How do you use Social Media?

[The Chairman]

Social Media is here, and like the Internet and Rock & Roll, its here to stay. I will be giving several seminars on using Social Media intelligently, and need to do a bit of informal research. To help me understand the state of Social Media in Scuba, I would like you to answer the following questions as well as to give me any additional insights: (BTW, yes: I realize that this crowd is way out front of most Scuba businesses when it comes to Social Media.)

1. Is Social Media an integral part of your marketing effort? If so, how? If no, are you planning for it to be?
2. How many people in your business are involved in handling your Social Media. Any full time? Any consultants?
3. How much time do you personally spend on Social Media every day?
4. How do you characterize your role in Social Media for your business?
5. How would you characterize your efforts with Social Media (good/bad/indifferent)? Please explain.
6. What characterizes your type of participation in Social Media?
   • Selling products or services
   • Networking
   • Communicating Values
   • Reputation management
   • Mixture (Please explain)
   • Confused (Please explain)
   • Other (Please, please explain)
7. What types of Social Media do you participate in? (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, MySpace, Linkedin, YouTube, ScubaBoard or other?
   them? If no, how are you going to get them?
8. Do you feel competent with your current Social Media skills? If yes, what did you do to get

 

[scubamarketing]

1. Is Social Media an integral part of your marketing effort? Yes If so, how? I could tell you, but I think my boss would kill me If no, are you planning for it to be?
2. How many people in your business are involved in handling your Social Media. Any full time? Myself Any consultants? Content writers
3. How much time do you personally spend on Social Media every day? ~12 hours
4. How do you characterize your role in Social Media for your business? I run it
5. How would you characterize your efforts with Social Media (good/bad/indifferent)? Please explain. Very good. I've been able to help a lot of people get into diving, stay with diving and get great deals on gear as well as helping people who otherwise may have fallen through the cracks.
6. What characterizes your type of participation in Social Media?
   
   [*]Selling products or services Yes
   [*]Networking Yes
   [*]Communicating Values Yes
   [*]Reputation management Yes
   [*]Mixture (Please explain)
   [*]Confused (Please explain)
   [*]Other (Please, please explain)​
7. What types of Social Media do you participate in? (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, MySpace, Linkedin, YouTube, ScubaBoard or other? Facebook, Twitter, Google+ (limited until Business Profiles roll out), WordPress blogs, LinkedIn, YouTube, ScubaBoard, Foursquare, Yelp
8. Do you feel competent with your current Social Media skills? If yes, what did you do to get them? If no, how are you going to get them? Yes, but it's all constantly changing, so I'm constantly learning. As an example, I took a close look at Facebook Places, didn't see it taking off despite the sheer Facebook numbers and that paid off with their recent announcement of abandoning Places. I like to think of that as an example of knowing how to use the tools and creating a strategy.

 

[rob@diveinutila.com]

1. That and website is the only marketing we do. No more magazine ads for us - a complete waste of money.
2. That sounds like you're talking to a business that actually makes a decent profit!! We have several people involved in social media marketing - two main people. But we all do it when they have time from their main roles.
3. 1 hour maybe. I'm here now!
4. I contribute and help run it
5. So far so good. Early days still so we have not been able to measure the success or not.
6. a Yes. b. Yes. nothing else.
7. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, ScubaBoard, soon Twitter and Google+
8. No.

To do Social Media marketing (in bound marketing I think they call it in a more general sense?) well it becomes almost a full time job and we can not afford to employ someone just to do that. So like many people in this business we swap hats all day from instructor, to general manager, web site developer, to marketing manager, etc and try our best.

Blogs you missed out.

 

[The Chairman]

That sounds like you're talking to a business that actually makes a decent profit!!

There are a few. The true magic of ScubaBoard is that we embrace the very big (like a few manufacturers) to the very tiny (individual diver) and have something for just about everyone. I find that the more people treat their business as a business and not a hobby devoted to fun or ego, the more it morphs into a real corporation where you can have people dedicated to one or two functions. A competent marketing department will soon be making far more than it costs you in terms of consistent commerce coming through your doors. Utilizing social media is a very economical way to get your clients to help you market your business. If you are really creative, you'll find that you can get volunteers to coordinate the Social Media Waltz, affording you the time needed to do actual business or just to go diving.

Blogs you missed out.

Blogs have their place, but they are usually not considered "Social Media". While some include limited interaction, they are designed more to get your message out rather than to initiate a dialog with your current or potential clients. In reality, Forums are a derivative of the Blog (Web Log) that have enhanced/incorporated the social aspect. While often overlooked in regards to Social Media, forums and their predecessors, the BBS, were actually the first wave of interaction.

 

[Surface Interval]

Social Media is here, and like the Internet and Rock & Roll, its here to stay. I will be giving several seminars on using Social Media intelligently, and need to do a bit of informal research. To help me understand the state of Social Media in Scuba, I would like you to answer the following questions as well as to give me any additional insights: (BTW, yes: I realize that this crowd is way out front of most Scuba businesses when it comes to Social Media.)

1. Is Social Media an integral part of your marketing effort? Yes
2. How many people in your business are involved in handling your Social Media. 2
3. How much time do you personally spend on Social Media every day? 4 hours
4. How do you characterize your role in Social Media for your business? I am the main contact, the personality for most of the posting.
5. How would you characterize your efforts with Social Media (good/bad/indifferent)? Strong. We do alot, but there is always room for improvement. I recently attended a seminar hosted locally in Houston.
6. What characterizes your type of participation in Social Media?E, a mixture of A, B, and C.
7. Selling products or services
8. Networking
9. Communicating Values
10. Reputation management
11. Mixture (Please explain)
12. Confused (Please explain)
13. Other (Please, please explain)

[*]What types of Social Media do you participate in? (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, ScubaBoard or other? --MySpace we don't actively participate in, but still have the page directing users to FB. We have a blog. We use RBW and also DecoStop, and I have subscribed to a few other small scuba communities that haven't quite filled out.

[*]Do you feel competent with your current Social Media skills? There are still a few things that I have a hard time figuring out. I thought I had blogging down, but that wasn't my strong point.
[/LIST]

Answers in quote.

 

[scubamarketing]

While we can argue the merits of a blog being social media or not, I stand on the side that it is the most important aspect of online marketing.

On a blog, I can optimize for search engine traffic and I own it. It only goes away if I don't pay my hosting bill or I neglect to back things up. It will perform better in search engine traffic than a static site.

Facebook could someday start charging for Pages or just do away with them entirely. Twitter could start charging or (as I've personally seen) it has become so noisy that it's far less helpful than it was from a business standpoint. Heck, the Scuba Board server could even have an outage!

My point is that relying on other outlets entirely is a mistake. Have your home base and use the outlets to promote that home base.