Friday, January 29, 2016

Social Media

As an “old timer” in the golf course management business, I sometimes have to work on the new technology things that come along. I spend a lot of time at home in the evenings in front of my computer trying to come up with good, solid methods to communicate to our membership. I have never been a Facebook guy. Why? I don’t know, it just did not seem like the right way to put out a bullet point as to what we were doing on the golf course.

When we started doing our golf course renovation project I noticed that a blog page that I had started the year before really seemed to be getting a lot more hits. About the same time I started a Twitter account and tried to “tweet” the bullet points that I thought our members would be interested in seeing or hearing about regarding the renovation project. I tried very hard to stay away from the negative items. I wanted it to be a learning experience for our members.

So fast forward a few years. I am now very pleased as to how it has all come together. In addition to gaining more exposure on the blog page I have a lot of members following me on Twitter. Many times they will see when we have a frost delay or cart restrictions just as soon as I talk to the golf shop to get it all in line.

This Social Media Craze is a very fast moving thing and it has sometimes been hard to get my mind wrapped around it. I have worked hard and it is very nice now to get some recognition for the things that we have been trying to accomplish. Golf Course Industry Magazine and Aquatrols recognize industry leaders in the Social Media world each year at the Golf Industry Show. This year I have been fortunate to be one of the superintendents that is going to be recognized. I want to thank Pat Jones and all of the staff at GCI and to Aquatrols for their support of this. It is very nice to be recognized for something that you have a passion for.