Posts tagged social media
Do what you love, love what you do.
02 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
Last week, on Thursday and Friday, I attended a marketing summit to which all of the POWDR resorts sent members of their marketing teams to attend. It was great to finally meet many of the people that I’ve communicated with over the years, but the true highlight was getting to spend a full day with David Meerman Scott. We had actually started our conversations with David over dinner the night before (see the photo – I’m the one hiding in the background), but he hit the ball out of the park when he presented to POWDR executives, resort GMs and our marketing teams the next morning. We followed that up with some small group exercises through the afternoon and I know that we all came away with a ton of new ideas and motivation that really invigorated us for the winter season to come.
I’m lucky in that I don’t really need the additional inspiration that I got out of last week, as I have a passion for what I do – it’s almost ironic that I’m wearing a shirt that says, “Do what you love, love what you do.” right now – but I am thankful for a good shot of additional energy before the big run-up to the season. And yes, I was reminded of this all by David in his post about his trip to Park City, “Do you love your job?” Once again David, thanks for a great presentation, great ideas and great conversation!
Photo credit: Our waiter at Butchers and posted to dmscott’s Yfrog account.
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Today’s ResortXpo Social Media Presentation Plus One
32 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in presentation
Having participated on a few panels focused on Social Media, I heartily endorse the experience and would advise anyone who is offered the chance to share their knowledge to go ahead and participate. I’ve also been very lucky to have fantastic fellow panelists on the presentations that I’ve been involved with, and truthfully I’ve learned many great insights preparing for the presentation itself in addition to the experience of speaking. So, thanks to Milena Regos, Michelle Evans and David Laplante for teaching me and with me during today’s ResortXpo Social Media presentation and if you missed it, the recording will be available online for a week or two, but you can always browse through our presentation slides here:
Social Media Engagement For The Resort Industry
View more presentations from Eric Hoffman.
And since I’m on a bit of a roll with sharing today, here’s a presentation that Michelle Evans tweeted about earlier today. It’s one of the better and more unique decks on social media that I’ve seen in some time:
What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later
View more documents from Marta Kagan.
Come visit Park City with the Social Media Clubs of SLC & UV
02 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in promotion
Not one, but two Social Media Clubs are coming up to visit us in Park City this week! Both the Social Media Club of Salt Lake City, and the Social Media Club of Utah Valley will be enjoying summer in the mountains with us at Park City Mountain Resort for a “Summer Social” on Thursday July 16 from 4pm-8pm with a Tweetup on the 2nd floor of the Legacy Lodge starting at 7pm. I’d encourage anyone that’s been to a meeting of one of these groups to sign up (you get a free Alpine Slide ticket that way) and come up and play with us…the weather is looking great and doesn’t everyone want a ‘real’ excuse to come up and spend some time in Park City?!
Are you attending the Resortxpo?
22 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in promotion
First off, what the heck is the Resortxpo? It’s a virtual conference for resort professionals looking to expand their knowledge and skill without even leaving their office and desk! Sound interesting? I hope so, because it’s coming up on July 15 and 16, and I’m excited to say that I’m going to be one of the presenters in a panel called, “How to Engage Skiers and Riders with Your Resort’s Brand Using Social Media.” We’ve got a diverse, passionate and very smart group of panelists and for me, this topic is one that is quite close to my heart.
Please let me know if there is anything that you want us to discuss in this panel, or if you have any questions about how we’re approaching social media at the resort by leaving a comment on this post below.
Thanks and I hope to see you at the Resortxpo!
You know where the fish are, now to get them to bite.
02 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
The idea of “Fish where the fish are” – listening and monitoring to figure out where your customers are in social media before jumping in – is a basic and important business concept. I remember reading abut this in Chris Brogan’s eBook several months ago, but have been drawn back to the fishing analogy by a number of recent posts that I’ve run across.
