In three sentences, tell us what you do.

Parker headed down after a long-ish day on the mountain. Photo: Andy Earl

I like to think of myself as a professional adventurer. I ride, climb and hike anywhere I can, and I tend to view my world from the receiving side of the lens. I’ve found photography and videography to be the best way for me to share the adventure and satisfaction of a lifetime spent in the outdoors.

Ok, I was talking about what you do at WELD (Special Content Project Manager), but let’s keep going. Got a good metaphor for how being outside makes you feel?

Being outside (particularly in climbing and mountaineering) is a lot like life; there are always obstacles that you encounter regardless of your chosen path. Part of the whole experience is to figure out the best way to overcome those obstacles, and transform those “roadblocks” into “building blocks” for the next experience; so it goes with life.

What makes you trust a brand when it comes to getting outside?

Authenticity is really important for an outdoor brand to push its wares on me. If the catalog looks hokey or staged, I tend to turn away pretty quickly. I’m not saying that every ad needs to be fueled by no-holds-barred-adrenaline-pumping-thrill-rides, but I need to believe that these people care about being outside as much as I do.

What’s your biggest outdoor achievement? Your biggest business one?

Parker (photo) and friends head up the hill in search of the goods.

Biggest outdoor achievement? Sheesh, that’s a tough one. I like to think that everything I’ve achieved so far is just a stepping stone of sorts for what the future holds. I’m pretty pleased with the direction I’ve taken with my snowboarding, and some of the rowdy lines we got in the bag in 2011 with the Wasatch Mountain Podcast. From a business perspective, I guess I was pretty hyped to be featured in a commercial for the new Apple TV. I was in the limelight for approximately 1 1/2 seconds of glory! Haha.

I know you’ve got a secret stash. Time to give up the goods. Where should I go ride?

Shhhh, don’t tell anyone: It’s called Utah. More specifically though, I’d say the Knuckledragger Couloir in American Fork Canyon is about as secretive as it gets. 45 minute snowmobile ride plus 1 1/2 hours of touring into the wilderness area to gain the ridge to this really wicked northeast-facing chute for about 1400 feet of vertical. You can nail that puppy 4 or 5 days after a storm and get nipple-deep Utah champaign every time.

Get right on that. So what drew you to WELD?

WELD has this neat way of embodying in a brand the passion for the outdoors that I’ve always felt. I can’t think of a better place for me to exhaust my energies promoting an active lifestyle.

Where are outdoor sports headed, in your oh-so-humble opinion?

Adventure is the key to the future of the outdoor industry, and you can definitely see it within the action sports brands. Ski and snowboard companies are aligning much more closely with climbing and mountaineering brands because they expect a welding of the sports in a big way. It’s a lot more like it was in the 90′s, and the marketing focus is about getting wild. Sometimes that means getting wild in-bounds, but often it means the backcountry, and I’m glad to be on or near the cutting edge of where things are headed.

With modern furnishings and finish by local craftsmen, the technologically equipped Bellann Conference Room still retains the original 1930's flooring.

Do you like old buildings? State of the art architecture? Environmentally-friendly places?

WELD has that. Coworking fans, rejoice.

If you’re coming from DC to Pittsburgh to New York to, say, Georgia, we’ve got a seriously beautiful, totally bad-ass space for you.

If You Like Old Buildings

For months, the Bellann Building in Oak Hill, WV (home to us WELDers on the East Coast, as well as Environmental Banc & Exchange and National Parks Conservation Association) has been getting a bit of a face-lift. And now that the particle board has been removed from the windows and the hammering, drilling and sanding has come to a halt, we’re moving into our new offices on the first floor.

If You Like State-Of-The-Art Architecture

Our new office space has this really cool rubber flooring made from recycled materials, an amazing LED lighting system and desks and a conference table made from refurbished timber from the around area. The layout is a plus, too. Designed to enhance creativity and communication within the entire agency, it features an open floor plan which we’re calling “the hive,” a private meeting room, an open area for creative brainstorming and a new conference room.

