Social media allows for communication between persons, groups, and organizations. These communications are generally either peer to peer or business to consumer (and consumer to business). Facebook has been (willfully and profitably) co-opted for commercial purposes and is a hybrid of these two frameworks: peer to peer communication combined with opt in advertising which is also shared with friends whether they opted in or not. From a marketing perspective, it is the best dodge of the CAN-SPAM Act available. Facebook has become the ultimate buzz generator for business to consumer communications.

Ten years ago, a company or organization was not legit without a web page. Now you are not legit without a Facebook Fan Page. Ski Areas on the cutting edge are blogging and tweeting. Lift status updates, snow conditions, and accumulations are reported real time in text, photos, and video.

Before these impressive communication developments, skiers had to read newspaper updates, call snow phones, or watch Weather Channel Ski Reports (none of which were in depth nor could be trusted). Now skiers and riders read forums, blogs, or social network feeds to see accurate conditions in real time. Ware the resort that fluffs a report which is contradicted by multiple live reports from skiers and riders on the mountain. Total buzz kill.

Going Viral

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Northeast Ski Blogger Summit was the continual references to and discussions about internet memes. Well known internet personalities become discussion center pieces. The cumulative networked connections of the group was astounding.

A world record for GoPro jokes was set during the Blogger Summit. How could one skier’s clumsy tumble generate so much shared experience? I recently read that viral prominence is directly related to the perception of something being astonishing and inexplicable.

Such experiences become the equivalent of the television and radio shared experience. Now we have non-synchronous yet shared social media experiences. Socially networked yet completely disconnected. If we are networked into a given community, it is only a matter of time before we experience the viral highlights of that community.

Social Advocacy

Social networking has became the great equalizer of lesser known areas. Static web sites merely elevated such areas from completely unknown to lesser known status. Their names appeared on destination maps and snow reports but they still lacked recognition and serious consideration from most skiers and riders.

Enter online advocacy through social networking. Whether through forums, blogs, or Facebook, suddenly there was a mammoth soapbox for any online personality to scream from and advocate for their favorite ski area.

Today’s most successful and well known skiing social advocacy project is Save Magic Mountain. Many Magic fans were already beating the drum and fanning the flames of interest when Magic was even lesser known.

My strong feelings for lesser known old school areas is well known to long time readers. I often give detailed and glowing write ups (in lieu of standard trip reports) when visiting such areas for the first time. Almost ten years ago, I began detailing areas such as Burke Mountain, Ragged Mountain, and Black Mountain (NH). My recent advocation of lesser known areas has been less direct yet still full of intent (Mount Abram and Balsams Wilderness are two recent examples). The features on Harvey Road Magazine suggest that TheSnowWay.com is not alone in its advocacy stance on lesser known areas.

Once a given internet personality or media source has been established as a known, trusted, and unbiased source, other like minded skiers and riders listen. It is a strange power being able to influence skier visits in such a way. I hope my advocacy of such areas throughout the past decade has been helpful both to struggling areas and those interested in discovering new adventures off the beaten path.

Buzz

Word of mouth has always been important from a business perspective. But historically, word of mouth was only between friends. Or perhaps occasionally extending to friends of friends. Old media fluff pieces drove the word of mouth agenda. Now, I post a trip report to a lesser known area like the Balsams Wilderness and it gets 250 views in a month.

These reports stay online, are shared, are continue to generate buzz long after the post date. My blog is small scale yet articles several years old still receive thousands of reads per year. When you start considering the views that larger forums generate, it is difficult to fathom exactly how many people are considering your words and formulating resulting opinions of their own.

A simple post can become a nationwide reference point. Do a Google Search for Fischer Atua and you’ll find my review has an astonishingly high search result. Search for untracked all day at jay peak (without quotes, even) and you’d think I had the phrase trademarked. My Balsams Wilderness trip report is one of the first non-commercial search results. Both my Middlebury College Snow Bowl and Mount Abram trip reports have fairly high results. This is creating buzz. People are reading about new places and then trying them out.

Blogging has enormous power to influence others while social networks have the capability to aggregate such posts for wider distribution. Both create the kind of buzz that money can’t buy. It is why blogging and online presence are important and relevant despite apparent trivial uselessness.