Posts tagged social media
Taking it With You
16 months ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
On a recent vacation to Hawaii, I made a conscious effort to cut back on social media use. It was a nice break from the continuous updates and checks that seem to make up a decent chunk of the day during the regular work week. In checking back now, a few months later, I’m surprised to see that in particular on Twitter, I sent no tweets during the entire trip, aside from the day of arrival and departure, take a peek:
I also pulled stats from Tweets stats which showed interestingly that I did tweet, which is odd, but it also shows a steady increase of followers, which I suppose I could believe is true:
I bring up these personal stats as I just saw the results of a recent survey which found that half of all leisure travelers update their social network status while on vacation, with 40% of them admitting that they no longer send postcards as social updates are just so much more “gratifying”. tnooz provides an excellent summary of this Ebookers survey data, which while it queried Britons, I’m sure would also apply here in the US – what do you think? And do you provide social updates while on vacation?
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Go Time
17 months ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
After a re-invigorating break from work and blogging, I’m baaacckkk! The first topic to start back with is this interesting infographic that I found on Simplifying via Mashable which breaks out some interesting numbers on how successful airlines are in social media by virtue of how they manage their social accounts by either dedicated employees or an integrated team approach. Seems like it’s pretty obvious which direction has more success for airlines and I think it readily translates into other travel businesses including ski resorts, enjoy!
“Ownership” of Social Media Accounts
21 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
I didn’t think too much about the whole firing of CNN’s Rick Sanchez until I happened upon this article contemplating about the “ownership” of the various social media accounts that were an integrated and essential component to Rick’s show on CNN. Now I understand that it’s great to have a single personality behind a brand, but this case obviously shows the pitfalls of what might happen if that person leaves the company. With the Rick Sanchez case, his accounts were branded to him so that with his leaving it wasn’t that damaging (at least in my opinion) to CNN. In fact, looking now, his account has now been renamed from @ricksanchezcnn to @ricksancheznews which still retains all of the followers that his old account had – interestingly the renamed account is not “verified by Twitter” any longer.
An example of a company social media account changing hands gracefully is the Comcast @comcastcares account. That account was established by a Comcast customer service employee, Frank Eliason, who grew it into a wonderful and very popular customer service portal. However, Frank has moved on to other opportunities, and has left the account in the hands of Comcast customer service.
These are both examples in which things worked out ok. What happens if an employee is in charge of a ski resort’s Twitter and Facebook accounts and has them attached to their personal email and for whatever reason that person leaves the resort? Certainly one would expect that employee to pass those accounts along to their former employer, but in an extreme circumstance they could easily hold onto the Twitter account, or perhaps change it to suit their purposes. Same with the Facebook Pages where the account would need another admin assigned to it to take over and remove the person that has moved on, thankfully, Facebook does allow the initial page creator to be removed, a fairly recent change.
What can Ski Resorts Learn from Professional Sports about Social Media?
01 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
A year ago I wrote a post talking about how my favorite NFL team, the Minnesota Vikings, was then using social media. A year later, I would argue that every major and most minor sports teams are fully immersed in social media and are enjoying the benefits (and hazards) of engaging their fan base directly online. While teams can manage the engagement on their own sites and social connections, they don’t have as much control over the athletes on their teams and are looking at ways to ensure that their players are also engaging in social media with appropriate care. As the football season starts to wind up, it seems that a few football players are already posting some, uh “questionable” things, and organizations are scrambling to react – there’s a very nice description of this in an article on ESPN.com titled, “Football tweeters in midseason form” which sets forth the following advice:
As Dolphins cornerback Vontae Davis
, whose grandmother is one of his Twitter followers, told the Sun-Sentinel: “I’m not going to put anything on there that my grandmother won’t want to see.”
This certainly is just another reason for ski resorts to ensure that they’re putting together appropriate guidelines and resources for their employees, because this winter will only see more people posting to social media from their workplace on the mountain, whether it’s playing in powder, people dangling from lifts, getting caught up on them or nearly getting blown off of them.
8/18/10 edit – Just wanted to note that I wrote this post last weekend, well before the recent Brett Favre “un-retirement”.
