Tales from the Tweetup

Savvy enough to know when and how to use communicative technology for work purposes, the winners of Golf Course Industry’s 2015 Super Social Media Awards share a message: Problems can be solved by taking a phone out of your pocket.

For the first time in the event’s four-year history, a group consisting entirely of superintendents stepped onto the Aquatrols stage and accepted plaques during the GCI TweetUp at the Golf Industry Show in San Antonio.

The superintendents hailed from six states, a Canadian province and three time zones. Their reasons for taking their course’s maintenance activities viral are as contrasting as their courses yet they all know tweeting and blogging has developed into something bigger than an industry fad.

Social media has become a best management practice, one where individual and corporate investments are yielding significant rewards. Starting an account is a big step. But what’s the best way to maximize your time online?

We bypassed the consultants, experts and professors and allowed this year’s award winners to share their social media stories. The stories demonstrate how a technologically timid superintendent at a high-profile club blossomed into an industry leader and why agronomists at private facilities are exchanging information on public forums.

Get your smartphones and tablets ready. We’re presenting Tales from the TweetUp.
 

John Kaminski Leadership Award
Steve Cook
Oakland Hills Country Club, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

Less than five years ago, Steve Cook was sitting in a restaurant when his wife obtained an instant answer to a question by performing a search on her iPhone. “She said, ‘Boy, you should get one of these. This is really neat.’” Cook says. “I said, ‘No way. I’m not interested in that.’”

The scene reveals the evolution of an industry leader.

Cook, the director of agronomy at Oakland Hills CC for nearly two decades, eventually flipped his views on smartphones, especially when he realized how effectively using one could improve communication with his membership. The pictures he took with the phone found their way onto his blog, ohccturf.blogspot.com. The blog was created for one purpose: to better educate members about agronomic procedures.

Little did Cook know the blog would inspire other superintendents to improve their own communication efforts. The blog had instant credibility among colleagues because Cook was using a public forum to reach members at an exclusive top-100 club. “I didn’t anticipate it becoming an industry thing,” he says. “It was more trying to explain things like why we aerify, and it kind of grew from that.”

A man who once shunned smartphones also started the Twitter account @OHCCTurf. The account has more than 1,400 followers. Cook, though, concedes his intended audience is minimal. “But I would say it’s enough that there are some regular users of the club who are up there (at the clubhouse) every day who do follow me and do read it and it has really helped in the conversations that occur over lunch because those guys have access to that information,” he adds. “They will bring it up. While I might not have contact or access to dozens and dozens of members, the ones who do follow it follow it pretty regularly and they are better informed, and they help put out some of the fires if you will. It has been really good.”

Accuracy is an emphasis when Cook blogs or tweets. If he needs to, he will pull a textbook to make sure he’s properly explaining a topic. He also stays away from controversial subjects. “I gave a talk last year at a meeting and my point was that if I can do it, then anybody can do it,” he says. “I’m not computer savvy or tech savvy. I would say it took me an hour maybe to set the blog up and it takes me five minutes to post something. It’s so not time-consuming. It’s just you have to think about it.”

Cook also uses social media to promote charitable causes such as Make-A-Wish Michigan and Wee One Foundation. Cook is attempting to summit Nepal’s Ama Dablam in October as part of a Make-A-Wish Michigan fundraising effort. He’s hoping to raise a minimum of $22,500, which equals about $1 for every foot he climbs. The elevation of the mountain is 22,349 feet. More information about his effort can be found at www.steveswishclimb.blogspot.com.

Best Twitter Feed

Scot Dey
Mission Viejo Country Club, Mission Viejo, Calif.

Scot Dey started as a receiver, but he has developed into one of the industry’s best givers.

Dey opened his Twitter account @scotdey upon the advice of industry consultant and GCI columnist Tim Moraghan. He waded into social media carefully, spending his first two years on Twitter learning from others. “I didn’t want to embarrass myself,” he says. Dey was becoming too comfortable observing, so he asked a club member with social media experience for some guidance. “He said, ‘There’s only one way to get your feet wet and that’s get into the water,’” he says.

Dey, coincidentally, works in a region with a major water conundrum. Mission Viejo CC has positioned itself to endure water shortages by using drought-tolerant kikuyagrass. Twitter is an ideal forum to share information on the variety.

“So I’m growing kikuyagrass in Southern California and I’m learning about kikuyagrass every day from guys like Michael Wolpoff at Friendly Hills,” Dey says. “It’s such a little niche grass in this Southern California coastal situation. Where else is it growing? It’s growing down in Australia and in South Africa. So we’re trying to engage on a worldwide level with what guys are doing with kikuyagrass is other areas.”

Dey builds tweeting into his daily schedule. “It doesn’t take long to take what you are doing and write a quick sentence about it and post it,” he says. “This is just a tool. It’s another tool like a shovel or a moisture meter or a vehicle or an irrigation system.”

Kevin Hicks
The Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Course, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

Kevin Hicks recently celebrated his one-year Twitter anniversary. The occasion led to reflection. “I don’t know why I jumped on to be honest with you,” says Hicks, who operates the @golfsuper1992 account. “But it took me 10 minutes to find the value of it with guys throwing out ideas all the time and pictures. Pictures have been awesome. It fits my attention span really well too. 140 characters is about right.”

Hicks quickly left what he calls “the voyeur” stage and started tweeting about almost everything: the beauty of Coeur d’Alene’s floating green, diseases, course projects, equipment repairs, and challenges finding and retaining reliable labor. “You can put a picture out there and say, ‘Hey guys, ‘What do you think this is?’” he says. “I have been on the giving end and receiving end of that. That’s where the value is at in our industry. It’s so quick and so to the point. You don’t have to mess around. Somebody will shoot a picture and what they have done to solve the problem. It’s just awesome for that.”