If You Like Green Places

Our new digs complete the final phase of a 3-step process to renovate the 1930’s structure into a sustainable and green business environment. The project was seen through thanks to Lights ON! West Virginia, a real estate company whose mission is to revitalize old buildings with a green emphasis throughout the state. Not only were the products used environmentally friendly, but when possible, local craftsmen and materials were used in the renovations.

Looking for office space in a modern, green environment? We've got room for you at the Bellann.

In a project that first began in 2007, Lights ON! followed LEED standards as guidelines during the renovation. In the upstairs space, which was completed in 2008, locally owned materials cover most of the building, including carpeting in the rear suites that’s made from 100% recycled plastic bottles and ceiling tiles that are made from 85% recycled materials.

If You Like Shout-Outs

We owe a few organizations a big-time “Thank You.” Throughout the reconstruction of the Bellann Building, Lights ON! and WELD have received support from:

• New River Gorge Regional Development Authority,
• Natural Capital Investment Fund,
• Mountain Association for Community Economic Development Fund and
• BB&T.

If You Like The Whole Thing

If you or someone you know is looking for a place like the one described above (and, let’s face it, who wouldn’t?) you’re in luck, because there’s space available at the Bellann! For more information, contact Gene Kistler at genekistler@gmail.com.

And if you just want to talk about the project, hit us up anytime. Like, in the comments, for instance. We can share what we learned with you, or you can ask us questions, or both.

The Rundown: Available Space and Pricing

For just $2 per square foot per month (or $24 a year), you could be a part of the Bellann community.

The Rundown: Sustainable Building Practices

The 2nd floor space, completed in 2008 and now available for rent, is swimming in locally-sourced materials, including carpeting in the rear suites that is made from 100 percent recycled plastic bottles and ceiling tiles that are made from 85 percent recycled materials. All restoration of the 1930s building followed LEED standards as guidelines, and the (wo)manpower was generated and organized entirely from West Virginia residents.

The Rundown: Your New Neighbors

Current residents of the Bellann include: WELD, a digital marketing agency that primarily occupies the first floor and spills a bit into the second; National Parks Conservation Association, who work hard to protect and enhance America’s National Parks for present and future generations; Environmental Banc & Exchange, a provider of ecosystem restoration and protection solutions; and bringing up the rear, Virgin Timber Lumber, Co., creators of 100 percent recycled furniture made from reclaimed first growth Appalachian lumber. All business have equal access to the full-functioning kitchen, full bath with shower, recycling bins and conference room.

If you or someone you know are looking for this type of business environment, spaces available are available for rent at the Bellann. For more information, contact Gene Kistler at genekistler@gmail.com.

These first-to-mind social networks, however, aren’t the only ones out there. For the right brands, there’s a lot of awareness and engagement to be gained with more specialized social applications.

A great case in point is Aspen/Snowmass and their use of Instagram.

Instagram is a smartphone application that adds your choice of funky filters to photos. The application integrates with the your social networks, making it easy to quickly share those cool photos via Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, straight from your phone, in the spur of the moment.

“But the interesting thing is there’s a community behind it,” says Aspen/Snowmass interactive marketing manager Dave Amirault.

You can follow other users of the application, and even more applications have popped up to help you navigate the millions of photos people are producing with the app (see Statigram). Aspen/Snowmass has collected 1,000 followers on Instagram, and Amirault makes photo-sharing and curation a daily part of the resort’s interactive marketing.

“I use a desktop app [Carousel] to monitor all the photo content,” Amirault said in a recent phone interview. “Right now, I’m looking at all the photos people posted from Highland Bowl. I see a really cool photo from someone who made the summit, so I ‘like’ it.”

And it doesn’t stop there, he explained.

“You don’t sit back and blindly wait for people to like your content, you have to give back,” Amirault said. “I can copy that link, and share it on Twitter. People bug out when they get 200 likes because we exposed their photo to Aspen/Snowmass’s 11,000 Twitter followers.”

Amirault said the ski resort officially incorporated Instagram into its marketing quiver about 4 months ago (he had begun personally using it about 9 months ago).

“We started noticing the incoming volume of photos,” he said. “We couldn’t ignore it — we had to encourage it. People were extending our brand to their networks.”

Other Networks

In a similar fashion, Amirault keeps an eye on other emerging platforms, and Aspen/Snowmass is incorporating them into their marketing.