Photo credit: Flickr user xoque and modified via CC2.0 Attribution
Staying Connected to the Web and Social Media on Vacation
51 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
My wife gives me a (probably well deserved) rough time about how I tend to bring my digital life with me when we’re on vacation. This has come in handy, like when I was able to pull up New York transit maps and directions up via Google Maps on our trip to NYC earlier this month, although I almost wish I’d known about this Android App. However, I know that there are definitely plenty of other times when my wife wishes I’d left my smartphone and/or laptop at home.
Now, I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one who brings their tech with them, because according to this article, “Most Vacationers Stay Connected To Internet, Digital, Social Media” on MediaPost:
“No matter where vacationers migrate this summer, chances are slim that they will completely disconnect from digital media and communications.Indeed, 72.2% travelers in 2010 say they accessed the Internet, email or social media sites while on their last vacation, according to a new study from ad network Burst Media.
That represents a significant jump from 2009, when three out of five — 63.3% — travelers admitted to using the Internet while on vacation.
Men are more likely to go online while away — 76.2% — than women — 67.7%.
…”
With this greater level of connectivity on vacation, what are most of these people using the web for on their vacations? Keeping in touch with friends and family is first (my guess is this is a lot of showing off the great trip Facebook photos), followed by finding information on the local destination, then came news and sports sites and finally was checking in at the office. I believe that this shows that there is a very real and quickly increasing demand for information that travelers can use once they’ve reached a destination, like the Google Maps and MTA app I mentioned earlier. What are some ways that ski resorts can develop web content/services that cater to visitors once they’ve arrived at the resort? Are there any good examples out there? Personally, I’d love to see something along the lines of the MTA app – simple and useful!
Photo: Guilty! This is me being way too connected at work (kind of looks like vacation though).
Thoughts on SAM’s Best/Worst Advertising 2010
01 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
Sam Rufo, one of the authors of Ski Area Management magazine’s article on the Best/Worst Advertising of 2010, was kind enough to volunteer to ‘guest host’ this past week’s #mrktchat Twitterchat. For anyone who isn’t familiar with what a TwitterChat is, please take a quick read of Sam’s excellent description on her blog post, “TwitterChat 101“. We had a good discussion about the ratings, but to some extent I think we just glossed the edges a bit, in that we never really delved very deeply into what the article.
I don’t want to get into the debate of what a best/worst list is all about, after all everyone seems to do them (note, the image is just for an example, I’m not a reader of Star’s 55 Best and Worst Beach Bodies!). The article had a lot of positive and negative things to say about a variety of resort marketing efforts and called out a number of trends:
After combing through this season’s ski area ads in print, broadcast and online sources, SAM found standout campaigns in all channels, as well as some ho-hummers. We looked at branding, messaging and consumer response, and some of the most powerful advertising still derives from print and broadcast media. Creativity knows no boundaries.
Resorts that had a clear understanding of their customer demographics and the audience for each medium were able to engage, inspire and attract followers. But beyond showcasing deep powder, scenic vistas and après-ski activities, more areas are exploring their inner selves—their “social brand”—and these efforts often produced the most memorable and compelling messages.
Resorts express their personalities in a variety of ways: profiling the people who work there, showcasing the lifestyle of the locals, and using major events, from town festivals to snowboard competitions. Social media add a new strategy: letting your customers define the place in their own words and images. This creates a human connection with undeniable authenticity.
This all sounds great, but it doesn’t fully address the biggest thing advertising is about – accomplishing strategic goals and objectives. If a resort is just trying to drive database growth, then I’d say Mountain High did well with 20k plus acquisitions; even then, are these really consumers that will spent or will spend money at that resort or just a bunch of freeloaders that signed up for a contest? It’s awful hard to say one way or another as an outsider looking in.
As an interactive marketer, I’m also a bit disappointed in the examples presented as great interactive campaigns. Maybe it’s because there just isn’t enough room to go into Northstar and Sierra at Tahoe’s behavioral campaign, whoops think I meant to say re-marketing campaign, nah I like the description behavioral targeting. 
I thought the summaries of the Copper and Jay Peak campaigns were adequate, but to include a screen cap and a print creative for these two progressive interactive campaigns seems almost criminal – at least give us a link, I’m sure the resorts would be more than happy to post or provide creative for this piece. And I won’t even touch on the Social Media section of the piece because by only listing the ‘worst’ I can’t find anything to discuss.
