If you've been tinkering with Twitter, fussing with Facebook and blogging with bravado, you're well-established in the Social Media Club. Congratulations and take a bow. Last season many resorts were just starting to experiment, enamored with the promise of generating buzz from these digital derivatives. This season, the flirtation with "having conversations" and "creating communities" is over. Now it's time to get serious, to go from skirmishes to full-out engagement. The kid stuff is fun, but where's the ROI?

Social media gateways are now fully validated, even if the roadmaps are still a little blurry. Resorts have discovered that you can't just throw out morsels to satisfy the hunger. The pack is voracious and demands constant feeding, which in turn demands more staff time. It's no longer about shooting promotional Tweets randomly into cyberspace and seeing what falls to Earth. It's about identifying the targets through common-sense marketing practices and then selecting the appropriate weapons for the attack. And what about metrics- that pesky M-word? Everybody's gotta have measurements these days.

STAYING IN THE STREAM

New research shows that social media channels are, indeed, moving targets, with participation rapidly increasing and age demographics edging upward. A recent report from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project shows that the median age for Facebook is now 33, up from 26 in the middle of 2008. Twitter, whose median age has been relatively constant at 31, has seen explosive growth-climbing from about 2 million unique visitors per month at the end of 2008 to over 17 million by mid-2009. Likewise, the audience for online video-sharing sites such as YouTube has risen from 33 percent of online adults just three years ago to 62 percent in 2009.

Ski resorts that have been mixing it up in the social media swirl have discovered the delights of creating virtual communities, of imparting last-minute lift/lodging deals, and of engaging audiences with contests and user-generated content such as photos, videos and advice blogs. More resort homepages now have the familiar icons of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, even if there are few headlines to drive traffic to those channels. Facebook Fan pages, YouTube channels and one or more Twitter accounts are becoming commonplace.

Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz, speaking at the Association of Cable Communicators Forum in Denver last fall, said online video has become the most powerful tool in destination ski marketing, especially in the early season. Resort-produced video segments of powder-bashing and skiers flying off cliffs may not typify the abilities of most skiers, he said, but they serve as teasers to get them motivated. Katz dubs these clips "video porn."

The booking window for ski vacations, even during the holidays, has shrunk from four or six months in advance to as little as a few days, he said. "We had some places that went from 50 percent to 80 percent occupancy in the week before Christmas, and that's unheard of," Katz noted. Vail Resorts has pulled back significantly on long-lead magazine print advertising in favor of real-time messaging through social media, he added. The company has formed strike teams of marketing, sales and public relations staffers to evaluate strategies on a weekly basis and launch coordinated campaigns based on snow conditions and moves by competitors. "We have the arsenal to make the blitz," he said.

CATCHING THE BACKTALK

With pressure mounting to message frequently, resorts are certainly doing a lot of talking to their customers. But are they listening, too? Some media experts say that too many companies aren't doing enough to monitor what's being said about them, and that ignoring the chatter can be harmful to your brand-and revenue. Of course, most organizations don't have the time and staff to read every Tweet and Facebook Wall post, let alone troll through consumer ratings sites to read positive and negative reviews. That's why web monitoring services such as Vocus and Radian6 are adding clients rapidly. These outfits, while not inexpensive, can compile real-time reports, segment them by department and give sentiment metrics on the fly.

And what you don't know can hurt you. The Internet is viral, for sure, and trash talk and rumors can spread like wildfire on TripAdvisor.com, TetonGravity.com, Skiratingz.com or Yelp.com. All of these portals can influence opinions and help or hinder the bottom line. Some sites, such as Yelp, give businesses an opportunity to respond to negative criticism, but may require a membership fee to do so.

When the buzzards start circling, quick response is crucial; the next day is way too late. At Mammoth Mountain in California, CEO Rusty Gregory frequently jumps into the online conversations to explain, for example, why it takes so long to open the upper mountain after a righteous dump. This trend of top management having a direct and personal "voice" can be a powerful communications tool to calm the angst because it carries credibility and gravitas. Thus, more general managers and VPs are making social media engagement part of their daily routine.

HOW ARE WE DOING?