I think that the fishing parallel can be drawn even further as more people and brands moving into social media. The rate of change is very rapid right now, at the Social Media Club of Salt Lake meeting this past Thursday, it was mentioned that 6,000 businesses are creating Twitter accounts every day. With that many more fishing setups, there are bound to be more hooks being dropped into the part of the pond that you’re trying to fish in. With more options, fish are going to be more picky. Sure, a fish might still snap up the hook closest to it, but they’re at the point where they’re ignoring a lot of hooks and looking more for the ones with the bait that they’re most interested in. Also, many are at the point where they won’t nibble unless they’re hungry – so both content and timing are more critical than they ever have been.
In order to figure out what will trigger your fish to bite, you need to continually monitor your analytics using short url services like ow.ly and bit.ly. See what posts or tweets people are interested in and test new ones to figure out why. Another shortening service, su.pr, even recommends the best times for you to fish based upon past click-through rates (be aware that this service is still is beta mode at this time, follow @stumbleupon for information on when it will be rolled out further).
There will be days when the fish aren’t biting as well as some when you can’t throw your hook back in quick enough, but the days of only a few people fishing have drawn to a close and we all have to be careful to make sure we’re fishing with the right setup and at the right time.
Photo credit: modomatic
Social Media Panel at the 2009 Utah Tourism Conference
32 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
I’m excited to say that I have the distinct pleasure of sitting on a what I’m confident will be a great panel at the 2009 Utah Tourism Conference this Thursday afternoon from 2:00pm-3:30pm and again from 4:00pm-5:30pm. The title of the panel is “Using Social Media Technologies to Promote Tourism: It’s Time to Join the Conversation” and I’m looking forward to discussing this topic with Thomas Cooke from the Salt Lake City agency Welikesmall and Jay Evensen from the Deseret News.
Thomas is incredibly knowledgeable about marketing in the Utah tourism industry and also brings great insight into the social media world, I know this from sitting through several marketing meetings with him and most recently we were both at the San Francisco Inbound Marketing Summit. I admit that I’m not acquainted with Jay, but I have seen that he’s been blogging for the Desert News for a year or so with some very good engagement (commenting).
The topic is wide enough that I think that we are going to try to do some basic introduction to the social media space, what it is, why tourism businesses should be paying attention to what’s going on there and how they should then engage in this space. I imagine that we’ll be able to get into more specifics as well, so please bring your questions, concerns and ideas.
If you aren’t able to make it to the conference, we’ll be streaming the panels via our ustream channel at www.ustream.tv/channel/utc-09. Just a quick disclimer, it may wind up being via the camera on my MacBook Pro unless I find an external video camera that I can grab a live feed from, neither of my video cameras seems to work. Hope to see you at the conference or on the web on Thursday!
PS – I have a draft of an inbound marketing for ski resorts post that’s been sitting around on my WordPress Dashboard for a few days, I’m thinking that i may split it into a multi-part post, stay tuned…
Photo credit: Utah Tourism Conference
Inbound Marketing Summit
02 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
I’m excited to be heading to San Francisco next week for the Inbound Marketing Summit taking place on April 28-29. Inbound Marketing is an interesting change, because unlike traditional marketing, which focuses on finding customers and pushing messages to them, Inbound Marketing focuses on ways to be found by the customers.
If you haven’t already, you need to pay attention to Inbound Marketing because traditional marketing isn’t working the way it used to:
- We DVR our favorite TV programs and skip the ads
- We have SPAM filters that block unsolicited bulk emails
- Telemarketing has been crippled by do not call lists
- Newspapers and magazines are going out of business by the day
The answer isn’t finding a another way to push your message, it’s changing how you reach your customers. The way to do this then, is to help your customers find you online through Inbound Marketing. The heart of any Inbound Marketing effort is to create high quality content. This content can reside on a website, a blog or any other sort of media including video, photography or audio. The next step is to ensure this content is findable via Search Engine Optimization techniques so that your content appears organically in searches – which is still how most people find products online. Finally it’s a natural step to use the wide variety of social media tools to provide additional support and context to your SEO efforts. By the way, if my description of Inbound Marketing isn’t completely clear to you, check out this great post by Rick Burnes on the Hubspot blog for a more comprehensive explanation.
