POMA Donation: Social Media Marketing Crash Course

One day of consultation from Sherry Kerr of Outdoor Media Resources for initiating or enhancing your social media marketing program.

Social media marketing is no longer optional, and having a Facebook page is not the same as having a marketing program. We will work with the winning bidder to:

• evaluate existing marketing efforts and assets
• determine what you need to accomplish through social media
• create a strategy
• plan tactics for engaging an online community and “getting found” online
• create accounts/pages and/or enhance existing pages.

We’ll also show you many tips for marketing your brand online, along with do’s and don’ts. We’ll include such platforms as blogging, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other video sites, LinkedIn, social bookmarking, etc. As time permits, we will also address other inbound marketing activities with which social media is integrated, such as search engine optimization (SEO), content development, email marketing, websites, landing pages, and more.

Your one-day crash course will save you months of trial and error and significantly advance your social media marketing efforts.

Available to individuals, businesses, and organizations. (No agencies, please.)

Consultation can be by phone and web or in OMR’s office in Anniston, Alabama.

Sherry Kerr is an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional with over 21 years of experience doing Public Relations and Marketing Communications exclusively for the outdoors industry.

Get Back to Basics

Sometimes as a hunter I have to wonder what a new guy must think when he decides to try to break into the hunting game. He has to wonder how successful he will be if he doesn’t have all those new gadgets on the market today. You and I started we hunted in hand me down clothes, with grandpas second generation gun, a box of cartridges from three different manufacturers with different grain bullets and an Old Timer pocket knife. But these days we have to have the newest and best, it seems like these days our passion runs through our wallets and not our veins.

Before you jump out of your chair, pump your arm and say “hell yes”, understand it’s not that simple. We can blame the TV shows that only show the biggest bucks and magazines that talk about the new-fangled gadgets that make us better hunters, but the newest and biggest sells, so that is what they market. When is the last time you bought a copy of “Small Buck” magazine or bought a new bow that makes you shoot like a beginner. Newer and bigger sells.

Should we be happy shooting something other than the biggest buck with the best bow or fanciest rifle? In the last few years I have seen some really strange things come on the market that they say you have to have if you want to harvest biggest bucks. Things like rear view mirrors for our tree stand or little plastic butt hole extractors that we have to have to be great hunters. Your probably saying “Come on Doak, that’s a ridiculous analogy”, but there have been some really good hunters in the past that never dreamed about spending $100 on a pair of scent lock pants or $10 on a lighted arrow noc. Our hunting numbers have dropped over the past several years. Could it be because any potential new hunter feels he has to spend thousands of dollars to get into the sport?

I am writing this blog while my Son-In-Law is driving my grandchildren and me to Texas so my 12 and 13 year old grandsons can shoot a sheep. They are going after a Corisican Ram with a 30 year old 308 rifle. Yesterday while preparing for the hunt I nearly panicked. I realized that my Swarovski Binoculars were at the factory for a bit of a tune up and I didn’t think it would be possible to hunt without them. Then I realized I have hunted a lot of animals without a $1,200 pair of binoculars. I just grabbed a 20 year old pair of Bushnell binoculars and I was good to go. You don’t have to have the best of the best to be a good hunter and have fun.

So grab your children, your grandchildren, your friends and their children and all that 30 year old hunting and camping equipment and go out and enjoy the great outdoors. If our hunting numbers continue to decrease we will loose our sport to the tree-huggers God made the Great Outdoors to be enjoyed and his renewable resources to be harvested and eaten. So through a back strap on the grill and indoctrinate a new hunter to the wonderful sport of hunting.

by Outdoors International

A Few Tips For Training a New Pup

It isn’t easy and it is going to take time! Start with the basics. Sit, stay and come, and make him understand that a command given is to be obeyed. This is done through repetition but keep the sessions short. You must also understand that dog training isn’t a democracy, the pup has to understand that he has no say in what takes place. If the pup gets the idea that he can obey only when he feels like it, you are going to have problems.

