NOTE: For our chapter's November club meeting, we traveled to Roundtop Mountain Resort to meet Lutricia Eberly and her social media team. While we munched on fabulous brick oven pizzas, buffalo chicken dip, and other assorted goodies in the Fireside Pub and Grill, Lutricia explained how she landed in her current position, and how she engages with her audience on the slopes.

Social Media at Roundtop has been a grassroots effort born out of my passion for Facebook, and has expanded to cover several platforms.  In my 5^th winter at Roundtop, I increased my responsibilities to include Marketing Assistant and asked for permission to start a Facebook page for the resort simply because I personally enjoyed Facebook and I love snow.  Permission was granted and that first season I had a lot of fun sharing my passion for snow with others.

At the end of the season, I was offered a full-time, year-round position as Director of Sales and Events.  My responsibilities include creating an outward bound sales effort, planning resort events, coordinating representation of Roundtop away from the mountain, and social media.

On the social media side of my responsibilities, I engage daily with Roundtop fans on Facebook, respond regularly on Twitter, post occasionally on our blog (when I need more than 140 characters to talk about something), and recently created a Google+ Page. 

According to SlopeFillers (a ski resort marketing blog), Roundtop’s Facebook page ranks #4 in the state of PA (15 resorts total), #9 in the region (40 resorts total), and #92 in North America (431 resorts total)!  On Twitter Roundtop is #6 in the state and #12 in the region.

Ski resorts have a reputation for inflating information on their websites– such as the amount of snow on the ground, or the quality of conditions.  Facebook, for all ski areas, offers a reality check.  If I’m personally not at the mountain, I invite other fans to chime in to answer questions about conditions.  I won’t answer a question just to blow smoke and make us look awesome. 

Last spring when I was planning a personal trip to Utah, I posted on Facebook saying, “This Facebook commentator is planning a trip to Utah. What resorts are your favorite?”  Then while I was in Utah I posted “Bluebird skies in Utah, what does it look like back in PA?” 

I’m personally friends with several of Roundtop’s ski and snowboard instructors and they’ve gotten used to sharing stories about their experiences with me, or uploading photos from their lessons to Facebook. All of this helps to lend to the personal touch of our online community. 

Two years ago we had a photo contest all winter.  Each week we announced different subject matter (such as best photo of a class lesson, best photo of a lift operator, best photo of tubing, best photo of sunset, etc) and awarded an 8 hour lift ticket at random to one person who uploaded.

Most people I correspond with on Twitter as Roundtop were tweeting about their experience, or conversing with a friend.  My acknowledgement of their tweet is typically their first realization that we’re on Twitter and usually results in an exchange of tweets.

Facebook is an ideal platform for us to extend the on-mountain fun and it’s worked well for us in the 3 years we’ve resided at www.facebook.com/RoundtopMountain

Have you interacted with Roundtop on Facebook or Twitter before?  What have you noticed/observed about the others who are engaging with us? - Lutricia Eberly