Owning Social Media as a Ski Resort

Every cohort or sector has a unique advantage when it comes to marketing, and it's important to play that to your advantage. Ski resorts are no different, so let's take a deep dive into what makes your audience tick.We analyzed the Facebook and Twitter accounts for three ski resorts in Lake Tahoe area, Sierra at Tahoe, Kirkwood, and Northstar. Looking at 117 posts from the past 30-days accounting for a whopping 8,461 likes, we were able to determine which trends have the greatest impact.We'll break it down into 3 sections -- post type, post content, and frequency.

Post Type

In all 6 cases (remember, 3 companies, 2 platforms each), image posts containing hashtags far surpassed any other post type when it came to engagement. People like visuals, especially if those visuals are of snow, and hashtags help with discovery.[caption id="attachment_2491" align="alignnone" width="2602"]

Cloud Campaign's 'Post Type Analysis' for Sierra-at-Tahoe[/caption]In theory, the two donut charts should be nearly identical. The left chart shows the distribution of post types being published, while the chart on the right is the 'likes' earned by each post type.You'll notice the left chart has a relatively small bright green section from about 270° to 300°. But the right chart has a massive bright green section accounting for over 25% of the total likes. This is a post type you want to capitalize on and publish more of. So, what is it?[caption id="attachment_2505" align="alignnone" width="2194"]

Engagement Distribution by Post Type for Sierra-at-Tahoe[/caption]An image post with a short caption and hashtags! This same trend is replicated across both Kirkwood's and Northstar's accounts.

Post Content

Now I'm not saying just any image with a short caption and some hashtags will do the trick. Don't go posting pictures of bananas and get mad at me when only your mom likes the post.Let's take a look at which image posts received the greatest response. To do so, we looked for engagement spikes over the past 30 days.[caption id="attachment_2516" align="alignnone" width="2152"]

Sierra-at-Tahoe's Post Engagement over 30 Days[/caption]80...40... holy smokes! 800likes and 70 shares! What was the picture of??

Ah, fresh snowfall of course! Anticipation of the season quickly approaching got people sharing the post and quickly sky-rocketed engagement, 10x over other posts during that time period.

Let's see if thats also the case for Kirkwood and Northstar.[caption id="attachment_2529" align="alignnone" width="2138"]

Kirkwood's Post Engagement over 30 Days[/caption]10...30... 970likes and 130 shares!?What's the picture of? You guessed it -- early season snow and talk of opening day.

Nothing gets Jerry quite as excited as seeing fresh snowfall for the first time after a long summer. But a key thing that Kirkwood did well here, is sharing a link to buy a season pass.They knew this post would perform well and would be shared by many. By adding a link to the season pass site, they just drove a ton of traffic to a revenue source.For good measure, let's take a look at Northstar's post engagement.[caption id="attachment_2544" align="alignnone" width="2124"]

Northstar's Post Engagement over 30 Days[/caption]For Northstar, the spike is a bit less drastic, but it's still sizeable at 830 likes and 60 shares.

Okay, you're probably bored by now. You get it -- people follow a ski resort to see pictures or in this case, videos of the snow.Knowing this, how can we better engage our audience? How can we be sure to capture every opportunity to gain social media publicity while also getting the chance to ride/ski said fresh snow?Enter Cloud Campaign. Cloud Campaign is a social media management platform that saves brands time and money by scheduling, recommending, and analyzing posts.But what sets it apart is the ability to dynamically trigger posts. What does this mean? It means if it snows more than a couple inches at your ski resort, you can automatically broadcast a powder alert to all of the social media platforms!While you're waiting in line for first chair, Cloud Campaign is busy working away to make sure your followers know to button up their powder skirts, because it's about to be a powder day!After a day in knee deep powder, you can log back onto our platform to sift through the analytics and see how your posts performed.To learn more about Cloud Campaign, head on over to the website or drop me an email at rborn[at]cloudcampaign.io for a demo.Social Media AnalyticsSierra At TahoeFacebook: https://cloudcampaign.io/analytics/fb/80397677330Twitter: https://cloudcampaign.io/analytics/t/15458596KirkwoodFacebook: https://cloudcampaign.io/analytics/fb/71261558252Twitter: https://cloudcampaign.io/analytics/t/27259435NorthstarFacebook: https://cloudcampaign.io/analytics/fb/74373009442Twitter: https://cloudcampaign.io/analytics/t/17844641