Some superintendents fear peeving their members or bosses when starting Twitter. Hicks had a different fear. “Addiction,” he says. “That was one of the reasons why I had never been involved before. I’m one of those guys who are constantly trying to learn new stuff. I’m pretty much addicted now. My fear came true.”

Hicks recently obtained a drone, so video represents the next step in his social media evolution. He’s also working with ownership to use the images he collects to bolster Coeur d’Alene’s marketing efforts. “We have purchased some tools which are going to allow us to create a much bigger and much better social media presence,” he says. “Since no one else was doing it, I decided I ought to jump in. I’m the one that’s out here all of the time snapping pictures of nature and things going happening in the golf course. I thought, ‘Why not be involved in that regard?’”

Jason Hooper
Quilchena Golf & Country Club, Richmond, B.C.

Jason Hooper didn’t want to make a mistake and post something that yielded industry ridicule. He quickly realized, though, talking turf with industry peers on Twitter was nothing like raising your hand in class. Hooper created the @superjhooper 2011 as an extension of his blog, which started to “put out 19th hole fires” at Quilchena Golf & Country Club.

“I was a little reluctant to dive into [Twitter] initially and I figured, ‘What the heck? It can’t hurt.’” he says. “I was just overwhelmed with the number of turf industry professionals on there, but what I have always enjoyed about the industry is the willingness to share knowledge and pick each other’s brains and help other guys solve problems. That was just immediate. I can be out on the golf course on the fifth hole, snap a picture of something on the fairway and by the time I got to the sixth green from scouting in the morning, I could have six responses already. ”

Besides sharing an abundance of pictures and anecdotes, Hooper uses Twitter to reveal glimpses into his own life. Superintendents are split on whether to post personal information on Twitter, but personal tweets are helping Hooper build connections with members.

“As you have seen from my account, it’s not just the golf course,” he says. “I share my life on there, from my family to what I like to do with my own personal time. There has been no backlash with the membership. If anything, I feel like I have gained a human connection with our membership and I have got responses from my members like, ‘Hey, I saw your Twitter account and you took your kids over there. That’s great.”

Best Blog

Joey Franco
Brookstone Golf & Country Club, Acworth, Ga.

Joey Franco started his blog, brookstonegcm.blogspot.com, on Valentine’s Day 2014. It was instantaneous career love.

Franco works as the superintendent at a nearly 30-year-old club that operated without a greens committee until 2013. He started blogging to prevent members from having to use Internet search engines to find answers to agronomic questions. Franco also wanted to establish a connection between the maintenance staff and memberships.

Blogging has become a part of Franco’s daily routine. He arrives at work anywhere from 4:30 and 5:15 a.m. and often uses the time to post entries. It’s hard finding a superintendent who blogs as often as Franco. He posted 26 entries last December. Greens committee meeting minutes and co-worker of the month features are among the staples of his blog, and Franco has recently started posting videos. Franco says simple works when communicating with members. He recommends determining a focus before launching a blog.

“First off, I would say, ‘What’s your approach with it? What do you want to do with the blog? Do you just want to supply educational information? Or do you want to build a relationship between the blog and the member?’” he says. “Sometimes you can put some very scientific information in there and these members don’t want to see that. They want to see the basics. I would say try and keep it as basic as possible, supply just enough information. Mine might look a little bit complex, but we are trying to simplify the information and group it to a point where if you want to do videos, have your video screen in the blog. If you do slideshow, have that in there, so members can just look for it.”

Basic information has cultivated a satisfied membership. Complaints about the golf course have been reduced by 90 percent since the blog started, according to Franco. Unlike many clubs, Brookstone has increased its membership in recent years, and Franco understands prospective members can easily find his blog. “The blog is really catching on more and more with members because they see what’s going on,” he says.

Adam Garr
Plum Hollow Country Club, Southfield, Mich.

Adam Garr has an English degree and always wanted to be a writer. Instead, he flipped career paths and became involved in turf.

When he was promoted to superintendent at Plum Hollow Country Club in 2010, he realized he might have a forum to combine his turf and writing passions. He waited a few months and launched his blog, phccgreens.blogspot.com, in January 2011. Garr modeled his early work after a Michigan turf leader – Steve Cook.

“I look at guys like Steve who were out in the forefront when very few guys were communicating to their members this way,” Garr says. “I thought it was a great idea. One of our issues at Plum Hollow before my blog was communication. ”

The situation is different in 2015. Garr uses his blog to tell, and maybe more importantly show, members what happens on the Plum Hollow turf. The posts have helped Garr avoid some of the angst involved in difficult agronomic issues. “I will say it’s a labor of love,” says Garr, who incorporates extensive videos using a GoPro camera and drone into blog entries. Still, Garr has limits. “I sacrifice some sleep,” he says. “One thing I will never do is sacrifice family time.”

The videos are powerful. But Garr says superintendents shouldn’t overlook their writing skills as they trudge into social media.

“Being able to write is a skill I think a lot of superintendents need to have, just to be an effective communicator,” he says. “I see guys on Twitter who sometimes struggle to string a sentence together or they haven’t proofread their blog. When your members are reading something, it needs to be professional and it needs to look like you know what you are doing.

“I have definitely learned along the way things not to say. Not to get on a soapbox. Remember, it’s not your golf course. It’s the members’ golf course. Don’t talk down to them. To somebody starting out, I think the best advice is to be yourself and find your own voice. Be an individual and communicate it in the easiest way that your audience can understand.

Guy Cipriano is GCI’s assistant editor.