The Park City Mountain Resort blog that I helped to launch, and am a contributor to, was reviewed today by social media guru Mack Collier as part of his Company Blog Checkup series and I’m happy to say that we did came out pretty darn good! Of course, I wish we could have aced the “check up,” but I knew that our blog could use some improvement and also that I’m not always the one to see the changes that could or should be made. Here’s the summary that Mack gave us:
Content: 27 (Out of a possible 35) – I like how the blog is currently positioned to cover the current slope conditions. I would like to see more videos as I think these are also a promotional vehicle for the resort.
Comments: 31 (Out of a possible 35) – Very active comments section. I’m not completely sold on bloggers replying directly to each comment in the comment, but the sheer volume of comments from the readers, and the promptness of replies from the bloggers, is impressive.
Posting Schedule: 8 (Out of a possible 15) – Looks to be decent now, but big gaps in the offseason, would try to work on closing those.
Sidebars: 10 (Out of a possible 15) – Pics of the bloggers at top of blog makes this score. Also like the weather-related links.
Total Score: 76 (Out of a possible 100)
The rest of the post is very informative too and has given me some great ideas for continuing to evolve and improve our blog.
It’s well worth mentioning that the reason Mack reviewed our blog, was because of a referral from his friend Sean Howard, who had written a post called The Role of Messy in Social Media on the MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog on which I had left a comment. Sean looked up our blog, thought that Mack might like to review it, and was kind enough to pass along a note which got the ball rolling. This just affirms what I’ve been learning about social media and the people that participate in it – they’re really cool!
Resort Marketing - Don't Forget, It's All About Fun! 
Congrats on the good review. The PC blog contains very useful information and good content, certainly two keys to developing a successful blog.
The multiple bloggers/writters, twitter updates and tone of the blog are great. Nice work.
Are you beginning to see some actionable results or success from the blog?
Troy
Interesting site and cool review. If you want to up that Content score you should consider adding a Park City snow report to your blog. OnTheSnow.com has the most up-to-date and accurate snow-reports for more than 2,00 resorts (including Park City) around the world.
Here’s the link to where you can download a widget (flash or RSS) that you can add to your site: http://mountainnews.com/
Here’s the link to their Park City page: http://www.onthesnow.com/utah/park-city-mountain-resort/skireport.html
@Paul – As I’m just with the basic WordPress hosted account for now, I don’t know that I can add that widget. I will take a look this weekend. And yep, it is extremely timely and accurate content that comes directly from our snow reporters – I know, because I train them on it every year (and then get out of the way – no ‘marketing’ bias here)!
Thanks!
@Troy -thanks, it feel good to know that our efforts are going in the right direction. And as you can tell, I do really like the multiple voices on it too.
We’ve been remiss in not setting solid targets for the blog in terms of traffic and comments. But, we have definitely seen marked increases in visitors and in comments in each of the three years that we have been blogging.
Hey Eric,
I would agree about not setting solid targets. Until you can understand the aspects and consumer interactions of the blog, it is difficult and possibly restricting to say we want X traffic to the site for 2008.
But, it does sound like the blog is moving in a positive direction, which is great news and answers my question.
Keep up the good work.
Troy
@Troy – Thanks! We’re getting some interesting and positive feedback from ‘higher ups’ regarding our blog too.
Hey Eric,
Thanks for the link and call-out.
And keep that chin up, your blog did better than the majority I’ve seen Mack review and we’re speaking about big brands with very large budgets generally. You guys are doing a kick ass job and it’s awesome to see it pay off.
And you are right. The real power of social media is in the word “social”. It’s about connecting with people we value and respect. And from that we can hope to gain new friends, new insights and new connections.
@ Sean Howard – I appreciate the kind words and I can assure you that I took Mack’s review as very constructive (and well informed) criticism, something that I value greatly and seem to find a lot in the world of social media.
Thank you once more for the referral to Mack and I will certainly be keeping in touch with both of you!