So hopefully you can see why I’m excited to see where the great slate of speakers at the Inbound Marketing Summit think that Inbound Marketing is going in the coming months and I’ll be sure to put together a post or two to sum up what I hear.
Photo Credit: psd
Social Media Bites
02 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
I had the pleasure to have dinner last Thursday with two lovely Park City PR mavens, Krista and Libby, along with the enigmatic Peter Shankman of Help a Reporter Out. Our dinner at Shabu was delicious and stimulating in it’s own right, don’t miss the sweet miso glazed black cod, but the conversation was even more so.
Our chat was a great mix of stories, both personal and professional, some of which I’d get racked over hot coals if I mentioned here! But to me, the key ingredient was the fact that everyone was extremely passionate about what it is that they do and how they do it. It’s refreshing to know that people like Peter, who are leading the charge in social media, are so passionate and do really practice what they preach.
I’ve also had the good fortune to be able to meet and chat (briefly) with Chris Brogan, Frank Eliason and Gary Vaynerchuk and each one was likewise amazingly interesting, intelligent, approachable, helpful and genuine in person. So, I guess that what I’m trying to say in this post is, go ahead and take a bite out of social media, I know that it will treat you well!
Photo Credit: Flowizm (this pic is of the dish Shabu Shabu, not the restaraunt Shabu here in Park City)
Social Media Happenings in Utah – January 09
13 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in promotion
I attended the 1st ever Social Media Club of Salt Lake City meeting last Thursday and was happy to see the larger than expected turnout of very excited group of people that filled the room to overflowing. And, the best part is that there’s more to come, and there are also more great events happening this week!
On Inaugural Day, there’s a Salt Lake City Sundance Tweetup at the Beehive Tearoom starting at 7:00pm and features a “guest speaker” with lots of other Sundance connections as well.
Then, on Thursday, the 22nd, there’s another Sundance Tweetup, this one being the Charity Tweetup at Sundance, which is happening at the Legacy Lodge at Park City Mountain Resort (where I work, hint, hint). The cool twist on this event is that it has a suggested $5 (min.) donation, but all of the door will go to a charity that will be determined based upon a vote of all attendees. There’s will also be a quick panel and plenty of Tweetup goodness. PLUS, and I still haven’t had any takers on this – I’m looking for some ski or snowboard Tweeples to join me on the slopes for a #SkiTweetup! Don’t worry about ability, I can ski really slowly if need be, I just figure it’s time to Tweetup on the slopes – @freeskier41 – you listening, my man (I know you don’t need to go slow)?!
BTW, just noticed that the PodCampSLC twitter account just tweeted back into action – it’s not until March 27th, but it’s sure to be another great Utah social media event to attend!
Photo Credit: magerleagues
Yummy and Delicious
03 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in review
I’ve been using the Delicious social bookmarking service for nearly two months and I am really enjoying it. As a matter of fact I wish I could convince more of my peers to jump on and use it because of how easy and helpful I think it is. Here’s what I like:
- I can access all of my bookmarks from any computer and I won’t lose any if I change browsers or my computer crashes!
- Use tags to filter and sort bookmarked pages.
- Tags are automatically suggested based upon your existing tags as well as those that other users use for a page.
- Sharing of bookmarks with friends that are in your Delicious network is as easy as clicking on the network for:<username> tag.
- Installing the Internet Explorer or Firefox add-ons takes the whole Delicious experience to another level of ease and usefulness, personally I love the feature that alerts you when someone bookmarks a page a tags it for you.
- I enjoy browsing through Delicious just to see what other users have bookmarked, kind of like StumbleUpon but without the slot machine pull aspect (although I have been known to stumble a bit every now and then)!
- It’s also fun to find the Delicious account of someone you know or are interested in and check out what they’ve bookmarked. Please feel free to browse mine at http://delicious.com/eric_hoffman
- And you always have the ability to keep selected pages private.
There are many other social networking tools out there, but Delicious is quick to learn, easy to use and very helpful, I give it a solid A.
