I have three teenage children. Their lives are so strange compared to how I grew up. Social media has completely changed our market place. It’s highly likely that your golf course hasn’t gotten on board with how to leverage this fantastic marketing tool.
Do you ever find yourself watching an old movie (yeah, movies from the 90’s are considered old) and you watch the plot and think “Why don’t they just look that up on their phone?” or “Why don’t they just make a phone call when they’re in the woods?” maybe it’s “How could they not know that? It was all over social media!”? We walk around with computers in our pockets that are hundreds of times faster and better than the computers that put astronauts on the moon!!
If you’re someone who isn’t a fan of social media, you’re going to have to overcome that aversion or find someone on your staff who is all over social media. That’s where your golfers are hanging out, so it’s time to be active!
POST IDEAS
Many people find it to be hard to come up with something that might be interesting on Social Media. You should be posting on your Facebook page at least once a day. Facebook algorithms like posts that include video and images more than those that are text only. If you want a larger reach, then you’ll want to have one of those in your post. Because Facebook likes its Facebook Live more than anything, those videos have an even higher reach.
Need a boost in what to post about? Here’s my friendly nudge…
- Personal Life
- What’s going on with your family?
- Is a staff member celebrating a birthday?
- Who has something special going on in their life?
- Share it.
- Updates
- Making some updates to the clubhouse?
- Aerating or fixing irrigation?
- Renovating something – anything really cool going on around the clubhouse?
- Did you repaint the bathrooms? Fix a toilet?
- Share it. People are interested.
- Answer Questions
- Do you keep being asked when you’ll have fall rates go into effect?
- Maybe people want to know why you have black tee markers.
- What causes someone to slice their ball?
- What’s your favorite club in your bag?
- Share Your Blog Posts
- If you take my advice and start a blog, then here’s your chance to shine!
- Have it set to automatically share your blog post upon posting! Bam! Easy Facebook update.
- News
- Do you have something that’s newsworthy?
- Did a golf outing make $50,000 for a charity?
- Did you help with a cool project?
- Raise money for the local shelter?
- Did Rory have an amazing shot while playing in the Masters?
- Tell us! We want to know!
- Behind the Scenes
- What does your office look like after a weekend?
- What do your mowers look like?
- How do the flag sticks get painted?
- How do you organize your tools?
- How is a certain item on your menu prepared?
- Why did you select your style of uniform?
- Celebrate Your Golfers
- Have golfers who have been with you forever? Tell us their story.
- Is someone really making a difference in their community?
- Do you have a youth pastor who brings troubled teens out on the course?
- Hole In One Club
- Who got a hole in one today? We want to see a picture of them!
- Tree of the Week
- Is there an interesting tree on the golf course?
- If you don’t have many trees, show a picture of a bunker and why it’s shaped that way.
- What are the names of the annual flowering plants in your planters or at your tee boxes?
- Call to Action
- Need to grow your email list? Give them a call to action to get signed up!
- Do you have an event taking place? Provide a link where they can find out more information.
- Tell a Story
- Is there something cool happening behind the scenes?
- Did a golfer share a story about the last time he played your course was with his grandpa?
- Did something funny happen at work?
- Images of Golf Shop Items
- What’s going on in your Golf Shop?
- Did you get new apparel? New clubs?
- Let’s see what you have for sale!
- Quotes
- Create images of quotes with a golf background.
- Make them shareable!
- Funny quotes or serious ones about life and the game.
- Ask a Question
- Get some engagement. Have a dying question you want to ask your golfers?
- Ask them their favorite part about the golf course or least favorite.
- What’s their handicap or favorite hole on the course?
- Advertise Events
- Create a post about every event you have at the golf course, so they can see what’s coming up. They can ask questions and find out more information. You can even provide a link to all of the information about that event on your website or the event coordinator’s site.
- Event Calendar
- Be sure to promote all of the events you have on your calendar and tell a bit about them.
- Provide a call to action when telling golfers about the event.
- Beautiful Images
- Facebook prefers images and videos over text only posts, so make sure you share some pretty images. It isn’t difficult to catch a beautiful picture on the golf course. Find a time of day that is overlooked. Sunrise or sunset.
- Get out and take a few pictures of the course.
- Share Other People’s Stuff
- Golf Digest post an interesting article? Post it!
- Share those images and posts that you find informational.
- Make sure this is something you do no more than once a week.
