Monthly Archives: March 2008

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Spring in Lake Tahoe is one of my favorite seasons. Snow still blankets the mountains of the Sierras, and the lower elevation rivers rise as the days grow longer and warmer. It is this time of year that I find myself having to make the difficult decision of skiing vs kayaking.

As I prepare for an upcoming California road trip, I can tell you that the gear I am planning on taking is getting a bit overwhelming. Just thinking about trying to fit it all into a little biodiesel powered VW TDI has me wondering if I need a semi-truck.

No matter what the weather dictates, I inevitably find myself catching up on whitewater community sites like boof.com and americanwhitewater.org, as well as looking through old kayaking photos to remind myself that I still know how to boat. Here is a little slideshow  of some kayaking” I have accumulated from years past. Can you tell which ones I took with an old 35mm camera and slide film and then scanned?

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Social Media for Ski Resorts

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Anyone that knows me or visits this blog from time to time has a pretty good inclination that I like to ski. Fortunately for me, I also get involved with a certain amount of ski resort marketing as part of my job. One resort in particular that I work closely with is Heavenly Mountain Resort.

Heavenly has a great team of individuals over there who are busy pushing out a lot of great content in the form of blog posts, Flickr photos, and video. Why? To bring as much of the mountain experience to you as possible. I can tell you that it works, and if you want some more education as to why it works you can read this post and the post it links to as well.

Another cool example of social media comes from another one of my favorite Lake Tahoe ski resorts – Alpine Meadows. They have put together a really cool social media page that lays out all of the various places you can interact with them. Sites include:

Why so many? Because people are individuals with individual preferences. They want to learn, experience, and interact with a brand in the channel they see fit and enjoy the most. Alpine and Heavenly are simply doing their best to satisfy those preferences, as well as understand their customers better. They will probably add more, for there are more.

You can find me on all of these sites. Unfortunately, I can’t be on the hill all the time, but the next best thing is hopping online to interact with the mountain, finding out what is going on, and getting stoked for the next time. The social media tools these two ski resorts are making use of help me do it.

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Fancy Fingering

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In my last blog post I took the liberty of complaining about my irregular writing schedule of late and the significance, or insignificance, of it. Some of you called me to task in the comments, while others preferred to bring it up in private with me. Either way, it got me thinking.

If I could get this Chinese woman to quit her day job at Epcot, maybe she could do dictation for me? I bet she can type faster than me, and it would certainly make my life easier when it came to regular blog postings.

Actually, I remember sitting there filming her, watching her hands, and I began to consider all of the tourists around her and the fairly faux surroundings. I wondered if she ever imagined as a young woman that this is where her talent would be directed? She captivated me for a moment, and then I went out and bought something plastic. Then I returned and realized that she was creating greater awareness about her culture, and it was up to those that wanted to listen and feel it; or not.

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Who Gives a Damn?

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My frequency of blog posts has been utterly pathetic as of late.

It is not like I haven’t been getting out and about. In fact, in the past three weeks I have surfed in Sebastian, Florida, attended an art show and an oyster roast in Charleston, South Carolina, and worked and skied in Reno-Tahoe.

Certainly plenty to write about.

In fact, as I type I am getting ready to leave for Salt Lake City in the morning for additional work related activities, as well as some long overdue skiing in the Wasatch Mountains with good friends.

Still, that is little excuse for not writing.

Maybe it is because I am often busy allocating words to my company’s blog, press releases, web copy, marketing plans, and magazine articles?

I suspect that still doesn’t warrant my flagrant inattention to my own personal pursuits.

Or, is it because I don’t think you really give a damn about all of that, and believe you’d rather poke your eyes out with a burning stick than read all this nonsense about how I think I am significant to anything meaningful in your life?

Instead, how about a ski picture I took in Tahoe on Saturday while backcountry skiing? Yes, that’s better…

NoName2

Professional

Ski Resort Marketing

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In order to truly understand a brand it helps to experience it firsthand.

HeavenlySnowboarder When we at Twelve Horses are not busy geeking out on the web, many of us here are charging hard somewhere in the outdoors. Whether it is around Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada range that rise above our Reno office, or the Wasatch Mountains that tower above our Salt Lake City location, a common means of experiencing these environs is on a pair of skis or a snowboard. Come visit us and you’ll find that the last powder day is a common conversation around the water cooler. Even as I type this blog post apres ski session, I am looking out across big, beautiful, snow-laced Lake Tahoe and looking forward to the next time.

This company culture is undoubtedly a major contributing factor as to why we service so many destination and sports marketing clients. Passion for these pursuits permeate our client work and online marketing endeavors such as brand building, web design and development, email and multi-channel marketing, social marketing, and search engine optimization. It works well because we are marketers and technologists that are a part of the target snow sport audience. 

When I came across this blog post titled, Seasonal SEO and Online Marketing for Ski Resorts, I couldn’t resist beating our own drum. Not only is it an informative and well-written post on online marketing for ski resorts, but it also touches upon one of our clients that we have serviced for more than 12 years – Heavenly Mountain Resort. It is a great compliment, but it also gives you a window into what we have been doing for them. Here is an excerpt.

Heavenly Resort in Lake Tahoe is perhaps the best example of a ski resort with an effective online marketing strategy. They are relatively well optimised for search and have good visibility in the search results. They have developed a MySpace profile and their website offers a range of initiatives including videos, daily podcasts and RSS feeds for their interactive blog, mountain condition updates and their own TV show.

Our work for Heavenly has also garnered several awards including a Web Award, ADDY, and California Travel & Tourism Award, and this success stems from a well-designed website that relies on the right online tools to reach and resonate with a global customer base. But I also believes that it comes from a deep and personal understanding of their brand.

See you on the hill!

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