You might remember that, awhile back, I applied to get on the Specialized Trail Crew. I guess Specialized already picked the crew, and now they are trying to figure out how to evolve the Trail Crew for its next incarnation. I have some ideas, some of which might seem bare-knuckled. Check ‘em out.
1. I know this might seem like blasphemy since the chance to ride a $6,000-plus wonder bike was part of the draw. But I think Specialized should equip the Trail Crew with more “everyday rider” sorts of bikes. That’ll cut the cost down, and give a more realistic idea of what their products can do. Also, they need to make the Trail Crew bikes visually different. I’m seeing a special color scheme along with a full Shimano SLX group – I’d suggest a choice between a Stumpjumper HT (29 or 26) and the Epic. Promote the notion that you can have well-maintained, workaday bikes and still enjoy riding to its fullest. It’s the experience, not the bike. I would love to see what Shimano SLX on a quality frame can do.
2. Figure out which members will get the word out. The current Trail Crew has been weak on spreading the word. I’ve searched Google Blogs to see what the lucky few posted about being selected – barely anything. One guy posted about the arrival of his bike. I haven’t seen any substantive posts since. Specialized needs to figure out which bloggers are syndicated, which ones have real readership, which ones hustle for those readers and which ones get out on the trails and engage the public. That’s more important than where they placed in their last race. For example, my post to apply for the Trail Crew appeared on the Chicago Sun-Times Web site and generated more than a thousand headline impressions. Specialized doesn’t let people ride their stuff for free out of the kindness of its collective heart: It should expect measurable results.
3. Use the Trail Crew as realistic product testers, and welcome their feedback – both complimentary and cutting.
4. Widen the net. The Trail Crew needs to engage people – lots of them … in-person and online. So choose population centers wisely. A rider in Montana is great, but will engage a limited number of people. A rider in Denver or another major city with access to local riding? Far better. Frankly, I’d also aim for a concentration of riders in climates with long riding seasons. Better weather equals more biking, which leads to more exposure. And that’s the name of this game.
5. Require Trail Crew members to complete a certain amount of trail maintenance. There’s more to mountain biking than riding. This will build brand goodwill. My tactic would be to do all my trail maintenance wearing a shirt with my blog’s URL, and some sort of Trail Crew logo. That explains what I’m doing there, and how fellow trail maintenance workers can find out more.
6. Speaking of which, Specialized needs to recruit members who understand branding. They need people who realize that a brand is more than a logo – it’s a promise on delivering a certain level of quality experiences. It’s about engaging the customers’ lifestyle. That requires some work. The Trail Crew members need to be blogging -and not just Tweeting- about their rides: favorite local trails, crashes, near-crashes, maintenance sessions, cool people they meet, anything that’s remotely interesting. Promote the brand and the experience through that sharing.
7. Select bloggers who are more than bikers. If every post is centered on Specialized or mountain biking, the content will get stale and repetitive. Specialized needs Trail Crew members who have other interesting aspects of their lives – travelers, rock climbers, pilots, musicians, artists. And they need to keep posting that all in their blogs.
8. Finally, stay away from any blogger who registers a domain with “Specialized” in it. That tactic shows commitment, yes – but it also shears away the entire grassroots, organic flavor of the effort. It comes across as something being written by another company rather than a person. It also narrows the blog’s niche too far, and makes it awkward to post non-Specialized content like I mentioned in #7.
There we go! Any questions?
Hey, you just described me! LOL And you too come to think of it…
Hi,
I author a blog about travelling India. I would love to exchange links with you. Awaiting your response for the same.
Regards,
Janit
I definitely did. See, I expected that when the Trail Crew members got their bikes, they’d be pretty excited about it. Like so excited that they’d have some blog posts about their first rides on it, and impressions of the bikes. I’ve been doing regular searches based on date looking for those sorts of posts.
It’s a big nothing. I think that’s really odd.
Have you been following http://trailcrew.specialized.com/? That’s the official blog site. Only 2 or 3 of the 8 post regularly but the others are starting to come out of the woodwork. And they can’t use winter as an excuse in most of the places since one is still riding in snow covered trails…
I think a few people have been doing searches for the Trail Crew, it’s the #1 phrase for people finding my blog on Google.
T, that’s new to me. Thanks for pointing it out! And sorry for the delay in responding. Virus problems … I think my computer wandered to the online equivalent of Tijuana and caught something nasty.