Another great article on the slowing of the Social Media craze.  I have started to hear from the business world social media is still strong but losing the momentum.  The blog Tom Johansmeyer posted on GADLING.com, The future of travel: the real impact of mobile and social media, cover a number of points in the Travel industry I can concur is happening in the Golf Industry social media. Here are some of Tom’s points…

Even with social media and mobile technology showing incredible rates of adoption, skeptics remain. Everyone has a friend or family member who "doesn’t do" Facebook or thinks Twitter is somewhere between worthless and moronic. That said, marketing teams in the travel industry are watching these trends closely. In fact, the intersection of mobile device and app adoption with slowing social media market penetration could lead to interesting developments for the travel industry … and thus for you.

Golf’s Third Putt

I also agree the Golf industry will not see much more increase in the number Golfers interested in Social media.  My studies are showing that Golf’s social media will only hit around 55% of the American golfing public by 2012.   Tom explains further…

Okay, let’s start with social media take-up in the United States. Right now, 63 percent of online Americans use social media. This is only expected to hit 67.5 percent by 2013. What does this mean? The marketing folks who use social media need to do a better job of mining the online communities they already have. As you probably know, hotels, airlines and such are all over Facebook and Twitter, so they definitely fall into this trend.

I have been saying for several years now the same thing Tom has been saying about how the Golf industry needs to do a much better job of using social media.   More needs to be done in mining the online and offline communities for golfers and educate those who are not comfortable with the internet so they will stay online where more information can be offered them on Golf.

Tom concludes his blog with a statement that I would like to echo…

It’s nice to hear the platitudes about mobile and social media bandied about, but all that is meaningless until money changes hands. Talk is cheap, as they say, and it’s consumer behavior that provides the best indicator of what the future will look like.

The future of golf is in its ability to use social media and social/business networking to bring more golfers online.  Since most of the golfing populations is not online and/or not up to speed with understanding the latest in technology more needs to be done to educate the golfing public on the virtues of social media.  I have a few suggestions on what can be done..Tom has offered a few to consider..what is your thoughts on what Golf needs to do to bring more golfers online?

Let me know how I can help.