I wish there was more discussion of how these advertising campaigns fit into each resort’s overall strategic objective. How these campaigns focus on each resort’s target demos and to what level of success, because as the article’s authors state in the 2nd paragraph quoted above, the most successful marketing will attempt to appeal directly to consumers – in essence creating buyer personas and using them to create advertising that is most effective as it is the most targeted.
I do find much of the thought that went into this article to be very spot on, and in most cases the authors did a great job of drilling down to specifics in terms of what was ‘best’ or ‘worst’ about a particular campaign. Keep it up Sam, Ken, David and Katie! BTW, what about the Vikings go Skiing ad from Capital One, I really enjoy this one even now – definitely a solid add to the ‘Best of 2010′ in my book!
Photo Credit: CC2 licensed image by Flickr user Slava
An Appropriate Social Media Post?
101 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in video
I found this video via an ‘industry forum’, but it’s a publicly available clip on YouTube that already has over 10,000 views. My question is, do you think this is a video that an employee (I’m assuming that’s who shot it) should share via a public channel? I’m wondering what thoughts are from those of us in the ski industry as well as those of you that perhaps just love to ski and ride. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
IMPORTANT: There’s some ‘colorful’ language in this clip so it’s NSFW, mainly if you’re at the office with speakers turned on!
Social Media Upends Ski Resort Marketing
02 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in video
Hmm, some post title eh? Not really. It’s actually the title of an Ad Age video of Vail Resorts’ CEO Rob Katz speaking at the Cable Communicators forum in Denver a few weeks ago. It made some ripples through the online resort marketing community when it was published and Katz does make some solid points in the clip, but more than anything, I think that he’s mainly just acknowledging a global shift in marketing and advertising that is already well underway. While it’s encouraging to hear an industry leader in the ski resort business verbalizing this paradigm shift, as an interactive marketer, I would be concerned if he wasn’t saying these things. What do you think?
How I use Twitter
02 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in review
Twitter is a very useful tool in my social networking arsenal. I find myself using it both for work and personal objectives and many times I find the two to be interconnected. To me, the most useful aspect of Twitter is the ability to see information coming across the web in pretty much real-time via my Twitter stream, or more often through Twitter search. I find a ton of fantastic links to timely content via the search and by scanning my Twitter stream (I tend to only look at the tweets from certain people) I’ve found some incredibly useful stuff that I never would have found otherwise.
To manage my Twitter accounts (my personal @eric_hoffman and work @pcski) I am currently using Seesmic Desktop (formerly Twhirl from the same developers) because it allows me to sort users and keep searches in it’s easily read column format. I like that it also allows for the stream from all of my accounts to be consolidated into one column, same as with replies and direct messages. I have a Windows phone so I’m using PocketTwit for mobile tweeting, it’s definitely not as slick as many of the other mobile Twitter apps, but it’s as good as I’ve found for my OS, it has multi-account support and does have a pretty slick kinetic interface.
Finally, I also use Twitter as a sort of cloud based note taking by virtue of using hashtags, at meeting, conferences and even online webinars. I find it helpful to be able to review my tweets once I’m done, but it also can generate interesting discussions with others who aren’t at the meeting or on the webinar and I’ve even followed conferences I couldn’t attend via their hashtags! Just a ‘heads up’ on this topic, I’ll be attending a meeting on October 21-22, so when you see a ton of tweets coming from me with #mpdm please be aware that this is what I’m doing and I’m not intentionally trying to over-tweet you!
Great use of Social Media by the Vikings
22 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
If you don’t know, I’m a die-hard Minnesota Vikings fan and I glad to see them embracing some of the social media tools that I think can be of real value to any organisation. The one that I’m really stoked on is going on right now in the locker room after their recent 34-20 win over Cleveland, they’re live streaming the post-game press conference via their Ustream Channel. I mean how cool is it to see Adrian Peterson talking about his 180 yard/ 3 TD afternoon?!
If the Vikings can do it, why can’t you use social media tools like Ustream, Flickr, Twitter or Facebook to give your fans and/or customers a sneak peak behind the scenes of what your business does? For me, I’m thinking, wouldn’t it be cool to Ustream or Qik current mountain conditions from the top of Jupiter Peak – any other ideas out there?!
