YES!

What a great day Golf had yesterday with the golf match between Christina Kim, famed LPGA and Solhiem Cup heroine and John Raser, gonnabe (not a wanabe) mini professional tour player on his way to the Tour.

CK and Speedraser squared off at the Waldorf Astoria Golf Club in Florida in the world’s first Live Ustream grudge no-holds-bar steel cage golf match broadcasted across the world wide web.  This is exactly what Golf needs..REAL Golf with Real people..or are they Real people.

Well, it makes a difference that one of these people is a well know LPGA Tour player and the other person is a brash new maven of the Social Media world…kinda the best of both words within one world…or whatever..it was just down right honest fun and I was just glad to be one of the many hundreds trillions thousands few who go to see this ongoing epic battle instead of the Super Bowl…OH, thank you for that.

Yes, it was a good day for golf yesterday…congratulations Steve Stricker for winning the Northern Trust in style..sorry it was not top bill on a lot of golfer’s dance card for Super Bowl Sunday.  The Ear Muff vs White Belt match was just a must see!

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Fast forwarding to the last 6 months in the world Golf, and as it fits in the business world, one can truly become concerned with wondering if Golf will even survive.   What Golf does not need right now is more controversy.  Social Media today is being used by many in the golf media as their way of drawing attention to their endeavor to make a buck..not to helping golf remain a very viable resource for business people.

The future of golf will rest with Social Media.  But, how will Golf use it?

The Questions Golf has to Deal With Now

What will it take to turn Golf around?  What do golfers need to do to help golf survive? What changes do the icons of the golf industry need to make immediately to keep golf viable past next month?

All of these questions get asked and they get asked frequently.  What are the answers?  That is the question not many people can answer completely..I know I can’t.

However, there is one thing not being done by the golf industry as a whole and that is the effective use of Social Media.  The use of Social Media in the golf industry over the past 6 years has been appalling, ineffective and non-existent in some of the niche areas of the golf economy.  Christina Kim has done more on Twitter for golf with her incredible style of Social Media than the golf media and icon industry have done.  Is this the future of social media for golf?

Geez, you would think with the money the large golf manufactures still have they would be able to hire someone who could really show them how to use social media. In hindsight, maybe they have. 

Where Golf Has Gone Wrong with Social Media

Golf is still not understood by the mainstream marketing industry.  Large PR firms who are wizards in producing slick ad campaigns and mainstream media commercials fall woefully short in understanding how to market to the mainstream everyday golfer. 

Oh, yaw, if you drive a Cadillac, wear a Rolex, have an American Express Card, you own private jet and play golf with Tiger Phil, then they have the ad campaign for you.  In their eyes..these people are only who play golf.

Even in the many cases where a golf personality has been brought in to mainstream a golf business’ efforts they usually only touch the golfers who, first, know who he or she is and, secondly, fall within the small market interested in what the personality is saying.  Even when Tiger was around there was a pull back by the majority of Real golfers to feeling the golf industry was putting too much into one golfer as who represented golf.

It would seem the adage of, to reach a real golfer you have to be a real golfer, holds true.   To take it a step further, if you want to reach the everyday golfer you need to talk to them, NOT at them..making social media efforts to golfers totally different than the non-golfing Marketing/PR/Ad Agency are capable of doing.

Overall, Golf has not grasped what Social Media really is or how to use it.

What is Social Media?

What many in the golf industry are missing is the lack of understanding how Social Media works in the golf industry. Those in the golf industry attempting to use social media miss that the basis of Social Media is Social.  Having been in many marketing campaign brainstorm meetings in my past career I have seen the spastic cringe marketing directors make when anyone suggest anything to do with taking the campaign to the streets.  This still is the reaction most marketing firms have to using Social Media for Golf.  Believe me, anything that has to do with them shaking hands or meeting anyone in person is wiped away as having no ROI. 

Social Media is just that..Social.  It is based in the use of Social Networking, or what is now evolving into Business Networking.  Over the past 10 years, consumers have been flocking to both the Internet and offline social networks to find information on what it is they are looking to buy.  Business people are using the network to ‘face-to-face market’ their wares.  Why has this happened? 

