Good Morning Bowlers This Social Media stuff is interesting, Ive interact with one of USBCs top bowlers and holder of 5 USBC Open Championship Eagles, one of the top editors in the automotive world, even had a chat with the President of Ford Motor Company and Matt Cannizzaro with USBC Media. You can interact with the Hollywood types, Local police departments, Im even a “friend” of the Brimfield Police Department, Brimfield a small town in Ohio with a population of 8,000 but they have a Facebook following of over 154,000 second only to the NYPD. Which the reason for the post, I was interested in how other bowling associations handled their Social Media and it seems we are all in the same boat rowing upstream a hard as we can. Heres a few numbers; Greater Fredericksburg USBC 50 LIKES Appomattox River USBC 92 LIKES Greater Richmond USBC 112 LIKES Danville USBC 124 LIKES Virginia Peninsula USBC 164 LIKES Tidewater Virginia USBC 192 LIKES Nations Capital Area USBC 213 LIKES The USBC BOWL.COM has 240,652 likes out of two million sanctioned bowlers, the number just dont add up, is it because bowling demographics are aging and few older bowlers on Social media ? Social media, for organizations, has taken the place of Blast Mail an obsolete from of disseminating news and information from the late 90s and used today mainly to entice you to buy something. Social media has outpaced newsletters as a choice of communications to membership, of the several groups I work with only two still use newsletters as a form of communications and we faithfully upload their newsletters every month and keeping an eye on the number of visitors who open the pages to view I see numbers between zero and twenty, very low response rate for the work place into making them. I maybe odd man out but I have a grand total of 75 friends on my Facebook, I know each one and 97% of them I have met in person, yes even the Aussie from Down Under in South Australia who taught me what a Fortnight is, the young Brit who just became a US citizen and works as an Engineer for Cat, the lady in Utah who has 14 Mustangs and enjoys dog sledding and that crazy trucker in Canada who wanted to appear on Ice Road Truckers, what a diverse crowd we are. But heres the question, what is Bowling to do to increase participation on Social Media, we have Facebook Pages and have Twitter, in fact its really easy to connect both and post on each at the same time, VPUSBC does this. I’m not good at using 140-characters, I tend to get long-winded and have to start over, nor am I good at those neat little abbreviations, for months I didnt know what IDK , AFAIK or CUL8R” meant, thank goodness I have a Granddaughter to interrupt for me. You would think that every League Officer would want up to-date information to pass along to their leagues. But yet if you ask a bowler when the tournament is, they dont know, participation in the annual Open meeting is poorly attended. The one thing we can do is share association news, many of us like but to “share” gets word out to all your bowling friends. Back in the day word of mouth was the way to advertise, now days a share on Facebook or a re-tweet reaches many more people. If we want to grow the sport we need to embrace Social Media, use it to the fullest, yes I have apologized to my many Mustang Enthusiast “friends about my Bowling posts but they understand my passion for bowling and I put up with their selfies, which I think is the internet’s way of letting us know who the village idiot is and the political posting. Now I do enjoy those baby photos and videos of cats and dogs so please keep those coming.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 19:53:28 +0000