The Pellucid Perspective - April 2015 - (Page 10)

SociaL media Confessions of a social media Neanderthal By Stuart Lindsay S omeone recently suggested that I don't "get" social media. Sometimes I wish that was true. I got sidetracked the other day by one of my Facebook friends who posted a link to Richard Pryor's "mafia" shtick video, which led to another one about his pet monkey, and so on. By the time I stopped laughing I was another 15 minutes in the hole. But at least I was in a much better mood. When I checked my LinkedIn profile recently, it said I have 326 connections and over 150 endorsements. They tell me I could have another 199 connections if I give them the right to use my email contact list to automatically send out requests for me. At some point, I must have screwed up and let them look at my contact list, most likely when I started. Now I think they look at it every time I log in, because their match number grows along with my email contact list. I haven't taken the time to look up how to stop that process, which is probably not very bright on my part, but at least I didn't give them permission to use it. Of course, the permission option appears after you let them look. For all of you who use and/or buy technology you don't fully understand, I just want to let you know you aren't the Lone Ranger. For a Neanderthal, I have a fairly long history of technological education that dates back to the days of the "world wide web" before Al Gore invented the internet. One of my friends who worked at the first "on-line" company I consulted with in UNBIASED, FACT-BASED INFORMATION & INSIGHT Visit our website and register for more information and free sample reports at www.pellucidcorp.com. Or, contact Jim Koppenhaver to discuss your unique needs at jimk@pellucidcorp.com or 847.808.7651 10 The Pellucid PersPecTive the 1980s went on to become one of the first 50 employees at AOL - he's retired, growing grapes and making wine in Napa. I helped facilitate some of the first internet tee time reservations in California in the mid-1990s, which required me to be a fairly early email adopter. For those of you who remember, the precursor of what we now know as "social media" was known as the "bulletin board," the vestiges of which can still be found in Yahoo Groups, including one of the oldest golfer online communities. Some of you know that I served as a consultant to Fore Reservations for 17 years as they grew into the largest provider of public golf software and a major provider of internet reservation connectivity. All of the above simply means I have observed the development and deployment of technology both inside and outside the golf industry for a long time. Besides meaning that I'm old, it also means I have seen a lot of mistakes and managed to make a few on my own. Jim Koppenhaver and I started talking about "social media" in our 2010 State of the Industry presentation. We talked about both the positives and negatives. Our advice at the time was to be careful. If you get involved, you have to understand the technology and be prepared to spend the time to properly manage your involvement. That advice still rings true five years later, and in between we have documented the rise of Facebook alternatives such as Instagram and Snapchat when few in the audience knew what those alternatives were. We also predicted the rise in the need for "reputation management" and emphasized the multitude of "review sites" where a golf course can be both praised and cursed. In fact, my warnings about online golf course review sites can be traced back to the late 1990s and the creation of golf.com and golfcourse.com. If you want to talk about unintended consequences, who would have imagined that an obscure pizza parlor in Indiana could be forced to close due to "social media" backlash on one day and talk about re-opening due to an over $300,000 influx of supportive "social media" crowdfunding the next? To make matters more complicated, the technology and communication options keep expanding. And with every new option comes someone trying to get in your pocket with a new way to get you involved. Unfortunately, most of these new options don't seem to integrate with the technology or communication systems you are already using. If there is one almost universal "yelp" we hear from our clients, it usually centers on the lack of integration. They have an "integrated" email system in their database platform that allows the exclusion of golfers already on the tee sheet (a really valuable feature), but its execution and delivery rates are not that great. Many courses pay for another email system that is designed and regularly updated to more effectively comply with April 2015 http://www.golf.com http://www.golfcourse.com http://www.pellucidcorp.com/ http://www.pellucidcorp.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - April 2015

TOC
Equity clubs increasingly open to change
Digital Caddies customers lose free web connectivity
2015 weather bodes well for industry so far
Environmentalist bid to close historic course rejected
Confessions of a social media Neanderthal
March golf weather impact: Up strongly nationally, regional results vary
Rise of Phoenix needs fall of supply
ClubCorp continues to grow with 6-course portfolio purchase for $44M
Fantasy sports in more ways than one

The Pellucid Perspective - April 2015