Social media and I have had an interesting relationship with each other.

It gave me a huge boost early in the days of SlopeFillers, but in recent years it’s choked my creativity and caused more problems than it’s solved for me and my daily work.

But one thing I still love about social media is the ability to follow trends. Not in the trends sidebar, mind you, but just the patterns that emerge within my followers and the audiences I’m part of.

Just…Ask
For a long time those patterns were typically identified from consistently watching my feed and Twitter lists (where I segment the people I follow by resorts, marketers, etc.).

But lately I’ve been taking a break from feeds. Still curious, I started to ask some random questions:

Quick poll out of curiosity. Whether on mobile or desktop, how often do you enable dark mode if the app you're using supports it?

— Gregg Blanchard (@slopefillers) April 8, 2021

Another curiosity question while I'm at it. When you click "Contact Us" on a website, which of these options are you typically hoping to find?

— Gregg Blanchard (@slopefillers) April 9, 2021

Been enjoying these lately, so another quick curiosity poll: So far in 2021, what has your personal social media use looked like?

— Gregg Blanchard (@slopefillers) April 19, 2021

Now, I often do a big, in-depth survey of all SlopeFillers readers, but these little polls have been not only extremely insightful, but a really fun way to quantify some of the ideas and behaviors we share (or don’t share).

It’s become one of my favorite ways to use Twitter.

Room for Resorts?
Resorts do a lot of surveying, but I wonder if there’s a place for smaller, lighter, more engaging questions on places like Twitter. Instead of thinking them as polls that may or may not have a great thread or purpose, think of them as a larger marketing survey just broken up into a series of micro-surveys.

Questions that may shed some light into tactics or resort experiences. Questions like:

• What is your favorite type of resort swag to get for free? Hat, Shirt, Stickers, Other (Comment below)
• How many days did you ski this year? 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 30+
• Do you follow any of our other social accounts? Yes, definitely. No, just here. I think so, but not sure. I don’t think so, but not sure.
• Which is your favorite kind of social media content? Photos, Videos, Polls, Plain Text

Do enough of these and, comparing them to your analytics and reports, you might start to learn some interesting things about your audience while giving them another way to engage with you along the way.

Food for thought.

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.