So what are ski resorts doing this year to "engage"? Plenty. Marketers and publicists are displaying amazing creativity as they devise clever campaigns, contests, videos and blog forums. Here are some of the notable efforts:

• Park City Mountain Resort, Utah, offers a separate and unique website called Snowmamas.com, featuring regular blog entries from a half-dozen skiing mothers located in different parts of the country. Since women and kids are typically primary influencers in determining where the family will ski, this site provides travel tips and encouragement, and is loaded with personality. Launched in November with a different look and feel than the resort's main website, Snowmamas.com has taken on a life of its own, says marketing and communications director Krista Parry. "We realized that we were competing with beach vacations," she says, "so we wanted to create a place where people could ask questions about how to pack for a ski vacation or how to put kids in ski school." Halfway into the season, the guest bloggers had fielded over 250 questions.

• Copper Mountain, Colo., has mined gold in its whimsical campaign of "Everyone Deserves a Snow Day." This season the resort launched a dedicated website, YourSnowDay.com, with content created by a Seattle marketing agency. It includes video clips from a mock ski patrol encouraging people to seek a snow day. Buttons for categories of skiers are marked The Boss, The Employed, The Unemployed and The Elkguin, the last a mythical creature. For those with jobs, there are fake doctor's notes and a "Snow Day Soundboard" with effects such as sneezing and coughing that can be used when phoning the boss. For the jobless, there's the opportunity to submit a hard-luck tale of 739 words or more and win a sympathetic free ski day. The e-mail address is chinup@yoursnowday.com.

• Jay Peak in Vermont created a "Raising 'Em Jay" campaign to highlight the kid-friendly and customer loyalty aspects of the ski area. Steve Wright, VP of marketing and sales, says that in July, just prior to season pass sales, the area started a contest for the best submitted photos of kids cavorting in the snow. Apart from website announcements, the ski area devised a print ad campaign with several eye-catching graphics, including a mother knitting a youngster's cap with skull and crossbones. The campaign stretched across the four major social channels-Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube. The resort has 13,000 registered Facebook Fans, and the contest yielded 2,000 photos. There was also a drawing for First Skier of the New Year, with awards of lifetime passes, 15 years of free instruction and 10 years worth of free equipment going to the families of 2010's first born.

• Whistler/Blackcomb, B.C., with the Winter Olympics in sight, early this season launched an omnibus page aggregating all of its online communities, at www.whistlerblackcomb.com/connect. With just a couple of screen views, users can click on any of four Twitter accounts, including the official resort feed and a Nintendo Terrain Parks feed; separate links to YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and MySpace channels; a sponsored Podcast channel; a sponsored terrain parks video channel; an iGoogle gadget for PC users; an application for mobile phone users; direct links to any of four resort video cams, and eight RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. As a way of launching the Connect page, the resort created an online scavenger hunt to find a hidden photo of a glove, called Le Glove, with the opportunity to win a season pass. The contest generated 11,000 participants, according to Amber Turnau, senior media relations officer. The resort leverages its extensive video production throughout its website and social media channels, and its video Podcasts have generated more than 300,000 views over the last three seasons, she says. Whistler also held its first-ever Tweetup on opening day in November.

• Snowbird has enacted a host of novel applications and sites. Last year, with tongue firmly in check, the resort put up separate Facebook pages for a Red Tram and a Blue Tram, with only minimal content. Didn't matter-people soon found them and started posting photos. While producing at least one professional video a month for YouTube and the resort website-the preseason video alone garnered 37,000 views-Snowbird also invites its 4,000 Facebook Fans to post their own flicks. But the unique outreach for the season is a Snowbird application for iPhone. Since mobile phone users generate high volumes of social media posts, the free downloadable iPhone app allows the area's most passionate fans to check weather, snowfall, web cams and trail maps. Within the first 45 days of its release in mid-December, some 15,000 users had downloaded the app, says PR director Jared Ishkanian.

• Sunday River Ski Resort in Maine offered a Facebook Friday promotion this year, exclusively for Fans, who could get a discounted $49 lift ticket from a designated Facebook Window at the Welcome Center. The ski area also created a special Sunday River Community page that has a Forum, links to the various social media channels, blogs and members-only benefits such as first tracks with the general manager and exclusive tailgating events. Communications director Darcy Liberty says that membership-numbering more than 500 as of February-offers ways for customers to interact.

• Mammoth Mountain has a passionate following, enough to generate more than 20,000 Facebook Fans and 3,800 Twitter followers, according to communications manager Joani Lynch. What gets them engaged are relatively simple, whimsical contests such as "Name That Storm." In two days, that Facebook challenge drew more than 700 posts and a blizzard of suggestions such as "Calistormication."

