Tips on content creation

In the fourth of article in her series on social media marketing, Lily Hymes provides tips on content that golf clubs can share online.

Thinking of content ideas is definitely one of the most time consuming parts of social media marketing, so hopefully these ideas will save you some time in the coming months!

When planning your content, I would highly recommend trying to use the 80/20 rules when it comes to promotional content. Your inspirational, educational and customer centric content will generate greater engagement, in turn pushing your 20 percent promotional content to more people, if you stick to the rule.

Inspirational

Sunsets and sunrises – Who doesn’t love a sunset or sunrise? They have the power to make everything look beautiful, so take advantage!

Signature or scenic holes – Showcase your golf course at its best by highlighting the most scenic or ‘famous’ holes, at the same time enticing curious potential visitors.

Award wins – Has your venue been listed in any top 100s? Has a staff member just won employee of the month? Whether it’s internal or external, a win is always exciting!

Wildlife – Golf courses are home to so many gorgeous creatures and not everyone gets a chance to see them, so give them the opportunity to via your social channels. Domestic animals work too – who can resist a cute dog?

Guests enjoying themselves – Show your followers how great it is to visit or join your club, by showcasing what a great time your guests have when they’re on site.

Achievements – Celebrate your prize winners, hole-in-one achievers and lowest round scorers – your followers will love seeing positive stories.

Educational

Recipes – Share some recipes, food or drink related, from some of your best-selling items, so that your followers can try to recreate at home.

Tips from the pro – Put together short, less than 60 second tip videos with your club pro to help your followers reach that next level in their golf game – they’ll love you for it.

Agronomy – Let your followers know just what goes into maintaining the course to a great standard by sharing snippets of what your greenkeeping team have been up to.

Hole guides – Show your fans how to play that tricky seventh hole, or how best to avoid the bunkers on the 15th. This allows potential visitors to also find out what it would be like to play your course.

Facts and figures – If your venue is historic, share some interesting facts from ‘back in the day’ or perhaps some more general golf facts that you’ve found interesting.

Quiz questions – Get your followers involved by asking quiz questions – the extra engagement on the posts will do wonders, too!

Image by Tristan Jones

Promotional

F&B – Mouth-watering images of your latest dishes always go down a treat. As well as this, you could provide sneak peeks of new or seasonal menus, or create fun cocktail shaking or pint pouring videos.

Events – Show your fans what their event could look like if they were to hold it at your venue by sharing photos of event setups – think of your channels as a mini brochure in that respect.

Weddings – Ask your brides and grooms, or their photographers, if you could utilise some of their wedding photos to showcase your venue – you’ll find that most will be happy to oblige.

Seasonal – People are always looking for things to do around Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day and more, so make sure your followers are aware of what you have on offer.

Golf membership – Potential members want to know what it would be like to be a member at your club and social media is the perfect way of showing them – you could do mini interviews with current members, behind-the-scenes insights at the club championship, or walkaround videos of your venue.

Customer centric

User generated content – Sharing your guests’ images taps into a sort of digital ‘word of mouth’ activity, which is both popular and highly believable, further enhancing your club reputation. Always ensure you gain their permission first.

Encourage guests to share photos – Tied into the above point, encouraging photo sharing increases your potential image bank. You could also make this into a competition every so often, with a prize on offer. Always ask your fans to tag you, to alert you to new photos.

Ask questions – Engage your followers by asking them questions – these can be very simple such as, ‘who’s playing the course this weekend?’, ‘what’s your favourite hole?’ or ‘what’s been your lowest ever score?’

Testimonials – Encouraging customer testimonials benefits you in many ways and sharing these via your social media channels both shows your fans what others think and may remind them to complete a testimonial of their own. Design an attractive testimonial post using a free programme such as Canva (available as an app).

When planning your Instagram content, don’t forget to use the Stories feature as well as the brand new Reels feature. Instagram will be pushing this content more in the coming months as they try to increase the usage.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch on lily@19social.net or follow on Instagram @19social. In my next article, I’ll be showing you how to best utilise influencers and bloggers!

In the meantime, download my new content planner to help you plan out all the above content ideas: www.19social.net/content-planner