Posts tagged social networks
Travel2dot0 Social Cheat Sheet for Tourism Marketers
01 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
I’ve been a loyal reader of the Travel2dot0 blog for about the past two years – definitely subscribe to it if you haven’t already. Recently, I’ve been interested to see that Troy Thompson, one of the two main contributors, has recently started his own consultancy business. While I’ve never had the opportunity to meet Troy in person, we have corresponded numerous times and I have certainly been impressed with his breadth and depth of knowledge and interest in marketing for travel and tourism entities.
With Travel2dot0′s move into consulting, Troy has written up a helpful PDF, called “The Social Cheat Sheet for the Tourism Marketer“, on which he lists a large number of social networks that tourism marketers should be aware of . I think that all major social networks relevant to tourism marketers are on this list, although a few second tier networks that could be included on an updated list could be:
- TripIt
- Foursquare and or Gowalla
- Google Maps
- Delicious
- Qik and or Ustream
Of course, the biggest thing to remember in terms of social, is that social media is only another tool to accomplish your goals, if you don’t clearly define your goals and strategy then using one of these new and shiny tools won’t amount to anywhere near as much as it otherwise could. Aside from this, which everyone needs to decide for on their own, this “Cheat Sheet” does a wonderful job of defining the uses of each SocNet for tourism marketers – well done Troy!
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Fascinating Research and Analysis of Social Networks
21 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in presentation
I recently read this presentation by Paul Adams of Google on John Battelle’s Searchblog, and wanted to share it myself as I was quite taken by a number of the things that are put forth. First, I’m amazed at how quick of a read it is at 216 slides with notes! Second, as John notes, it has a number of digs at Facebook, but I also find that Paul does put forth a number of very positive design recommendations.
The Real Life Social Network v2
View more documents from Paul Adams.
Social Networks for Ski Resorts – Flickr
01 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in series
This is the next in a series of posts in which I am reviewing “Social Networks for Ski Resorts.” There are a huge number of ways to share photos online, but Flickr is one of the largest and most established and has some unique features/benefits that make it hard to bypass if you have a business that is looking to share photos online (personally, I’m not sold on their video option at this point).
First off, Flickr is owned by Yahoo! so you can (pretty much) rest assured that the site will be up and your photos accessible for years to come. Now, the key to this is to understand that if you are planning to post more than 200 images, then you’re going to want to purchase their “Pro” account. It’s just $25/yr and allows for unlimited uploads for images up to 20Mb apiece, using a nifty uploader application, I’ve been able to upload literally hundreds of images totaling well over 1Gb all at one time! All images are stored in high res format and Flickr even resizes for various download options. Here’s my one caveat: I’m a bit perturbed to have just learned that Flickr has now limited their stat reporting for Pro users to the past 28 days, which is a negative, but hopefully not a harbinger of changes to come.
In any case, uploading images to Flickr is easy, tagging is simple in the uploader, EXIF data can be readily included (geeky camera info) and geolocation tagging can be added through a nifty map interface. The overall user interface in Flickr is a bit problematic and many of the navigation and editing functions aren’t as intuitive as they could be, but additional integration with the Picnik online image editing application is very much appreciated by those who don’t have Photoshop (or perhaps don’t want Photoshop) on their computer.
Flickr is also a tremendous resource for Creative Commons licensed images via their Creative Commons search option. What this is means is depending upon what usage you intend for an image – business blog post or the like, you can search for images that Flickr users have allowed you to use with simply giving them credit, many even allow you to modify the images if you’d like. In fact, this is how I get many of the images that I use in my blog!
In closing are a few Resorts I’ve found using Flickr and using it well:
- Alpine Meadows – lots of photos, consistent posting, and I love that they have a gallery of employee images.
- Big Bear – great quality images, organization is just chronological, but they’re consistent.
- Moonlight Basin – basically just used Flickr for their Photo of the Day postings, but they did also include several Video Snow Reports.
- Diamond Peak – doing a great job of keeping images coming, even in the offseason, with photos of some construction that they’re doing.
- The Canyons – an example of a way to promote lodging and weddings via Flickr.
- Mt Snow – I think it’s awesome how they posted a chunk of photos of their employees thanking everyone for a great season.
If you think there are other resorts using Flickr in unique, or well-executed manner, please let me know in the comments!
Photo credit: Flickr user Zanastardust via creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
Social Networks for Ski Resorts – Ning
01 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in series
There are a plethora of quality choices that allow a brand or resort to create their own social network and until this past weekend, I’ve considered Ning to be one of the best of these. In particular, I’ve been impressed by the community that Steamboat Resort has built there that they call My Steamboat (or perhaps ‘Your Vacation Planning Community’, I’m a bit confused on its title). There are nearly 2,000 members and the site appears to have a good level of engagement between the resort and those members.
Here’s the thing, this past Friday, Ning announced that they will be eliminating their free platform to concentrate solely on paid products. Hopefully Steamboat is already a “paying Ning Creator” so they won’t have to wait for pricing to be announced for their social site that they’ve worked quite hard to establish. In any case, this is a clear example of how dependence upon a third party for services like social networks is an exercise in trust and something that can change at any time.
This all said, I have to say that I really like what Ning provides as a social platform. We’ve done a number of experiments with closed Ning communities (primarily online focus groups) at the resort and they’ve all been exceedingly successful. The setup is very simple and the administration tools are easy to work with and it’s quite easy to build in corporate branding as well.