- Facebook Live
- This is Facebook’s current favorite post. If you want some great reach, you’re going to have to put yourself out there. As of this writing, I have only “practiced” how I might do this. My plan is to go “live” just before a golf outing. I want to show the golfers, the energy of the day, explain what we’re raising money for and all of that jazz.
- Once you go live, it turns into a video on your page that others can watch. This video has a much higher reach than any other type of post.
- Share Email Sign Up
- When it comes down to it, the only thing that YOU own is your email list. You don’t own your likes or your Groupon or Golf Now lists. This is why building your email list is so very important.
- Share your page where they can sign up to be a part of your email list.
- You’ll want to give them something in exchange for their email. In the online world, this is called a lead magnet.
- Many courses offer a free round of golf on their birthday as their lead magnet, but it’s not the only option.
- Engage in Conversation
- Ask a question to get people responding. It can be about just about anything under the sun.
- What are their favorite shoes, clubs, golf balls, etc. The list goes on.
- Who is their favorite professional golfer and why?
- Silly Gifs
- My children and I can have entire conversations with gifs. They are amazing!
- Sharing gifs is a good entertaining post and hardly requires words to get the message across.
- Tutorials
- Golf is a very easy thing to use a tutorial message for just about any sort of marketing. Practically every golfer needs help with something!
- There are many subjects which allow you to have a tutorial. Not just a golf swing.
- Provide information on setting up a golf outing
- Recipes
- Do you have a kitchen with a sandwich everyone loves?
- Maybe there is a signature drink at your bar?
- You will absolutely be shocked when you get very high engagement from recipe sharing! Give it a try!
- Event Content
- When you’re hosting, make sure to provide information about the event.
- People want to know what’s going on at your facility. It adds credibility to you and allows them to picture in their minds what their own event might look like at your golf course.
- You can do just about any type of event. Lesson, Leagues, Weddings, Birthday Parties, Bachelor Parties, etc. Go for it!
- Videos
- Facebook LOVES videos. They are viewed more than simple text posts. Take 30 minutes and create ten 3 minute videos.
- These videos can be of many activities on the course. How a reel mower cuts grass or how a slit seeder works. Are you digging a trench? Teaching a lesson?
- Up Your Selfie Game
- No. We’re not talking Kardashian Selfies here, but they are certainly a testimony to the power of the selfie.
- Are you having a fun staff night? Grab that selfie stick and take a picture!
- Are you taking time off to enjoy a round of golf? Share it!
- Show Don’t Tell
- Remember that Facebook is about being extremely transparent in your marketing.
- Don’t just tell them that you have specials going on this upcoming weekend, give them a picture of golfers jumping or flags flowing.
- Whatever you can do to allow your golfer to picture himself in those shoes will be good showing material.
- Educate Your Audience
- As golf courses, we have soooo many things that require education.
- What steps do you take to recycle or conserve water? What are the things you do to follow safety guidelines? How do you protect the earth? We are always getting a bad rep, but we are actually very good stewards of the land. Brag about that!
- Golfers always need more education on their golf swing or best way to play fast golf.
- Remember new golfers when you’re working on educating! Teach them how to make a tee time online, when is the best time to put on their golf shoes. What is a bag drop? What signs do they need to look for when they’re playing a new golf course. How should they teach their son or daughter to play the game! This category could be a post every day for five years. There are so many things that golfers have a desire to learn. It’s our duty to teach them!
- Share a Freebie, Coupon, Discount or Deal
- We can’t forget everyone’s favorite thing! A Deal!
- Create a coupon that’s good for a typically slow time of the day.
- Run contests where the first person to call after seeing this post gets a free bucket of balls. You’ll be shocked when the phone rings 3 seconds after your post goes live.
- Think of interactive deals that gives them a reason to select your golf course over another.
Challenge!
I just listed 30 different types of posts that you can create on Facebook.
Here’s your challenge!
Sit down and plan out the next month of posting content for your Facebook Page! Once you have it planned out, you can load all of your posts into Facebook and have them schedule to go out at different times of the day every day of the month.
If you’re anything like me, you’re thinking… Seriously? NO!
I get it. You’re busy. Your to do list is a mile long and you don’t want a month of Facebook posts to be added to it.
Just do me a favor and spend 30 minutes today and write out ten Facebook Posts. Do that for the next three days and you’ll have spend less than two hours for an entire month of marketing!
Keeping consistent in your content delivery is extremely important for your golfers to know, like and trust you, both online and offline!