Lack of trust in the business industry is mostly the reason consumers check out what is going on with a product or service they need.  Business people who ‘get it’ have found that letting the social network pass the word and validate their business’ worthiness works to build trust better than a slick ad campaign.

The network, or the community as it is now being called, offers up reviews or opinions on the product or service.  This information that comes in the form of a blog or Tweet validates or at least offers another view towards, what is being shouted at them by the mainstream media.  Gaining information and connecting to the network to talk to someone face-to-face about an issue satisfies the basic human nature of trusting someone.

Social Media for Golf

The way social media today is being used in Golf stands in staunch contradiction of the very basis of what Golf is all about.  From Golf’s beginnings, over 400 years ago, it has been a form of socializing.  Currently, Golf is one of the only forms of socializing for many golf communities.  This basic function of Golf is being overlooked in the marketing of Golf.

Golf has got to change its thinking in how it uses social media and needs to move quickly in getting behind the social part of the game so the promotion and marketing of Golf can fall within the mainstream of Golfers.  Golf has got to get connected to the business golf network.  Mainstream marketing firms need to reach out to the real golf community and instead of hiring a slick golf personality to put a face on their product look to becoming part of the business/social network that can spread the word about their products and services like wildfire.

Social Media for the Golf industry needs to change to using social media as it was intended to be used..for social marketing.  The Golf industry has to stop being part of the ‘Shouting’ many marketing firms feel is Social Media and get back to what Golf is all about..being social.

Let me know how I can help.

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Registration is open for the 2010 Aloha Team Classic

Beyond the Rainbow Foundation presents this year’s 5th Annual Aloha Team Classic Pro_AM.  October 17- 20, 2010

They have added a second flight this year that includes teams of two amateurs and one club professional playing with an LPGA Tour Professional for a two day Pro/Am.  This flight will be limited to 20 teams and the selection of LPGA players will be based on the date of registration so interested players are encouraged to register early to ensure their place in the event and early sequence during the "Draw".

The 2010 Package will include:

• Team Entry into the Pro-Am
• 5 nights accommodations for the two amateurs and the Club professional
• three rounds of golf for the Amateurs, with two of the rounds with their Club Professional and a LPGA Tour Professional,
• three evening activities,
• lunch each day of golf,
• and all the prizes and gifts.

The cost is $7,750 for each team.

There will also be an all Amateur flight  for teams of two amateurs that will play three rounds.
The courses played this year will be the Kapalua Resort’s Bay and Plantation Courses and the Kaanapali Golf Resorts’ Royal Course.

The second option provides interested participants continuing education for professionals.  The event will offer between 8 and 12 hours of continuing education courses for lawyers, accountants, insurance agents, financial planners, etc.  These will be accredited courses for professionals that are required to take continuing education.  This will have another reason to participate in October event.
I have provided URL links for a copy of an information page for participants as well as a special information page for the Club Professionals. 

Anything you can do to share this information with anyone you might know that would be interested or Club Professionals you are working with would be greatly appreciated. 

Her are more details for the event.  Information Package     Club Professional Package

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Scottsdale, AZ – Give Through Golf Launches

I am really excited to announce to all my fans the Give Through Golf charity fundraiser service company that features the Virtual version of the Helicopter Ball Drop.

If you have never seen a Helicopter Ball Drop, here is the basics.

1. Golf Balls are sold to supporters of the charity.
2. Each Golf Ball will be Marked with a Number associated to the person who bought it.
3. All of the Sold balls are placed in the Helicopter at the Charity’s Golf Event.
4. The Helicopter flyers over to a golf green where all spectators are surrounding
5. The balls are dropped from the Helicopter onto the golf green.
6. The Golf Ball that goes into the hole, or is closest to the hole wins the grand prize.

Dave Bisbee, principle of GTG, said “You will be blown away with how easy Give Through Golf makes raising funds for charity”.