I hope that Ning doesn’t get pushed down by the glut of publicity that their business model shift is getting as I think that it is a great service, just one that the end users need to be able to know that it will exist in the future and not be priced too high or have services reduce unnecessarily.
Social Networks for Ski Resorts – Yelp
12 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in series
I recently read the story “You’ve Been Yelped” in February’s issue of Inc. magazine and it prompted me to get back to writing my Social Networks for Ski Resorts series that I’ve been neglecting.The article does point out some of the short comings of a user review site like Yelp, but it also nails the benefits of the network for a business that takes advantage of the tools that Yelp provides for business owners.
If you’re not aware of what Yelp is, it’s a social review site that has a core of active members that are typically quite frank, or perhaps brutal, when it comes to reviewing all sorts of local services. The nice thing is that once you ‘claim’ your business listing, you get the ability to reply to reviews either publicly or via a private message to the reviewer. Yelp even provides a great Business Owner’s Guide that will help an owner or manager respond appropriately to reviews. This is quite important because as the “You’ve Been Yelped” article describes, Yelp contributors can be quite opinionated and if they are messaged in a way that they feel is not appropriate, they are more than likely to respond publicly and vociferously. Resorts can also post additional information including photos to their profiles which once created will give you measurement of page visits and the option to post “offers and announcements” in addition to the opportunity to create a Yelp ad.
So cutting to the chase, which ski resorts do I think are using Yelp well? Easy answer, not many at all. As a matter of fact, in a quick survey of ski resorts on Yelp I found that only my friend Milena Regos at Diamond Peak was publicly responding to user reviews (I haven’t even done any as of yet), and only a few resorts, mostly in the Tahoe area had posted “offers” to their Yelp profiles. I’m sure there are more ski resorts that are engaging with their customers on Yelp, I just haven’t been able to find them. If you know of some, please let me know in the comments section.
Social Networks for Ski Resorts – Facebook
32 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in series
Continuing my series on “Social Networks for Ski Resorts,” let’s talk about another marquee player. Facebook is one more “no brainer” social network that ski resorts should be using. As with many of the social networks, the question is not if, but rather how?
In my mind, Facebook is one of the best social networks for ski resorts because the tools and the community are very well established and easy to use. Creating a fan page is quick and easy and the various tools to import blog posts, images and video are just as simple to setup. Facebook also offers up “Insights“, a nice analysis tool for fan pages The one big quirk with Facebook is that because it’s a closed network, there are limits to how a brand can interact with it’s fans and possibly the big on to me is that it’s not searchable for brand mentions in the Facebook network.
Which ski resorts do I think are using Facebook well?
- Diamond Peak – I know the Marketing Director here and think she’s doing a great job of using a variety of things, but in particular a “Where’s Waldo” style contest to drive interest and engagement on the Diamond Peak Facebook fan page.
- The Canyons Terrain Parks – It’s great the way The Canyons is using this terrain park centric fan page to create a high level of engagement with the core audience for their park users. I also like how they are posting ‘behind the scenes’ things to really keep visitors coming back for more.
- Whistler Blackcomb – With well over 18k fans, this is the most ‘faned’ of any of the ski resort fan pages that I’ve found on Facebook. Lots of interaction, contests and info keep the feed fresh.
- Valle Nevado – It’s not just North American resorts than are doing good things on Facebook, check out the action on the fan page for this Chilean favorite. My spanish is awful, but from the volume of posts and comment, this page is doing great.
Social Networks for Ski Resorts – Youtube
22 years ago
The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas
I’ve been noticing lately how many ski resorts now have a Twitter account and perhaps a Facebook fan page, but most aren’t leveraging many of the other great social networks that are there just waiting to be used. To that end, I’m going to start a series that I’m calling “Social Networks for Ski Resorts”, posting my thoughts on some of the myriad of other social networks that are just begging to be used. I’ll start with a social network that I think all ski resorts should be using – YouTube.
YouTube’s reach is tremendous, it’s the 2nd most popular search engine in the world, after it’s big brother Google. But even more importantly, it’s possibly the best way to show off a ski resort’s most valuable asset: people having a great time skiing and riding.
What to do? Create a YouTube channel, customize the look to fit your resort and start uploading. The content a ski resort might shoot for video on YouTube can range from the obvious, snow conditions, to ski school tips, to customer testimonials to just about anything that’s fun, topical and related in some way to the resort. A secondary YouTube option that I think is important is to try to find content shot at your resort that’s already on YouTube and favorite it so it shows on your channel – there’s nothing people like more than being acknowledged.
To wrap up, I’m going to list a few ski resorts that are doing a good job of using the reviewed network, so here we go:
- Alpine Meadows – Nice consistent use of graphics at beginning and end of each clip, upbeat, fun and regular postings.
- Vail Resorts – I’m not sold on having the corporate entity upload all of their videos and then use separate playlists for each individual resort, but the quality of the videos is so good and consistent that I wanted to include them.
- Mt Bachelor – Disclosure: this is a sister resort of where I work, but I love how they use their YouTube channel to communicate “inside information” in a way that is fun, interesting and helpful to both the resort and their customers. Check out their most popular video, “Storm Recovery…” and you can see that it’s long, at over 7 minutes, but has tons of views at nearly 12,000.
If you have other ski resort YouTube channels that you like, please list them in the comments. And, stay tuned for more social networks for ski resorts.
