I typically focus on a generic, one-size-fits-all approach to many of my posts. This week, I’ll be focusing more on the smaller mountains and sharing some insights and ideas specific to them. It doesn’t mean you big guys can’t benefit, but I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for the little guys.

Should your mid-sized resort have a blog: yes*.

But if the answer is that simple, what’s up with the asterisk? Like all things, there are conditions for such a simple answer. Should I run a marathon tomorrow? Yes*. (* conditional upon a low IQ and no need to walk for the next five days). Make sense?

So what are requirements that make blogging a good idea for your mid-sized resort? What a marvelous question.

How good of a salesman is your website?
Now, blogs are good at a few things, but the main benefit I’ve always enjoyed is the extra traffic they generate for your site. Actually, let me put that another way. Blogging gives you an excuse to send people to your site. As is, your site is static. There’s little reason for people to return. Blogs change that.

So the first condition comes in the form of a response to this question: what good would doubled website traffic do for your bottom line?

If you can’t answer that, blogging may need to wait. Like fixing leaks in a bucket, you need to take care of any issues on your site that are hindering conversions before pouring more water (traffic) in. Once visitors are doing what you want them to can you justify efforts to get more of them.

What should you blog about?
Another great question. The answer: whatever* you want!

Yes, another asterisk because, though you can blog about anything, remember that this is an excuse to generate traffic. Think about where you currently send your fans, followers, subscribers, and guests and then try to replace those locations with your own. This is especially true for the links you share on Twitter. For example:

TWITTER PHOTOS
Viewing a photo you share on Twitter requires a click. As long as they have to go somewhere else to view it (Twitter pictures, TwitPic, Facebook, etc.), why not get them on your turn by hosting your photos on your blog? Instead of seeing Facebook ads or TwitPic banners, they’ll see your offers, your content, and your calls-to-action.

YOUTUBE VIDEOS
Same goes for YouTube videos that you’ve either created or simply want to share. Why send your precious followers to YouTube when you can embed the video into a blog posts and send them to your site? Even Utah’s most popular news source – KSL – has capitalized on this with a “have you seen this” article with the day’s most viral video embedded in the page. It generates huge amounts of traffic for them.

EVENTS/NEWS/ETC
The local news writes about an event and you send your followers to their site for the coverage. Why not write a quick recap on the blog with a “link for more info” pointing to the news site? Gets people to your site and starts to establish you as a good source of info.

But those are just the tip of the iceberg. When you focus the type of content you create, you can become the go-to-source for content about that niche. Want to become the go-to source for ski vacations in Utah’s Ogden Valley? Look for complementary businesses that have solid social media reach and interview them. There’s nothing like positive coverage about a business that gets them to promote the heck out of it.

But, Gregg, what about…?
“But Gregg, what about our GM blogging? That’s not meant to generate traffic, that’s more of branding…heck, you even wrote a post about about it!” Yes, yes I did. And guess what a good GM blog is great at doing? Generating traffic.

That’s why I qualified the start of this post with the fact that blogs are good at a “few things”. The common byproduct of all great blogs, no matter what the goal, is increased traffic. Unless you get your site converting well, you’re wasting a valuable resource your blogging efforts are generating.

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.