John Kaminski Award: John Reilly

John Reilly has pushed more than 20,000 tweets into the digital ether over the last dozen years. Most have promoted his team’s work at the 45-hole Resort at Longboat Key Club on the Gulf Coast of Florida, where he’s director of agronomy. Others have provided snapshots of his everyday life. A recent tweet mentioned his love for a certain brand of foam footwear (no, not Crocs).

And so many of his tweets manage to hit some nerve within the larger #TurfTwitter community. Reilly sparks and inspires and entertains. He focuses on building up others without tearing them down. And he does have a fan base: When we fielded nominations for our annual Super Social Media Awards, Reilly received the most, often along with some variation of, If he doesn’t win an award, then what are you even doing?

A year after winning Best Twitter Feed, Reilly is the recipient of the John Kaminski Award for Social Media Leadership, the top honor for turf social media. Tweeting from his @turfmonkeyboy account, he is some of the glue that binds together people from across the country and around the world.

“We have a mindset in this industry and I just try to mirror that the way I see it,” Reilly says. “If it helps somebody make a decision in the future, that’s good by me.”

Reilly will be honored in person at the 12th annual Golf Course Industry TweetUp — #GCITweetUp23 — scheduled for 3 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8 at Aquatrols Booth #2373 at the GCSAA Conference and Trade Show in Orlando — along with all other 2023, 2022 and 2021 Super Social Media Award winners.

In advance of #GCITweetUp23, we talked with Reilly about Twitter and communication.

How do you use social media for work?

In my world, work, play and life are all sort of connected. That means anything’s game for social media and I never really think about it as a promotion for work — although I always make sure I promote the resort. It could be nature, it could be metrics, it could be a response. I like promoting other things that interest me. I guess it’s a potpourri for me, everything’s open. I never would have thought that this would be the progression of my life, but it’s an interesting part of it — and I do only see it as a small part. When you’re getting a tweet from me, it’s similar to what I’d be doing anyway, taking a picture, making a comment, talking with a member, that kind of thing.

What do you learn from your industry peers on social media?

It’s always open. I like the minimal things — how to paint a stick, how to make sure your cups look good, things like that. … It’s the world we live in. In the beginning, we had pagers and no cell phones — I’m an older guy — then email became a big thing and you answered it in a day or two. That’s not the world we live in, not in our industry. If you get a request from a member or somebody in leadership, they’re expecting a response right away. That’s just how life is, it’s pretty quick and to the punch.

Wait. You had a pager?

I did have a pager once. My first superintendent job was Copperhead at Innisbrook and I quadruple verticut my greens and then went to Augusta. It was my first chance to go to Augusta. I got up in the morning and got the guys going, then drove many miles to Augusta. You can’t bring any (technology) in, so when I got back to my car, those greens were puke yellow and I had many, many pages from my director of agronomy. I drove very quickly back home. I was going to stay overnight, but that didn’t happen. The greens were great a couple weeks later, but they weren’t very good Augusta weekend.

What advice would you give peers looking to boost their social media game?

For me, it’s just being authentic. Just be real. Don’t think about whether something will get hits or whatever the lingo is. Just put it out there and sometimes take chances. John Cunningham is a good industry friend. He’s the GM at Grandfather (Golf and Country Club in North Carolina) now and he used to be a superintendent, and he always preaches, ‘Get a little bit uncomfortable.’ If you’re on the fence, just put it in your drafts and go back to it later. You don’t want to up your Twitter game as much as you want to up your career. Like Herm Edwards always says, ‘Don’t hit send!’