Mammoth is one of the few resorts to keep its older channels of message boards and forums alive, as these allow the area to respond routinely to customer questions and concerns. And, too, the blogging channel, called LiveVibe, has strong ties to the faithful. This season it ran a contest inviting the Mammoth blogosphere to suggest a different nickname for Olympic snowboard contender Shaun White. Word is, the red-haired White is not enamored with his current moniker, "The Flying Tomato." So a couple of hundred posts later he had plenty of alternatives, including the "Flying Flame," "Red Rider" and "Carrot Top Jr."

A NEW BALLGAME

As those in communications and marketing have learned, there is no returning to the old days of managed information and the hard sell. If you spin a snow report that anyone finds questionable, the contrarian posts will fly like darts. If you use Twitter and Facebook only to sell something, users will castigate you as a spammer.

With the benefits of social media comes the need to exercise social responsibility and transparency, and to understand the rules of engagement. The formula for developing a positive relationship with online communities is to be honest, informative and entertaining. Succeed with those parameters and your customers will keep coming back for more of everything. In the end, this virtual handshake of social media underscores the old adage that nothing beats word-of-mouth.

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Follow Me: The Short List of Gurus and Blogs

Tim O'Reilly is widely credited with coining the phrase "Web 2.0" and is one of the pioneers of social media. His is a diversified company that publishes computer books and hosts the annual Web 2.0 Expo and the Web 2.0 Summit, arguably the best social media events on the planet.  Both are held in San Francisco, with the Expo May 3-6 and the Summit in November.  Further, O'Reilly's blog, called the O'Reilly Radar (http://radar.oreilly.com/tim/), is must reading for everyone in the social media space.

Jeremiah Owyang is young and hip, and for several years was the voice of Forrester Research on social media trends. Currently with the Altimeter Group in Silicon Valley and a columnist for Forbes, Owyang tweets like a demon and seems to be all over every trend on the horizon. Both his tweets and his blog (http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/) are full of information, links to new research, and educated insights. 

Brian Solis runs an uber-cool PR company in Silicon Valley, and his book, "Putting the Public Back in Public Relations," co-authored with Deirdre Breakenridge, redefined the profession and the industry. His new book, "Engage! - The Complete Guide For Brands and Businesses," takes social media to the next level. He posts and blogs regularly, and you can sign up for email notices of his latest entries at www.briansolis.com.

Shel Israel. Surprise, surprise, most of the social media gurus are well over 50, and Shel Israel is 65 (going on 25). In 2006, this former New England newspaperman co-authored, with Robert Scoble, the book, "Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers." That was a landmark work, and his latest, "Twitterville:  How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods," delivers Twitter success stories from more than a hundred companies.  Follow Shel's blog at http://redcouch.typepad.com/.

Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple evangelist and Silicon Valley venture capitalist, has authored nine books, including "Reality Check," has a huge Twitter following,  and writes a pithy blog called "How to Change the World," which as of September 2009 was ranked among the top 2,000 blogs globally. His website: www.guykawasaki.com.

Other sites to check out:  www.mashable.com, www.problogger.net and www.copyblogger.com; the blog from Seth Godin (author of "Tribes" and a new book, "Linchpin") at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/; and Robert Scoble's blog, http://scobleizer.com.

-Ken Castle

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Six Ideas To Pump Up Your Social Media CAMpaign

1) Webinars-real-time online tutorials-are becoming hugely popular, whether the topic involves software, social media techniques, products or services. But resorts haven't availed themselves of this tool. Why? Imagine empowering your ski and snowboard school, or your children's center, or your equipment rental center, with the ability to reach hundreds of people through interactive briefings before they come to the slopes. Tips on equipment, grooming, technique and skiing the mountain would be powerful. Webinars (Cisco's WebEx is frequently used in the business world) utilize presentation programs such as PowerPoint and can allow participants to send questions via Twitter or Facebook, letting everyone see the responses in real time.

2) Webisodes-Internet TV segments-can be short promotions, clips, speeches or serialized video episodes that can be streaming or downloadable. They are differentiated from YouTube-type videos because they have an ongoing cohesiveness, sometimes a serial story line. With the established popularity of video and the projected massive growth of on-demand Web video channels-which will compete with cable television-Webisodes offer yet another powerful outreach. Can you think of storylines that might make for great Webisodes? Think of those old TV serials with cliffhangers that kept you coming back for the next installment.

