What Are Your Goals When You Post On Social Media?
There are a few different things you may be looking to do when you post on sites such as facebook or twitter. In terms of scuba shops I think the main goals you should have are to keep in touch with past customers and to try and find new customers. Both are completely different. When you are keeping in touch with customers you are putting their photos that you captured of them diving up on your facebook page. You are putting photos up from the highlights of the dive. These are great. They give the people who just were your paying customers the chance to show their friends back home where they are and what they just did. However, chances are that people in the dive group (maybe 10 or 12) might hit the like button on those photos. Not the other few thousand that you have on your likes list who have gone diving in the past. There are exceptions but this is a general rule.
To get your scuba shop in front of a much more broad audience you have to have and share content that people want to share. There are a few age old things that have always worked in advertising. Social media is no different. Sex, humor, and shock value. Now when I say sex, I don’t want you to start taking naked photos at your dive shop and posting them on facebook (although they probably would get plenty of attention), I mean good looking people. Which of the following pictures do you think is more likely to get attention.
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Photo from www.sportstechreview.com
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Photo from www.mostbeautifulman.com
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I’m not saying that you have to get Kelly Slater to come work at your dive shop, but you get my point. The second photo of Kelly is actually a decent example of someone doing a good job at another aspect of creating content. He imprinted his website name and address on the photo. This ensures that when his photo gets shared around the web ( which it is right now) that he atleast gets a bit of recognition for it.
When you are the one that shares something you get credit for it in sites such as facebook it will show as Joe Blows dive shop shared this photo.. When it gets shared several times it will no longer say that Joe Blow’s dive shop shared this photo, it will say that John Doe shared the photo. Therefore it may be a great photo, but is it really doing you any good?
I have put the above infographic up as an example. This is something which may be for some dive shops and not for others. It is definitely toeing the line of being share worth or not. When you do something such as this, there are certainly going to be some people who will not want to post this on their facebook wall because they don’t want their kids or relatives or coworkers to see it. Then again, there will be people who are all over it. I am actually using this as a bit of a test to see what type of reach I can get with a photo like this. It is important to try new things and this is an example of that!
I think a good example of creating a share worthy moment on a dive trip happens at surface intervals. I have seen dive groups make an orange fly due to the wind blowing out of a scuba tank, I have seen a 65 year old man do a back flip off the boat, and I have witnessed a belly flop contest which had no real winners. These are all perfect opportunities where no one will be offended, but people will want to watch and share. The other great thing that opportunities like this present is to portray your dive shop as a fun place to dive. Everyone likes to be part of belly flop contests. Whether they are spectators or contestants people watch and have fun. Take advantage of the right opportunities and you will definitely start to grow your social network followings.
