Q: How many Facebook fans should a resort like yours have?

Benchmarks. A word you probably know all too well. Benchmarks give you a better idea of where you stand, what to shoot for, and context for your performance. So, with social media a major focus for many resorts, and fan or follower counts a key number marketers are watching, we decided to try to identify a social benchmark by finding an answer to the question, “how many Facebook fans or Twitter followers should I have?”

The Goods
We took current Facebook fan counts, Twitter follower totals, and skier visit averages for 27 resorts. What we were looking for was a ratio: for every X number of skier visits a resort has, about how many fans/followers should they have?

Let’s start with Facebook. The ratio here was about 20:1. in other words, for every 20 annual skier visits, a resort should expect to have 1 fan. This is a ratio of annual averages (skier visits) compared to a growing total (fans), so this doesn’t mean that if 2,000 people visit your resort tomorrow you should expect to see 100 new fans.

Vail Resorts used to release individual resort skier numbers and many local news outlets still do, so we can use a resort like Breckenridge (1,600,000 skier visits, 81,500 fans) to illustrate the almost exact 20:1 ratio.

Now for Twitter. There are about 5 times as many Facebook fans of ski resorts (700,000 Twitter followers vs 3,600,000 Facebook fans), so we expected to see a similar difference in the ration for Twitter which we did. The number here was a little over 100:1. So, if you see 250,000 skier visits each year, you would expect to have about 2,500 followers on Twitter right now.

Another example, Keystone, reports about 1.1 million skier visits. But with 14,500 followers, has an above average follower ratio of 75:1.

What This Means
An important key with this number is that it will change. A ski resort’s skier visits are much more stable than the constant growth of fans and followers (which can reach as high as 10% a month during the winter) which means the ratio will continue to drop.

By definition of a benchmark, these numbers also provide a gauge of where your resort stands. Slightly above or below isn’t much cause for concern, but if the difference between your totals and the benchmark don’t match the resources you’ve put into social media (e.g.: below average may not be disconcerting if you rarely use your accounts), this may be an issue to address.

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