How to boost golf membership and visitor numbers via social media

There is no doubt that most golf clubs could use the power of social marketing more effectively when it comes to attracting new members and visitors to their golf clubs.

One of the easiest, yet most powerful, ways to achieve this is by including more images and videos in your social media posts.

Research has found that posting a video on a Facebook update means it will reach more than double the audience than just a plain text post, and the engagement with that post is also more than two times bigger than posts without videos. On Twitter the stats are even more remarkable – posts with videos are six times more likely to be retweeted than ones with photos, which themselves get more engagement than tweets with neither. And more people now watch YouTube on their mobile phones during prime-time television hours than any TV network.

Recent research has also identified that most clubs tend to be reactive rather than proactive in their social media strategies and do not make full use of this very powerful, and low cost, tool at their disposal. However, the quality of the message must be right and there is no doubt that a good image is worth a thousand words, particularly in the social media world.

Video is becoming a very powerful medium for social marketing, as well as giving websites a more user friendly face and a higher Google ranking. Short, high impact clips of 10-15 seconds, can be used to capture the social media audience and can spread organically to gain thousands of shares so that the message can potentially reach a huge audience very quickly.

However, it is important that the message is continued when users click on the link to the golf club’s website and a short, introductory video on the home page of one to two minutes in duration, featuring the best of what the golf club and the course has to offer, should hold them captive. Short videos on other pages, such as an introduction to membership which features testimonial interviews with welcoming staff and friendly golfers will help to lower perceived barriers, secure their interest and could lead to a new enquiry. Fly-throughs of a few of the best holes, or all eighteen, will give them a better insight to the course which they may not yet have experienced. Packaged in the right way video imagery should convey a golf club which is very well run, provides a welcoming environment and has top-class facilities for the golfer to enjoy.

Creative Golf Video (CGV) was established to fill a gap in the market for high-end promotional videos and has produced video packages for prestigious golf clubs such as Royal Blackheath and Aldeburgh.

Having witnessed many shaky amateur and semi-professional drone videos on golf club websites, golf architect Ken Moodie, of Creative Golf Design, set up a video production studio with Mark Kendrick of Frozen Moon Productions to create affordable, high-end, TV-style video packages which combine spectacular aerial filming and cinematic ground-based footage, plus interior clubhouse and pro shop shots.

CGV can assist golf clubs with their social marketing strategies and provide short clips, in addition to longer ones on the club’s website, to convey targeted messages such as new membership or visitor offers, or the use of the clubhouse for weddings and functions.

For more information, please visit www.creativegolfvideo.com or contact Ken at video@creativegolfdesign.com