Instagram is a social media platform with 1 billion monthly active users, where more than 500 million of them use the platform every day. 71% of Instagram users around the globe are under the age of 35. 60% of users check it at least once a day and 38% check it multiple times a day. 500 million people use Stories every day (source).
This blog aims to help golf courses understand why Instagram works so well for visual businesses and educate general managers or the golf course marketing professional on some best practices for their golf social media and which hashtags to use.
Key Terms: (source)
- Instagram: a free online photosharing and social network platform that allows members to upload, edit, and share photos with other members through Instagram, email and other social media sites.
- Hashtag: a word or phrase preceded by hash or pound sign and used to identify messages on a specific topic.
- Geotag: an electronic tag that assigns a geographical location to a photograph or video, a posting on social media.
- Reach: a data metric that determines the potential size of audience any given message could reach. It does not mean that the entire audience will see your social media posts, but rather tells you the maximum amount of people your posts could potentially reach.
Golf Course Marketing with Golf Social Media:
Instagram is a photo sharing app that thrives when there are beautiful photos to be shared. Golf courses are known for their picturesque quality and would succeed with this type of social media platform. But not all golf course marketing crews take advantage of this easy opportunity to grow in reach.
There are three key practices necessary to running a successful Instagram account: quality of the image, frequency of posts and hashtag usage. Below is an excellent example of a golf course Instagram post taken from Longbow Golf Club.
Arizona is known for its colorful and radiant sunsets, capturing that image and posting it on your golf course social media is a great way to find more followers. However, notice the posting date was 33 weeks ago. This is this Longbow’s most recent post on their Instagram. Accounts should post at least once a week. This Instagram post does contain a geotag. It’s important to always geotag photos and videos as a business account to help customers identify that you are the legitimate Instagram account for the golf course.
This golf course has used more hashtags than most. 18 hashtags were used, and nine were related to golf, two were related to Instagram hashtags, and the rest are a mixture of popular hashtags that are related but not strictly golf related. Hashtags have a direct relation between the image and the ideal audience for the picture. Many of the commenters have found this image through the hashtags. We will go into hashtags later on.
Read more about social media optimization for your website.
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