The Virtual Helicopter Ball Drop™ is a dynamic new Web based platform offered by Give Through Golf that enables Charities to increase donations to support their endeavors with no upfront costs, hassles or the logistical problems that can hamper traditional ball drops.

How Does the Virtual Golf Ball Drop Work?

Through their individual marketing and promotional efforts, Charities lead donors to their Give Through Golf™ customized Web page, on GiveThroughGolf.com, where they can purchase virtual golf balls.  Via e-mail the donor receives a number that corresponds to each ball they’ve purchased.  On the day of the drop all the golf balls are loaded into the Virtual Helicopter; donors can watch the live drop via a web link.  The randomly selected winning ball is the one that is resting at the bottom of the cup; balls on top of the winning ball will win 2nd, 3rd or 4th place prizes.  The winners are contacted via e-mail or phone as well as being announced on GiveThroughGolf.com.

How much does each ball cost?

Each ball is $20.00 and donors can purchase as many balls as they like.  Many businesses have found that this is a fun way to engage their employees by purchasing large amounts of balls and distributing the golf ball numbers to their employees—giving everyone a fun opportunity to win a prize—while supporting their Charity of choice.

How are the winning numbers chosen?

At the scheduled time of the ball drop, the Virtual Helicopter will load all the balls and drop them over the Virtual Tee Time Club golf hole.  A Random Number Generating Program was developed specifically for Give Through Golf ensures the selection of completely random numbers without any bias or room for error.

How much does it cost a Charity to take part in Give Through Golf’s Virtual Ball Drop?

Charities incur NO expense and Give Through Golf recoups their upfront costs based on the sales of balls.  At least 75% of the funds collected go directly to the Charity.  Most Charities target selling 20,000 balls at $20.00 per ball, which garners $300,000; a minimum commitment of 5,000 sold balls is required in order for Give Through Golf to engage with a Charity.

How can someone contribute to a Charity through a Virtual Ball Drop?

Virtual golf balls can be purchased through GiveThroughGolf.com on the Charity’s customized Web page for $20.00 each.

How will donors know what their ball number is after they purchase it on the Web site?

After a purchase, the donor will receive a confirmation e-mail from Give Through Golf with the numbers for each ball.  If they lose the numbers, they may contact Give Through Golf at: info@GiveThroughGolf.com, or at 480.991.7300 and they will resend the numbers to the donor.

Will donors easily find their Charity of choice on your Web site?

Yes, each “active” event will be listed under the Charity link on GiveThroughGolf.com.  Clicking that link will take the donor to the Charity’s customized Web page.  If they see other Charities listed that they would like to support, all they need to do is go to that Charity’s customized page and add as many balls as they’d like to their shopping cart.

How does a non-profit know if Give Through Golf’s Virtual Ball Drop is a viable option for them?

Any Charity interested in Give Through Golf’s Virtual Ball Drop should contact them at info@GiveThroughGolf.com or at 480-991-7300.  The company will review the Charity’s annual revenue and marketing capabilities to determine if the Charity has the ability to market and promote the sale of at least 5,000 golf balls.

Can a Charity conduct Virtual Ball Drop as part of a planned event or existing golf tournament?

Yes!  Give Through Golf Virtual Ball Drop may be used as part of a golf tournament, existing event or as a stand-alone opportunity to increase donations for a specific Charity.  The actual ball drop can be viewed at a designated time to coincide with the event.  The beauty of this is, those who do not attend the event can also view the Virtual Ball Drop from their computer wherever they are, so there is no worry about missing the “action” if they cannot attend the event.

Where is there more information available about Give Through Golf?

More information is available about the Give Through Golf Program on their Web site:  www.GiveThroughGolf.com.  For photos, interviews or other media materials, please contact their media representative:  Mary Garrett at 602-432-2010 or mary@mgpublicrelations.com.

This is a very exciting and cost effective way for charity organizations to raise funds for their organization..or for a charity golf tournament to add value to its event.  If you would like to speak with Dave Bisbee through me here at the Mr Business Golf blog site or you can contact him through the GTG web-site.

