Trends Q: What are ski resort social media followers most influential about?

As we continue to build out our new social CRM tool, we can’t help but get excited about the things resorts are able to learn about their guests. One of those unique insights is topics that a social media user is influential about. So, what are the most common interests and themes among ski resort followers? Take a look.

The Goods
For this analysis we took a random sample of just under 8,000 twitter followers of North American resorts. To find topics we used Klout.

Klout scores social media users based on what they call influence. Besides a score, each user is also matched to the topics Klout’s algorithm thinks they are most influential about. Though some debate whether influence is the right word, the basic premise is themes a user’s followers interact with them about most. This ends up as an intersection between what a user talks about, is interested in, as well as what their circles talk about and are interested in.

Here’s how it looks:

What’s perhaps most interesting on first glance is where skiing sits at #8. This is below music, television, and movies and serves as perhaps a reminder of where skiing lies in most skiers’ priority lists. Going down the chart we see indicators of everything from major ski markets (Boston, Vancouver, Colorado, etc.) to other sports (like baseball, football, and hockey).

Keep in mind, this was a completely random sample of resort followers, so the fact that Whistler shows up twice says something about the brand they’ve built.

What This Means
There are a many takaways from this analysis, but let’s quickly explore two. First, is what your guests are most influential about besides ski related topics. Music, television, movies, and journalism aren’t necessarily competition for time on the snow. Rather, they are channels to broadcast messages are reach your skiers. Same goes for sports.

The second point is the style of your marketing communication. Looking for new content? Well, 3% of followers were influential about trivia. Wondering how to package your snow report? Over 4% were influential about comedy. Or even beyond that, want to get your community involved and come up with new ideas with one stone? About 2.5% of guests are influential about marketing. The more we learn about resort guests, the better we can reach them.

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