By Victoria Gibson, Digital Media Producer at Monaghan Golf Group
Instagram is the fun part of your golf course’s digital marketing initiatives. It’s your opportunity to create a unique voice and let your facility’s personality shine while connecting directly with your audience. Below are some tips to help you achieve an appealing aesthetic and get your feed rolling!
Work the camera - In our digital age, the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” couldn’t be more true. People don’t often read online, so if you’re able to capture a great picture you won’t have to put a lot of work into the rest of the post. Consider these tips to capture an engaging photo:
Snap things unique to your facility. Think signature holes, sunrise/sunset, animals on the course, attendees to your events, new menu items or new arrivals in the shop to get you started.
Rule of thumb: natural lighting is the best lighting!
Turn on the ‘grid’ in your photo settings. This will help ensure your subject is centred. Shoot wide so you can crop in if you wish. Consider taking your photographs in landscape format which allows you to have more room for the subject and still work on any platform.
If you think the photo needs some love, scrap the Instagram filters and click ‘edit’ to play with the brightness. Use the ‘shadows’ to lighten the dark areas, and ‘highlights’ to bring back some detail in bright areas. Use ‘saturation’ and ‘warmth’ if you want some more colour in the photo. Finish the photo off with ‘sharpen.’
Keep in mind the goal with photo editing is to bring the photo back to how it actually looked when you took it.
Consider a video post. Don’t stress - videos can be simple and can be taken with an up-to-date phone (to ensure quality). Try panning over a few new menu items or driving down a hole at sunset. A stabilizer is a handy gadget that helps make quality videos and won’t break the bank; take a look on Amazon. We’ve used the Zihyun Smooth Q Gimbal.
Check out what your competitors are doing online and do it better!
Find your personality - Instagram is a platform to let your facility’s personality (and brand) take centre stage. Find the right employee to be the medium between your facility and the public. Someone cheery, positive and funny will help make your content engaging and something that people look forward to and want to read.
Quality over Quantity - This is the best policy! Post good photos for good reasons versus throwing something up just for the sake of posting. You want to stay on your followers’ radar so they don’t forget about you, but your posts must offer them something worthy of their time. Offering a take-away – be it a memorable image or valuable tip – helps to build your facility’s brand and keep you at the top of your clientele’s mind. Have fun doin’ it for the ‘gram!