partying.

3. I can Google everything and find the answers to everything in zero time.

4. I can compare prices, read reviews,  ask my friends for advice. I’m web savvy.

5. I’m informed, educated and know where to look for information. I can see through your marketing and advertising lies.

6. I have no patience. I want immediate gratification. Superior Customer Service. I want to be treated as an individual.

7. I am the NOW GENERATION.

Ask yourself – How is your company adapting to the New NOW Generation?

Great song!

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!

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?

Today, I want to share with you some even more amazing statistics pulled again from the same website, Quantcast.com. This time, I looked at the most visited websites online. I’m surprised to see that Facebook.com is showing as Number 3, just past Google.com and Yahoo.com and ahead of MSN.com, Live.com, Microsoft.com, Amazon.com, eBay.com and even Craigslist which is probably the Number 1 website to find a job and a lot of people right now are doing just that on a daily basis. Here are the top 10 websites in terms of traffic:

There is only one point to make here – if you are not considering Facebook.com to promote your business, why aren’t you? You can get the word out about your products and services, all at the fraction of what you will spend in traditional marketing and even online marketing? There’s very little investment cost involved in having your business presence on Facebook and you will be reaching 104 million people monthly living in the US, compared to 120 million people on Yahoo and 141 million people on Google. Facebook has become a website and a marketing vehicle that you can no longer ignore for the cost that it takes to be on it. Can you say Free? Is your business on Facebook yet?

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?

Converse on Crack by ~PuNkPoP on deviantART

My challenge to you is to start thinking about your product/service in a brand new light. If Sharpies can do it and create a vibrant community where people create the most amazing art and post photos/videos/talk about it, then why can’t you? Sharpies is on all major social media sites. Go check out their page and look around to get the creative juices flowing.  Poor excuses for not getting involved in social media such as: “My product/service is not exciting” won’t work anymore. Go explore. Get creative. Start small. Engage your customers. Build your community.  You need a plan in place first,  before you engage with the tools. Sharpies conducted extensive research before they built their online community.  They knew what would keep their online community alive before going out and building a blog and a Flickr page. Think about your business objectives, look at your entire marketing strategy and incorporate the social element with it. Just don’t try to use old methods for new media – it won’t work.

What do you think? Do you have a product/service that you just don’t understand how to turn it into a talkable brand??  Let me know. I’m more than happy to give you some ideas.