Content marketing is a big part of what many resort marketers do.

Some of that content is incredibly high-end video work that captures seasons-long projects or events. Other content is as simple as snapping a quick photo outside the office and posting it to your social channel of choice.

But the piece of the equation that is always relevant is the time it takes to create that content. Which is important on a few levels.

Level 1: More Time, More Value
I’ve talked before about the ROI of individual piece of content and how low-cost content makes it easier to come out on top.

Level 2: More Time, More Quality
But it’s also true that, typically, better content takes more time to create. The thing that changes, however, is the risk/reward. Nail great content, big win. Fail at small content, tiny loss. And everything in between.

Level 3: Sell vs Entertain
Even deeper, however, you also are calculating how hard to sell or promote yourself (give value to you) vs how much you want to entertain the audience (give value to the audience).

These are all questions we ask when we create content, but there’s another thing that ties this all together.

The Thread and Opportunity

The best definition I have for a story is this: Stories give things more meaning. A video series about the construction of a new lift gives more meaning to the moment someone rides it for the first time. A story about the risks taken by the founders to start the resort give the name and brand more meaning.

Here’s the key point, though: the story doesn’t have to be about you to give your story more meaning.

An Example
For example, your mountain is covered in trillions (if not more) snowflakes. These flakes are magical and somewhat mysterious. There is a man, however, who has studied snowflakes so extensively he can create (almost) identical flakes in a lab and grow them into the exact shapes he wants.

And this morning, Veritasium published an extremely well-made video about this man’s research and the science behind snowflakes.

Think about what we have here:

• A very well made video
• Extremely high entertainment value
• Gives fresh meaning to a huge part of your mountain
• Only gives value to the user

The kicker? In this content-creation equation, there is no time cost to you. So even if the benefit is miniscule, you can still come out on top.

What If

But what if you added your face to this story by building on what Derek (Veritasium) has created. Interestingly, there’s one more character in the story of every piece of content. There’s:

• The subject of the story
• The creator of the story
• The sharer of the story

Derek made the amazing content, all you’d have to do is write a blog post about how much you love it, embed it inside, and share that with your audience to put your brand into the question and get a chunk of the value with very little time spent.

What angle would you take or what would that post look like? Well, reread this post because what I describe above is exactly what I just did.

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.