The ski resort also publishes a Tumblr, populated principally by the Instagram photo content, but also including more article-like posts, even some from the Aspen/Snowmass CEO. They’re also starting to explore Pinterest.

“The viral nature of Tumblr is great, and anything can be immediately shared,” Amirault said. “We’re diving into Pinterest with our dining and lodging interests. We’ve got 5-star restaurants and hotels, and that’s what’s topical on that platform.”

What’s The ROI?

Amirault said he reports some of the typical metrics to the executive level — the number of photos, followers, etc. The compelling story, though, is the ripple effect of social media.

“All I have to do is pull out a photo, say this one from the gondola, and I describe how it got 200 likes, and here it got shared on Facebook, and here it is on Twitter, and show the whole path of content,” Amirault said.

Aspen/Snowmass is gaining followers and brand exposure in a very organic way. Amirault said to do that, it’s important to treat each platform differently, because the audience is different.

“Each [social network] has a different purpose, they’re each trying to solve a different social question for people,” Amirault said. “The most successful brands are the ones that behave like people.”

Our new office space features a state of the art rubber flooring made from recycled materials, as well as a new LED lighting system and desk and conference table made from refurbished timber from around the area. The layout is a plus, too. Designed to enhance creativity and communication within the entire agency, it features an open floor plan which we’re calling “the hive,” a private meeting room, an open area for creative brainstorming and a new conference room.

But we don’t want to give it all away! You’ll have to show up to see the rest.

This project completes the final phase of a 3-step process to renovate the Bellann Building, which was built in the 1930′s. Lights ON! West Virginia first purchased the vacant building in 2007, and its first tenants moved into office spaces on the second floor in the summer of 2008.

If you or someone you know is looking for a place like the one described above (and, let’s face it, who wouldn’t?) you’re in luck, because there’s space available at the Bellann! For more information, contact Gene Kistler at genekistler@gmail.com.

Join us for light hors d’oeuvres as we show off our new space, and bring your own adult beverages if you feel so inclined.

The WELD video department recently completed a new reel based on our 2011 video productions. Take a look.

Props to WELDer Logan Bockrath, who put this edit together, not to mention the rest of the photographers who took part in several dozen productions in 2011. Shoots this past year took WELD crews to the Oregon coast, the Grand Canyon, the summit of Grand Teton in Wyoming, and more, in addition to our back yard in the New River Gorge of West Virginia.

Where did you get outside to in 2011? Who’d you take with you? Got video or pictures to get more people inspired by it? Let us know in the comments.

Just as the changes they make to the front end of Facebook send users into a frenzy of figuring out where all their favorite features went, these back-end changes might have you scratching your head. So, my tip today is to cut through the chaff, and if you have limited time to focus on everything, point out where to look for some key performance indicators.

And, it’s not just the number of fans who’ve “liked” your page:

Weekly Total Reach — You’ll find this one on the top bar of your overall page Insights tab, last on the right. It’s not enough just to look at total “likes” or fans; truth is, not all of them are picking up what you’re laying down on a regular basis. You’re also earning impressions from non-fans based on the fans who actually engage with you.

Another way to look at this is “weekly effective impressions,” and it’s a good baseline metric. In terms of any of the academic models of marketing you might frame it in, this measurement is about awareness.

People Talking About This — Of the 3 tabs under Insights, this is the last one, and the 2 images here in the post are at the bottom of that view. You can look at an aggregated view of the number of interactions people make with your page, or by using the drop-down menu, you can look more narrowly at the different types of interactions. “Stories from Your Posts” is any time someone clicks “like” or makes a comment on something your page has shared. “Mentions and Photo Tags” happen when a Facebook user creates a post of their own and creates a link to your page in doing so.

Produce remarkable content, interact with a community in a way that helps them solve their fundamental social needs, and they will reward you for it with positive affinity and advocacy. In that textbook sense of marketing, this is your engagement measurement.