3) Online video conferencing, a mainstay of the business world, is coming to everyone's living room soon, and resorts should pay attention to this trend. Cisco, which has developed an amazing face-to-face, high-definition video conference system called TelePresence, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January that it is launching a consumer version this year. Since more new flat-panel TV sets are being designed with integrated Web connectivity and built-in video cameras, online video conferences will soon move from the family PC in the study to the big-screen in the entertainment room. People will be engaged in virtual family reunions, PTA meetings and hobbyist discussions from the comfort of their homes, with picture-in-picture mini-videos so that you can see everyone live. Consider that, right now, about one-third of the traffic on Skype, the Internet calling system, utilizes video. Imagine reaching ski clubs and meeting planners worldwide, extended families and other groups with this form of teleconferencing.

4) LinkedIn is the forgotten social media tool in the resort toolbox. Yes, it's great for connecting to other professionals and for posting and finding jobs. But did you know that it also has an amazing database of large groups with very diverse interests? Call up LinkedIn, click on Groups and type in "skiing." You'll be amazed at what you find, and-well, I won't spoil the surprise by telling you.

5) Meetup.com is practically a phenomenon in big cities throughout the country, allowing people to find groups or to start groups with others who share common interests. Meetups can form around both professional and personal interest topics, have online members with their photos and profiles, and be organized regionally. Unlike virtual meetings, Meetups involve real meetings with speakers and face-to-face networking. They might be at a bar or restaurant, a meeting hall or a corporate conference room. Again, go into Meetup.com, enter "skiing" or "ski" in the search box and filter by country or zip code. See what comes up.

6) Enterprise social media is one of the hot new trends in the business world, and it can literally transform an organization. Call it Facebook for business. This is a tool for internal use, and it can quickly generate ideas from all parts of the organization, allow project groups over wide geographies to collaborate without having to do so in real time, and launch products and services much faster than usual. Keep an eye on Intuit's new Brainstorm software, on Google's Wave and on Salesforce.com's Chatter. If you think of your employees or a group of commonly-owned resorts as your community, then consider how powerful it might be to trade best practices, develop new processes and programs, identify sales leads, and give recognition on internal boards without having to meet physically as often as you do.

To stay on top of these trends, check out www.saminfo.com for more information about social media. Just click on "Current Issue" and this article.

-Ken Castle

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SAMMY Guest Editor's Take

The thought of commenting on social media makes my palms sweat. I'm a media dinosaur; I use media like it's still 2008. I read several newspapers every day, and several magazines cover to cover each week/month-all in hard copy. I have a Facebook account, but I've never used it. I monitor Twitter, but I haven't tweeted. Not long ago, I knew how our market used media, but these past two years have swept me under like a tsunami. I suspect I'm not the only one.

Ken's article reinforces four key beliefs of mine: 1. our market's use of media has changed-dramatically and permanently; 2. old media do not allow us to communicate with travelers in sync with how they now plan travel; 3. new social media are excellent tools for this; and 4. nobody really knows how to use all this stuff yet. Therefore, it's critical to measure what you're doing, to help figure it out.

Media have changed. In my chairlift research I always ask, "how did you decide to come to Vail?" and "how did you plan your trip?" Last year, the answers started to change dramatically. Those who relied on someone else's advice no longer got that advice in person-they got it through an online conversation or from user-generated posts. Research is no longer limited to magazines and supplier websites-it's a complex combination of sites like Trip Advisor and other intermediaries across the web.

The 2008-2009 season delivered an enormous lesson for us. We developed our marketing plan and ad creative in early 2008. We sent the ads to the magazines, and the vast majority of our marketing budget/firepower was spent by early fall. Then the world changed. In November 2008, having positioned Vail as the epitome of luxury, we wished we could take it all back and start over. And we had to start over, because nobody had booked. As the panic of the economic turmoil set in, we needed to re-engage with customers and resuscitate the idea of taking a ski vacation.

This year, we knew we had to move out of the long-lead magazines and into online media tools and social media that allow us to adapt to changing conditions, to reach customers with the right message just when they are ready to receive it.

For the future, the key will be learning which media strategies are really effective, and which are merely entertaining and interesting. Our marketing folks have been tracking everything we do, measuring clicks, views and, most importantly, revenue, using Omniture. This has helped us to direct our resources-money, but also our staff's time-toward the ones that are generating results. We're even experimenting with tracking revenue generated by a few employees' personal accounts; one Twitter account generated over $1,000 in online revenue in a week. I suppose some sort of incentive plan will be proposed next.

This is a big topic we all need to understand. I suppose I should probably start participating, too, before I become extinct.

-Chris Jarnot, SVP/COO Vail Mountain