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Do You Stand Out? Why Outdoorsmen & Women Should use Social Media for 2010
People using social networks will grow from 14 million in 2007 to 600 million
in 2012.
In the field hunters and anglers do our best not to be seen. We wear camouflage to conceal ourselves. But in the real world of fast paced business and cutting edge change, outdoorsmen and women cannot hide in the shadows…Lets face it, we all need to rethink the importance of social media and the benefits of this powerful tool. This is particularly important for us outdoor sportsmen and women as we try to connect with others who share our similar interests.
Whether its hunting, fishing, camping, bird watching or just those who enjoy the great outdoors we all need to work together to help each other in this competitive market place. Hunters are a dying breed (no pun intended) as our numbers continue to shrink. But now, there are effective ways to pass on our valued traditions through our blogs and websites.
So what is social media?
- Social media marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
- It is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive amounts of traffic.
- The key is having a target audience and communicating with a message that connects with your audience through quality content.
Why should the outdoors-man or woman use social media?
- The outdoor market is large and fragmented.
- This fragmented market offers opportunities for us niche bloggers to communicate and offer value to our readers.
- There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website again and again.
- Twitter and Facebook seem to be the most popular sites that allow you to gain followers and influence your target audience.
- If you are selling products/services or just publishing content for ad revenue, social media marketing is a potent method that will make your site profitable over time.
- When it comes to the outdoor sportsmen we our a large an influential group that has not tapped into the power of social media.
Interesting Outdoor Industry Statistics:
- On a national level 34 million sportsmen age 16 and older spent more than 76 billion in 2006, supporting 1.6 million jobs.
- If a single corporation grossed as much as hunters and anglers spend. It would be among Americas 20 largest, ahead of Target, Costco and AT&T.
- Outdoors enthusiasts contributed more than $56 Billion to the U.S. economy through hunting & fishing supplies alone.
- More than the combined revenues of Microsoft, Ebay and Yahoo.
- If they were a nation they would rank 57 out of 181 countries.
- Spending by sportsman benefits not only manufactures of hunting and fishing related products, but everything from local mom and pop businesses to wildlife conservation.
Those who ignore the value of social media usually fall into three categories:
- Those who dont know much or anything about social media,
- Those who are interested but dont know how to use it
- Those who dont believe in the value that a social media strategy can bring to any site or business.
- This is particularly true for the outdoor sportsmen.
- Currently on Twitter there are 429 registered users under hunting and 1,259 under fishing.
- On Facebook there are 7,400 registered names under hunting with Hunting having 88,000 fans and fishing having registered over 2,000 and Fishing have over 153,000 fans.
- Although these numbers are encouraging there is still room to grow and take advantage of the social media outlets that we have available.
90% of businesses in 2009 failed to gain significant value from social media (Community Marketing Blog). Despite Novembers 2009 statistics of YouTubes 6.75 billion streams (Nielsen Wire) and Facebooks 2.6 billion visits (Compete.com) many businesses are floundering with inexperienced practitioners and poor guidance for effective social media marketing.
Content =Connection = Commerce
I hope you enjoyed this post and please comment or share your story how social media has helped you and your brand.
Thanks and be sure to get outdoors in 2010 and pursue your passion -
Chris Burget, Bulls & Beavers
Author: admin2 · 15 Comments
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AMEN, Brother! Very good and applies to more than just fishing and hunting these days. How did I find this article? Somebody else’s tweet of course.
Chris, you are absolutely right. The rest of the world is hip to social media, while outdoors enthusiasts and businesses are slowly catching up. We need to get with it or be left in the dust. Our numbers are still huge, but we are dwindling to the point where we may soon become politically and socially irrelevant. Networking via social media is critical to getting our message out and perhaps even to the survival of our way of life and our recreational pursuits.
Chris,
Excellent article, we use social media almost exclusively by blogging, posting on relevent forums and using Twitter and Facebook as well.
We also encourage our readers to join organizations such as the NRA as well to help promote and fund the work they do to insure our rights to bear arms and to hunt as well. We provide a link on our blog to the NRA and display it prominently.
We all need to promote each other in the hope of continuing our traditions and to help promote the outdoor activities we all enjoy!
Hi Chris-
Thanks for this post. You shared some interesting statistics that are important for other niches as well.
I completely agree. I should get a face book account sometime soon. The numbers are amazing.
My company wouldn’t be where it is today without Social Media. If you’re not taking advantage of it, you’re crazy.
The online community has more power than the mainstream media. You can literally reach tens of millions of people online if you have something interesting enough to say.
It seems the past few months more and more outdoor companies are getting much more involved in social networking. Which, as we all agree, is a very good thing. For me, it’s all about relationships. A company can post all they want on social sites, but my money is spent with those that I’ve built a relationship with.
I completely agree with you so much I’m linking your article on my site http://www.rut2theheart.com/. Thanks for the article.
Excellent article, Chris!
The value in social media is how all of the communication channels and tools (Facebook, Twitter, Forums, Blogs, Email, etc.) allow Web users to connect and build mutually beneficial relationships.
Great call to action.
I think one last interesting statistic is that you have the most followers of any hunter on Twitter!
Great post! I’ve been using twitter and facebook for the last year documenting some of my experiences. Connecting with others about something were passionate about is just common sense. Social networking tools like twitter and facebook make it easy and mobile. I’ll keep it short so nothing walks by me while I’m not paying attention. ; ) Follow me on twitter @barbarosa1. Look forward to tweeting with you.
Billy
Chris,
well done!
especially: Content =Connection = Commerce!
sez it all!
thanks!
I recently wrote a kind of ‘primer’ on this subject at my blog. Just a post with some basic information on social media for shooters to get them thinking about it,
http://internationalsportingclays.com/index.php/2009/12/shooting-on-the-rise-in-social-media/
In addition to the basic Facebook and Twitter I highly recommend hunters, fishermen and shooters use yelp.com to write reviews of the businesses and places you frequent. It’s an underutilized promotional tool for our industry.
I am trying to learn how to use social media. Thanks for the infomation