What use of social networking for a scuba diving equipment niche can be effective?
What I want to do is sell scuba diving equipment. I could consider getting into promotion of vacations related to scuba diving. As I go along and get some kind of traffic I am sure to come up with new directions to follow with my website. Maybe I will create some new sites and/or promote WA.
To date my posts describe and discuss and review equipment. I am promoting some more technical equipment and have one post related to wreck salvage and will do more related to commercial diving, gold dredging and salvage that are not just discussions of equipment, but involve a little history and story telling. I would like to generate commentary from readers, but I suspect it is not a subject that will develop a lot of feedback.
As required by the training here I am enrolled on Facebook, twitter, google+ and pinterest. I have lived in Asia for the last 32 years. A lot of the time I did not have internet access and there was a stretch in the 90s in the Philippines with no telephone or TV (or electricity or clean water) and recently with google, Facebook and others blocked here in China. Until the last couple of years there wasn't a reliable vpn available here. The point of this history recitation is that I do not have a big historical social network to draw upon. There are social platforms in China that are very effective here, but are heavily monitored by the government. I am leaving China in another month and don't plan to maintain contact with people here.
Facebook doesn't seem like a platform to share my website with. Sharing there just seems like spamming. I suppose it is the same with google+. I can easily generate followers at pinterest. It remains to be seen if traffic will come from that, but I feel somewhat hopeful there. At twitter, generating followers is slow going, and again what I write about regarding diving just doesn't seem to be a subject for that platform. Of all the people who have emailed me at all my addresses over the years, not one is on twitter.
Where is my thinking and approach right or wrong? I'd welcome any ideas.
Thanks.
Recent Comments
16
See scuba diving that interest me big-time I know nothing about it but well and I meant I’m well I’m allergic to shellfish so on my honeymoon when I found out I was allergic to shellfish don’t swim in the ocean because it’s full of plankton which is shellfish anyway on a will and would read any blog about it ,I’m in Canada we don’t scuba dive a lot here see we have this giant waterfalls and it’s not real wise to scuba dive anywhere around it it makes you under toes I think probably nasty I’m not scared of the water now anyway so post lots of pics please
Your friend HAP 33
Hi in my experience I understand you want to sell this equipment but people are interested in your stories first like a blog. You can start by telling them what to expect when they first dive as new people to diving will be very interested this may take them down a pathway similar to attending aircraft simulator lessons for passengers. I'm sure the insights you can give amateur and professionals alike would be of great interest then you can have your keywords direct them to a site you are selling the equipment on. Just a thought everyone relates to a story.
Regards
Wildgeese or Steve
Thanks for your input. I wrote this last July after I had just started my website. I now have somewhere around 170 posts on the site and have written about 300,000 words there and am quite active on instagram, facebook, pinterest and twitter.
Dear j52powell,
The same experience with me to use vpn in China, but now I have a reliable VPN with stable IP service. it is not convenient to work with social media marketing without vpn. if you write article blog with content that followers interest in, you are easily to get more traffic with website and social media,pinterest, instagram,facebook,twittter is great source to promote scuba diving themes. but more of the divers will be more interest in underwater creatures and ocean life conservation, you would like to write something with this hot topic.I will write some articles about how to get more traffic with instagram,twitter, facebook and pinterest.
On social media, people are not interested in scuba equipment too much, as you say. My website has branched into the promotion of liveaboard and resort diving locations. For promotion, I use a lot of photos and videos of undersea life and have developed a pretty sizable following on Pinterest and Instagram.
Yes, good marketing for promotion resort and diving location, also you can promote with diving training, it is very popular and huge market, I use to write articles about diving course, there is large search volume, you should try to write this kind of articles as diving instructor.
Hey Joe,
Try Facebook and Instagram. Facebook & Instagram Business Marketing 201 by TonyHamilton Instagram 101: Posts and Reposts with Canva, Part 1 by jetrbby80316
There are lots of tutorials here for them.
Monica
Also, in China I need a vpn for my cell phone if I want to use instagram. I am leaving China in a month, so I think I will wait until then to get involved with instagram.
Here we have wechat and qq. I have noticed that wechat is used by many in the Philippines (where I am going), so I may look at opportunities to use that platform, as well. In China wechat is very widespread.
Very interesting... actually, I have never heard of wechat and qq. I'll have to look them up and get educated.
The Philippines... how exciting! What will you be doing there?
I will be doing this website and hopefully making enough money to support myself before long. I have a household in the Philippines and previously lived there continuously for 14 years. For the last 11 years I spent all my school break times there (2-3 months per year).
See more comments
You may want to detail the procedure of diving from step to step for those who want to try diving but still not confident to do it. By then, you can introduce the equipment, their function, how they can help plus discuss some safety precautions for divers.
Just an idea. Hope this may help. For a more exciting diving, you can also site examples and introduce new gadgets that they can explore.