Your website doesn’t change much, so there isn’t much reason for locals to keep visiting, but you always have offers there you want skiers and riders to see. A great way to get people coming back to your site over and over again is through your blog. Sadly, however, most resort blogs I’ve seen only cover basic news and updates. These can be great, but blogs can be so much more.
Over the last few years, I’ve been doing a fair amount of blog posting and even more blog reading. Here are 6 things I’ve found and noticed that your resort can blog about to drive visitors to your site over and over again, especially if you use your social media outlets (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) to promote each post.
1) Stories
Find people on facebook/twitter who mention your resort and let them tell their “epic” story. They’ll spread it like wildfire. Stories are the best testimonial a resort could ever have. When you tell stories, use Facebook and Twitter tags alike in your promotion. This gets people the story is about to tell their friends about it, and encourages others to share their stories as well with the hope of getting their name up in lights.
2) Riding Tips
Tips about riding, waxing boards and skis for snow conditions, etc. Give valuable information from talented people that work at the resort like ski techs, instructors, patrolmen, etc. If these are videos, you can also post them on YouTube for additional exposure and simply embed them in the blog post.
3) Resort History, How it All Happened
We all have a soft spot for entrepreneurial success, especially when it’s related to some part of our life; like our favorite ski resort. Tell the story of how your resort came to be and who played a part. Spread it out, conduct a few interviews, and you’ll have some killer blog content.
4) Video / Photo Contests
Photo and video contests are a great way to create/gather user generated content and if users get to vote they’ll send their friends over and over again to the site. Don’t forget to post these to Facebook and tag the photographers so that the pictures and your album show up on dozens of Facebook walls.
5) Resort Tips
Give tips on secret stashes, when to get the best groomers, where to go if you want good tree skiing, etc. Give them reasons to come back to the resort and find the stashes you are blogging about.
6) Fun Stuff / Trivia
Anything where the winner gets a prize. Contests like this make people want to pay attention to your blog. The prizes can be small like a free t-shirt or bigger like a free day pass. Doing this at set patterns (like weekly) and labeling the contest as such help keep people coming back as well.
What am I missing? Share your favorite things to blog about in the comments section below…
About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010
with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider
Inntopia,
my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley,
and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.
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