Slalom Ski Industry Fans, Followers and Subscribers

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Facebook Fans, Twitter Followers and YouTube Subscribers

My previous post of this series showed you how Radar Skis had 36% of the slalom ski industry Facebook Fans, Twitter Followers and YouTube Subscribers. Today I’ll break it down further to show you how well each brand is doing within each of these social media platforms.

For many businesses, the fear behind their social media reluctance isn't just fear of failure but of blame and accountability
- both individual and collective.
JAY BAER & AMBER NASLUND | AUTHORS OF THE NOW REVOLUTION!

FACEBOOK:

UPDATE Aug 21, 2012: Revised graph & data with new Facebook Page #s for Radar Skis

The Facebook Fans graph above compares each brands total Facebook Fans to the combined total of all brands Facebook Fans and shown as a percentage. Radar Skis is a clear winner with more Fans than HO and way more than the other 5 brands combined. This is impressive since Radar’s 39% doesn’t include any of their Ronix wakeboard fans. This is also impressive since O’Brien’s Facebook percentage does include their wakeboard products in the chart above.

Compared to their competitors, HO’s Facebook Page is more active for a number of reasons.  You can see from the screenshot above that 198 of their 3381 fans are “talking about this” which is almost 6%.  This is an indication that they are consistently posting new content that their fans find interesting. You can also see that they have some good apps setup including a contest to win HO Skis Gear as well as check out photos, video and their Twitter Feed.  They also used great images for their top level apps which encourages interaction.  HO has done a great job of taking the marketing knowledge they successfully use with Hyperlite in their race with Liquid Force and Ronix wakeboards to create more fan engagement than the others in this group.

AM Skis is the newest brand in the slalom market and is certainly one to watch since they are growing their presence quickly considering they officially launched their business just two months ago. They are direct competitors with D3 and Goode and with a little effort could easily overtake both brands on Facebook.  They have 13 of their 137 fans “talking about them” which is a little more than 9% engagement.

Some suggestions for AM SKIS:

1. Change the cover photo.  Current Facebook rules specifically say not to include a URL or any call to action within the cover photo.  Facebook will delete your page at some point in the near future and without warning. Lots of other brands are also breaking rules, but many pages have already been deleted too. Radar Skis became victom of Facebook rules and lost thousands of fans. AM Skis should change their cover image to a striking action photo and then update it once every week or two to keep fans coming back.
2. They should also take a hard look at HO Skis page to see how they get their fans to post and like new content.
3. AM Skis should add some new apps.  They certainly must have video and photos to get fans excited about their new skis.
4. Run a new contest every week of the summer to encourage fan engagement. The prize doesn’t have to be expensive to be successful.  How about an Andy Mapple autographed prize?

TWITTER:

Twitter is another great platform for the slalom ski market to quickly blast out news about products and what their sponsored athletes are up to. The key to growth in Twitter followers is to talk 90% about the slalom industry and only 10% about themselves.  It is also critical to post to Twitter daily and with multiple tweets per day. Most of this group has not figured this out. In fact only HO and Radar skis use Twitter effectively.  Most of the other brands rarely even send tweets yet people still want to follow them in hopes they eventually say something.  This entire group can also grow their Twitter followers by just following some of them back.  Remember that the ideal ratio is to follow at least as many as you have followers.  You’ll grow even faster if you try to follow a little more than your total number of followers.  Also re-tweeting others is very effective too.

Radar and HO Skis have about the same number of Twitter Followers, but I give the edge to Radar Skis for a few reasons.  Radar sends tweets much more often and has sent nearly 3 times the number of tweets HO has. Both brands should try to increase their following number which will help build their followers faster.  A larger number of followers increases the chance that tweets sent are seen by more followers which also increases the chance for tweets to be retweeted.

YouTube:

YouTube is a natural for any sporting goods company since you can bring your brand to life for your subscribers. But just like Facebook, to grow your subscriber base requires consistently adding new videos. A great example of consistently adding video and receiving subscriber results is Goode Skis. They have more subscribers than O’Brien and Connelly combined, as well as more than HO or RADAR Skis who both make many more products than Goode does.

YouTube can generate lots of brand exposure with a little creative content and some basic SEO and promotion. Goode Skis leads the YouTube race compared to the other ski brands because they post new videos more often than the other ski brands, plus their videos are more interesting than their competition based on the number of views each of their videos have. Goode posted a video just two weeks ago covering Regina Jaquess's recent World Slalom Record which has received almost 5500 views.

The entire ski industry could achieve better results by posting optimized videos more often than once per month. Below is O'Brien Skis YouTube Channel which could be dramatically improved upon by posting more often and shooting more interesting products. Throw in some SEO and O'Brien could easily be leading the pack.  Currently O'Brien has more videos posted than Goode Skis yet has a quarter as many subscribers and only half as many viewed videos. The entire ski industry should look at their wakeboard brands for guidance. Hint: Liquid Force!!

A solid social media strategy can be an extremely useful and affordable way to promote brand content.  There are lots of tools available to thoroughly analyze Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but for the purpose of my study of who is the best internet marketing brand we will keep it simple with the results shown above.

My next posts for the slalom ski industry series will review website design and search engine optimization. Also look for new posts for the wakeboard industry and the wakeboard boat industry, followed by many more action sports industry brands. Stay tuned. Any guesses who will be the top brand for internet marketing?