While attending a recent golf conference, I had several people who stopped me to ask questions about how to post on their golf course’s Facebook page. When I went to go help them, I noticed that none of them had the Facebook Page Manager downloaded onto their phone.
Everyone that I helped was posting and monitoring their business page from the regular Facebook app that is meant for personal use.
Suddenly, a post is born.
The first thing you need to do to monitor your golf course’s webpage with more efficiency is download the Facebook Page Manager app.
When you go to the app store, you’re looking for an icon that looks like this:
If you have several pages that you monitor, you’ll be able to access them by clicking in the top left on the three lines.
When you tap there, you’ll open up a menu that shows all of the Facebook pages that you manage.
This app will make it much easier to update your golfers on the fly and keep your Facebook page current. Just what we all want, right?
When you’re walking to the first tee to check on a group, you can also update your golf course’s Facebook Page on the way!
Talk about multi-tasking! Yes!!
The app has several features that will be invaluable to you in your marketing and growing your fan base.
- Publish/Schedule a Post
- Upload Videos/Photos
- Ability to use Facebook Live
- Schedule Events
- Communicate using Messenger
I happen to have a very large Facebook datacenter about five miles from my home. They do many great things for our communities, not the least of which is provide some free seminars about how to use Facebook, as well as, invitations to hear what their vision is for the future.
Facebook has some very ambitious plans which this app is designed to help enhance, so you’re going to want to master the use of this app, so you can communicate with your golfers.
Let’s look at each one of the attributes of the Page Manager app in more depth.
Publish/Schedule Posts
The Facebook Page Manager takes care of the original intention of Facebook which is to update your golfers through posts on your page. The nice part about the app is that it allows you to schedule posts. This means that if you happen to have 30 minutes of time between golf outings or maybe while you’re out driving the course to check on your speed of play, you can take some pictures on your phone and schedule them out over a period of days, so you don’t need to be writing posts every day.
I’m constantly taking pictures of sunsets, sunrises, golfers practicing, people on the driving range, people who got a hole-in-one, fundraising sponsor signs and golfers who wear bad pants (which is a shocking amount). Sometimes, I might take 10 – 20 pictures in one day, but I spread those pictures out over a period of a week by scheduling them right from my phone.
By doing that, you’re saving time and posting regularly which is the key to building a following.
Upload Videos/Pictures
Similar to a scheduling a post, you can also select to upload a video or photo from your phone right from the Page Manager app.
Facebook Live
The other very important feature that is located on the Facebook Page Manager app is the ability to use Facebook Live on your Facebook Fan Page.
Facebook Live is being heavily pushed right now by Facebook. What does that mean to you? It means that you’re going to get a great organic reach when you use Facebook Live because of the algorithms that are currently in place.
You might be wondering what is the difference between posting a video vs. using Facebook Live.
When you use Facebook Live, the people who are watching your video live can interact with you by asking questions in the comments. A video that is posted on your page is just that, a video – no interaction. The video might be informative, but the people watching it cannot interact with it and ask questions for clarification.
Let’s look at all of the many ways that using Facebook Live can be advantageous to your golf course.
It would be a great way to have daily/weekly golf tips from your driving range. Schedule 10 minutes with your instructor/pro to have quick hitting golf tips that are posted on to your Facebook Fan Page.
You can create some great graphics using www.canva.com that tell your fans when they need to tune in to view your live feed which creates some momentum up to the event. Over time, you will gain a following who tune in every week to get some additional help with their golf game!
When you are done going live, you’ll want to post your video to your fan page. This is when the true magic of Facebook Live takes place. Facebook will push out your video organically giving you amazing reach on your video.
Here are some times that I have scheduled to go Live this year at my golf course.
- Golf Tournament Prep
- Aeration Day
- Bi-weekly Golf Tips
- Golf Outing Coordinator Tips
- Fundraisers
- Specials events on my Marketing Calendar
Running a golf course is fascinating to most people. They love seeing “how the sausage is made” behind the scenes, so share those moments. Interview your staff when they are unloading boxes from the new club shipment. Take footage of your demo day and have the rep give a presentation on the new product.
Schedule Events
I only use the Events page to let golfers know about my Marketing Calendar and golf outing events. It’s not a hard fast way to know how many people will be attending, but it is a nice service to offer.
For me, I prefer to load my events from the computer. It’s just easier for me to type them and do it all in one batch. (If you do it this way, make sure you schedule them. You don’t want your followers to get all of the notifications in one day. I schedule my events to post 3 weeks prior to my promotion.)
Of course, if you have an event that you forgot to add or decide to have something that is more impromptu, then you can schedule the event right from your Page Manager app.
Communicate using Messenger
Facebook’s vision for the future is that we’ll use Messenger as a means of constant communication. You don’t need someone’s phone number in order to use Messenger, so it’s universal and an easy way to communicate with anyone who has a Facebook account.
That’s why it’s important for you to be able to communicate with your golfers through the Facebook Messenger that is located directly on your Facebook page. That’s right folks, you’re going to need to get with the times now, so you aren’t left behind.
In the last year, Facebook introduced Messenger bots that allow receipts to be sent to you through Messenger. Perhaps you have seen this feature when you make a purchase using Paypal? As soon as your order is received from Paypal, you get a receipt in your Facebook Messenger.
Why would this feature be useful to a golf course operator? Imagine not having to buy that expensive thermal paper anymore! When a golfer checks in, his receipt shows up in the Messenger which he then shows to the starter. The receipt could even have a QR code on it and the starter might scan to verify it. Similar to a boarding pass on a plane.
This would eliminate so many cumbersome steps that we currently have in our check in process. In fact, the golfer could book the tee time, pay online, then use the QR code in the Messenger receipt to show the starter and completely by-pass the line if they were running late.
Am I the only one who occasionally has the problem where my cash drawer won’t open because the receipt printer isn’t working? It’s so annoying!!! Then, the golfer has to stand there while we restart the computer to fix the dumb printer.
I can’t think of a more horrible way to say, “Welcome to my course!” than to make a golfer wait 20 minutes just to check in. Frustrating for all involved.
A Messenger bot could save many of these steps. I know I’m not like most golf course operators, but I seriously can’t wait for our point of sale systems to implement this technology!
I digress. Back to why you want to use Messenger RIGHT NOW.
Messenger allows its users to communicate in a text format (like texting with your phone). The advantage to this is that the response time and guarantee of your message being read is extremely high. Almost 50 times higher than that of your average email being read in a timely manner.
For me, I have many golfers who constantly use the messenger to ask me questions. Primarily they ask me if it’s raining, but many have clarifications about a product I sell online or want to know more about a specific promotion.
There is a ranking score of how quickly they can anticipate a response based on your previous responses located right on your Facebook page. At my golf course, there are three of us who answer questions using the Facebook Messenger on our Facebook Page Manager app. Between the three of us, one of us typically responds within 30 minutes of getting a message. It’s a great service that is very easy to maintain.
When you receive a message, you’ll get a notification and then you can quickly respond just like you would with a text message on your phone.
If you aren’t using this technology now, then you are missing out on a generation who communicates this way. We have our work cut out for us as we transition into appealing to a very wide range of generational abilities. You want to hear the crazy part? I can speak from experience, the people who use Messenger to communicate with me at the golf course are mostly in their 40’s! Are you surprised?
What are you waiting for? Download the app today and start planning a once a week golf tip segment using Facebook Live. You won’t regret it!
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