Fans >> Engagement >> Sharing

That’s the best way i can describe ski industry’s social media progression over the past 2+ years. It started with a focus solely on fans. Then, as EdgeRank became more of an issue and fan growth slowed, engagement came into focus. The next step I’m picking up is sharing. It’s getting other people to talk about your content.

This includes influencer marketing, encouraging shares, and a long list of other tactics that puts others’ avatars beside content about your resort.

Many resorts are already rocking this, but while the industry as a whole begins to transition, I think it’s important to remember who you are going to reach and who you will miss.

The Difference
When you look at your Facebook Insights, you get a pretty solid idea of who you fans are in terms of age, gender, location, etc. But that’s just your fans. But well over half of your resort guests don’t follow you on Facebook or Twitter, so what about everyone else?

That was the focus on this week’s Stash over on Ryan Solutions. Instead of fans, we looked at guests. Specifically, the age of guests.

Instead of simply asking “are you on social media”, we asked, “are you active on social media.” Many more people have accounts than actually use them regularly. We wanted to see who could potentially be reached on social media beyond the typical fan page posts.

The key here is the obvious one. Above the age of 45, a guest is more likely to not be active on social media. Above 65 and only 25% consider themselves active users of the technology.

Don’t Forget
Social media is good at a lot of things, but one thing it’s not the best at is reaching some of those more valuable guests. It’s not that you can’t reach the ones that are using social, it’s simply a matter of adjusting your expectations around the fact that 75% of them won’t ever have a chance to see your messages.

Social media can reach people in ways we could never have imagined 10 years ago, but don’t forget that half of your guests still aren’t actively using it.

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.