“Even if his day job isn’t slope side this season, the ski industry knows Alex and Alex knows the ski industry. You can also find him rocking the content at Ski The East and sharing insights you wish you thought of first in the comments on SlopeFillers. For more info on Alex, click here.”

A while back Gregg did a fine post about the ROI challenges of resort produced videos for small to medium size ski areas. Many of these mountains struggle with either lots of time and energy spent on videos that get little viewership, or end up with difficult to watch choppy vids with wind tunnel audio that leave viewers underwhelmed. Neither option seems like a winner.

The Problem
Thankfully deep powder trumps all. If you’ve got falling snow, you usually can’t go wrong in videoland, but alas we don’t always have that message to lean on.

How to feed the never ending consumption of video content in an effective way if you’re slim on resources and time? There’s the user-generated stream that you can encourage, but 90% of it will suck thanks to POV cameras. It’s worth harnessing, but not really a strategic solution if you want to stand out.

The Solution
A potential solution? Quick clips that either embarrass people in ways that they enjoy/endorse the process, or bringing people “behind the curtain”.

This takes a bit more creativity and commitment, but the time/money investment is low and expectations are kept down ensuring it won’t dilute whatever you think your brand is about (hint – what other people think of you is your brand anyway). It also shares far better on social media than your brochure turned into a video or your daily snow report read aloud (short of deep pow). Keep ‘em all under 30 seconds.

Need more guidance? Get a recurring theme that will deliver a different result every time (not knowing what to expect pushes viewership). The recurring theme helps to create momentum and allows for simpler promotion and buzz building. Open or end each video with the same two second slate (logo, web, silly audio, etc).  Then.. Go. To. Town. Weekly or so.

Making it Happen
Here’s a short list of 10 themes you could embrace and run with all year with very little investment and capture when you are out taking photos anyway. All you need is a slightly extroverted camera toter. These themes will convey that your mountain is fun, approachable and interactive while giving folks the chance to press play, share, participate, laugh, etc. You know, most of what those big and fancy videos do. You might also up your chance of catching something that goes viral. Every mountain has a different list to consider.

All should be less than 30 seconds with no editing other than the intro or outro.

• Off the cuff weather forecast (by guest) given from the après ski bar
• A weekly _________ eating contest.
• A weekly handstand contest in ski boots (winner gets hot chocolate?)
• Take a group photo or group song anthem video weekly on Saturday at 2pm with as many people want to be in it. Encourage signs. Think fb tagging.
• 30 second hangouts in the repair shop
• Read aloud (from the chair) a “guest feedback of the week” with the name removed
• Inspect/model what’s in the lost and found
• Have guests finish the sentence “If I owned this place I’d:……..” Self-deprecation works. Side benefit is showing wide opinions. GM does their version monthly.
• Weekly “how not to park” with a light-hearted example
• Meet the mountain – 30 secs meeting a random team member. Less viral but good for morale.

Bottom line, capture the “slices of life” that Joe Public might find interesting, not what would fit nicely in your brochure. That is, if you want people to watch your video and be entertained by and exposed to your bootstrapping ski area. Your boss not comfortable with this quite yet? Maybe this post can assist.

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.