Referral Traffic — This one isn’t in Facebook Insights at all. Sorry if you feel tricked. But the third thing to be thinking about, if your Facebook page isn’t where you’re achieving your ultimate goal, is whether that page is directing traffic to your desired transaction point. Are you shooting for sign-ups to a newsletter? Are you selling products on an ecommerce platform? If your goal lives on a website elsewhere, we want to look at the referral traffic that your Facebook page is sending there.

With some familiarity with a tool like Google Analytics, we can look at what those Facebook referrals are doing on your site, and if you’re achieving your goal. This is your conversion measurement, in the theoretical sense.

The rest of the numbers provided by Facebook Insights certainly have their use, and there are tools that can give you even more information than Insights provides. However, if there’s not enough time and experience to put all those numbers to good use, these 3 measurements, will easily tell you if you’re getting the results you need from this social media channel.

They spoke intently about social media, video production, content creation and their favorite water creatures. (Yep, that’s right.)

In case you missed the show — it airs live 7-9 a.m. Monday through Friday, with rebroadcasts later in the day — we’ll be posting the interview here on the WELD blog shortly.

A big thanks to host Link Carlin and the rest of the PCTV crew that made the visit not just painless, but fun.

Check back to hear more about who WELD is, what WELD does, and why George loves trout.

UPDATE: Here’s the clip of the Mountain Morning Show episode. Thanks to Park City TV for passing this along.

You won’t get very far talking about your brand or your product. You’ve got about 10 seconds to make a connection with someone in today’s attention-deficit communications economy. You better strike a personal chord in that audience, and fast.

Hat’s off to WELDers George Rogers, Michael Crenshaw and Logan Bockrath, who produced this piece for OARS. I love how this piece puts front and center the powerful experience that a wild place like the Grand Canyon electrifies people with, told straight from the perspective of guests and the guides who deliver it repeatedly.

It’s not about how many days long it is or what’s for dinner. It’s what it does to you while you’re there and how you carry that with you forward in life.

Stay tuned for more content from this trip. WELD was honored to tag along with OARS founder George Wendt and his sons on this voyage, and we’re working up a compelling story on this Grand Canyon pioneer.

If you’re open to more thoughts on our content marketing philosophy, be sure to check out my recent post, “When Features Don’t Sell, Time To Sell Story.”

You’ll also want to check out Brandon’s “Hero Marketing Is Dead, Long Live Content Marketing,” just one segment of his 4-part series.

And, we’d love to know: What places, what voyages have left their mark on you?

WELDer Ari Wile picked up a bike habit in the Bay Area, and now spreads the good word via example in WV.

When I moved to San Francisco — the sixth most bike-friendly city in the U.S. — the quickest, most efficient way for me to get from my Alamo Square apartment to my Financial District office was via bicycle. After four months of five-miles-round-trip, five-days-a-week commuting, not only did I drop two pant sizes, but I became addicted to bicycle commuting.

Then I moved to West Virginia.

San Francisco, surprise, surprise, opens its arms to every type of person and all levels of cyclists. From novice riders to fixed-gear bike messengers, from the hardcore Mt. Tamalpias century roadies to Gary Fisher himself, there’s no better place to become a cyclist. And with over 200 miles of designated bike lanes, the route options are endless.

In Southern West Virginia, on the other hand, the wheel spins differently.

Discouraged by the absence of even a single bike lane and frustrated by “Share the Road” signs on 40 mph roads with little to no shoulder, I was determined to keep bike commuting as a staple in my new mountain life.

Now I look at bike commuting from a completely different, more hardcore angle. No longer making the calm, daily meander with hundreds of others on their way to work, I fly solo and fewer days a week, stepping out my front door greeted by a 1.5-mile climb. Upping the ante from a two-lane city street, I ride the shoulder of a four-lane highway. Tripling my round-trip distance from 5 miles to 15, it takes a bit longer. Needing something beefier than my city bike, I’ve upgraded to the more versatile Surly Cross-Check. Even with all of these different challenges, I feel more accomplished with my new commute.

I hope to set an example, too, of alternative commuting for people who may never have thought of cycling as an option.

Some days I think I’m really badass for crushing it on my no-pollute commute. Then I see Jenny B (who rides twice as far and has to cross the New River Gorge Bridge) pull into the office on her road bike and realize I’m just another bike commuter.