(Disclaimer: Some post on this blog will be made as part of the site’s paid advertiser’s package. The above post is one of those post. For more information on advertising on this or any of the other IBGS sites or events go to the contact section of this site and enter Advertise in the subject.)

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Recently, I visited with a business women who had paid a very large amount of money to a large PR Firm and was provided instructions on how to market her business through what she felt very unusual and uncomfortable methods of marketing.  She had been using their methods and paying to attend follow up seminars that was part of their continuing education program but after a year and half had not seen any increase in business.  She asked if I could evaluate what she was doing that they told her she needed to do to market her business.

After a short examination I found what is causing problems for social media and  why she felt social media sucks.

Anti-Social Media

She asked if I would be her guest to attending one of the continual education seminars she paid for as part of her PR package.  I naturally agreed. 

The event was organized by a group of PR, Ad Agency, Internet Marketing and (so called self proclaimed) Social Media Leaders.  It was their own hug feast at a quaint country club.  I’ll not mention the organization’s name or the exact location for obvious reasons. However, who and where this took place did not matter for my point deals with more of what I heard at this gathering is now being preached at these type of gatherings around the country explaining to me why there are so many lost souls online providing no value to multitudes of social networking platforms.

My host wanted me to hear what she is being told in previous gatherings.  She felt what I was advising her to do for her social media strategies made more sense, but was puzzled at why this group was telling people what seemed to be a contradiction.

I understood completely what she was talking about when within the first two minutes of the lecture we were instructed to send as fast as we could at least ten Tweets, 5 LinkedIn/Facebook Status Reports and two statuses for Foursquare on our presence at this gathering.  They even provided scripts up on the overhead projector for everyone to use along with a laundry list of url’s to post to sites offering their company’s specials.

As soon as that nonsense was over the lecturer started in on what my host explained to be the group’s theme.  It seems this group feels in order for anyone to get value out of their time spend on any of the social networking platforms and to profit from it they need to think only of the themselves.  They made the point very clear that…

“…responding to one individual’s question, remark, concern or humorous statement on on any of the social networks is a complete waste of time.  All you want is for them to buy from you.  You have plenty of friends here in the room.  If you are wanting to socialize then socialize only with people who understand what your purpose online is..to make a bunch of money off the people online.  …”

To substantiate their claims of their proposed methods of social media they paraded a panel of ,unknown to anyone outside the group, experts who spoke pontifically on what was more or less was a fine art version of Spamming.  Their view of the internet and social media was very anti-social.  We were provided with a workshop on how to use Facebook Fan Pages as a advertising tool only and was told over and over that responding to ‘Fans’ comments’ leads nowhere.  A list was provided of instructions on how to use the Twitter apps that allow you to quickly post dozens of self promoting links to products or services.

To top off our three hours of insanity we were told in order to build our online community we needed to forget about interaction with people online since it is not profitable.  We should just focus on luring people to listen by only posting “valuable information”.

Then we were provided a showcase of the people on Twitter who they felt executed their method of social media.  This provided me with the only entertaining factor for this event since on they listed the few people I allow to follow me, or I am following, for who I know personally would not support any of the crap this group was shoveling out.

What Causes the Problem for Social Media

What clearly was the purpose of this gathering was for this group of old traditional PR and Ad firms to attempt to redirect people back to old methods of marketing.  Coming from the environment these firms work in I know their true motivations for putting on a cavalcade of seminars/workshops promoting their method of social media.  For them, the true method of marketing through social media is a huge threat.  They are so heavily over invested in old technology and processes they cannot afford to change to more proven methods of marketing business today.  To survive, they pump out information on what, more or less, is Anti-Social Media.  Unfortunately, they have the funds to hire a lot of silver tongue devils to persuade people to write them big checks.

As I mentioned, this particular event is not the only one I have been told about.  Seems there are many other factions of the PR and Ad agency world who are investing very heavily in showing small to medium size businesses how to look very bad to their consumers.  Hopefully, more of the real methods of social media like connecting to only real people instead of just to hundreds of thousands of names on Twitter will prevail over some of the misguided information given out in these gatherings. 

I am doing what I can to help get business people to understand that social media is about connecting to people who, if they like what you do, will connect to their people about you..and the networking then begins.

So, think about what makes sense to you. 

• Does it make any business sense to use Twitter to just post links to information of no value or shot gunning dozens of lame quotes to hundreds of thousands of people who are not interested just to draw attention to your business needs? 
• Does joining 50 groups on LinkedIn and then sending scripted emails to all of the members on those groups about your sale on fertilizer make any business sense?

The problem with Social Media is there are proven ways to effectively use it.  This threatens the methods many large companies have spent a lot of money to support the opposite of social media. 

Hopefully you can learn the difference before they get to you.  Let me know how I can help.

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I am seeing a lot of this online and from the reviews I have made with my clients and business associates the smiley face blogs and people who are tweeting positive stuff all the time are being avoided by a large portion of the consumer world due to their appearance of being mentally imbalanced, or foolish.

Yaw, I know, if you are one of those smiley face people you are about to click off the site, if you have not already, since you only want to stay positive.  That is OK, because if you are really interested in how you are looking online you may want to take a note or two.

I am online professionally on average 6 hours a day so I get to see a lot of Tweets, Facebook post , LinkedIn spam and read a lot of blogs.  I am out here like most people should be, to learn.  Oh, I know that the vast majority of people out here are here looking for entertainment.  Nothing wrong with that..it is normal.  I also like entertainment.  However, I am mostly wanting to learn more about how the internet works so I can help my clients.

What I am running into are the gals, and guys, who just really are not looking too Real to me and most of the world.   Additionally, I surprised with the large number of my offline associates’ reactions when I draw attention to these people online.   The comments I am getting when I flash one of these smiley face people’s blogs or Tweets up is..

…those are the people I run into offline who do not deal with ‘negative’ well and will avoid it at all cost.  I just don’t feel these type of people can handle the business I need their help with.  I like someone who can square off and be just as negative with something as they can be positive.

I have seen thousands of these type of personalities over the 32 years I have been dealing with them and over 80% of them usually will burnout or ,worse, literally breakdown.  This is what most of my associates have also dealt with and is why most of them turn away at the introduction to these people since they are not wanting to deal with a one-sided personality disorder.  They know that eventually someone who is all bubbly and is only focused on being positive in tone every breathing moment of the day will fall down on their professionalism and not fulfill their commitment. On the other hand, it is not good to be negative all of the time and that personality is the mirrored opposite of the positive only disorder.

In the world of Social Media, where most of these smiley face people are marketing themselves, the posting of Tweets instructing people to staying positive all the time is the biggest give away of someone who probably avoids issues or conversations that would shed a negative light on them. 

Appearing to be Positive Only is one of the biggest mistakes made by many business people using Twitter and Facebook.  This probably works well in an offline social environment of people who are supporters of the Positive Only Person.  Fortunately, in reality, in the business world a business person has to be able to address negatives as equally as showing off positive virtues of doing business.

I hear the rebuttals from some of the bolder of the Positive Only individuals who claim they do more business than business people who are more balanced in their approach to positive and negative.  Usually, that is when I drop my positive approach to dealing with them since their is no way to prove it..nor do I want to have to go into having to prove it.  The real issue they evidently enjoy avoiding is not how much business they are doing but how much business they are losing with staying positive and how foolish they are making themselves look to the Real business world.

What makes it worse is when these people attack someone for drawing them out for not dealing with reality.  Yes, I can be a target for that since I don’t step aside from issues reflecting badly on the industries I service professionally.  When the Smiley Faces make the Social Media world or the Golf Industry look bad, or foolish with their constant attempt to paint a rosy picture of something that is not rosy I have to take acceptation to my being positive to direct some negativity their way.  I do this in hopes it snaps them out of it or to expose them for who they really are.

My motto is and will always will be…

You just can’t keep putting lipstick on pig.

Let me know how I can help.

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