There are lots of good books on dog training out there but my favorites are Gun Dog, Game Dog and Family Dog all by Richard Walters and have been in publication for over 30 years. These three great books will help you train your new pup without making lots of mistakes that will create consequences that you might have to live with for years. By avoiding a few common fundamental mistakes, you can help your pup achieve a high level of performance that you will enjoy for years.

Here are a few things in my opinion that you should not do with a new pup.

1. Don’t ever play tug-of-war if you want your pup to retrieve. That teaches him to play keep-away and teaches him he doesn’t have to give up the training dummies. Don’t let him chew or mouth training dummies either if you ever want an edible bird retrieved.
2. Don’t verbally or physically discipline a pup for picking up or carrying something you don’t want him to have. You might send him the message that retrieving is bad. Simply take it away from him.
3. Don’t use different terms for a command. For example, “Here” and “Come” mean the same thing so just pick one and stick with it.
4. Don’t chase a pup because you might scare him, or he might just see it as a game and you will have a harder time teaching him to come on your command.
5. Don’t ignore the small things like occasionally barking in the crate or kennel. Once these behaviors become ingrained, the more difficult they are to break.
6. Don’t let the pup get away with anything like sleeping on the sofa, stealing food, or eating birds that you don’t want him to do for life.
7. Don’t get stuck in a rut. Training in the same place at the same time with drills in the same order doesn’t allow him to think on his own. Teach him to adapt by varying his training grounds and routines.
8. Don’t discipline a dog randomly. Be careful that the pup can connect the discipline directly to his behavior. The same thinking applies to his rewards.

These simple don’ts will help turn you pup into the hunting dog that will give you more pleasure and pride that could possibly be explained in words. Please let me know your thoughts.

by Outdoors International

Another Wolf Bagged in Salmon, Idaho

An Idaho wolf hunter shot this wolf just outside her home near Salmon, Idaho. While waiting for the pack to make their rounds and come near their home again, they looked in the woods below them and there was this wolf. He weighed 127 lbs. He was a collared wolf and by the time they checked it in (1.5 hours later), Fish & Game already knew about the wolf and said they had been hunting for him as this wolf pack had been terrorizing campers lately. They had a couple of guys “treed” in the cab of their pickup all night at a campground a few days earlier. The wolf is now skinned and hanging at their place.

Tags: collared-wolf, Facebook, hunting, idaho-while, linkedin, time, upon-something, wolf

10 Tips for Making Facebook Work for You

July 21, 2009 by sherrygkerr  
Filed under Featured, Outdoor Blogger Resources (TWO)

6 Comments

A few days ago I got an email from an outdoor writer/photographer who said he has closed his Facebook account. He had created the account in the expectation of its being good for business. Instead, it had been a distraction and a nuisance, as friends played games, conducted polls, and otherwise filled his page with non-work-related apps. Not only was Facebook not good for his business, it was detrimental to his getting work done.

It really made me think about how I use Facebook and how writers, editors, and photographers can benefit from it rather than have their work disturbed. I’ll admit that until fairly recently, I disliked Facebook intensely. While I opened an account with business purposes in mind, it quickly turned into a place to connect with old friends. Not that I didn’t want to do that, but high school friends and business associates didn’t belong on the same page. I also experienced the same distractions as the writer who closed his account: games, virtual hugs, teddy bears, polls, and the like that didn’t appeal to me, especially in a forum where I’m trying to do business. So I just connected on Twitter and avoided Facebook.

But the past year has taught me that the outdoor industry’s clients, consumers, and participants are online, and Facebook is the number one platform where they congregate. Any of us who aren’t also there are missing a valuable means of connecting with them and with one another. And the networking benefits alone make it worthwhile to me. In the past month alone, I’ve met writers, editors, photographers, outfitters, prospective clients, wildlife agency people, and others online with whom I might work in the future. I’ve also introduced two photographers to multiple editors, helped several writers connect with editors who were looking for their expertise, and facilitated numerous introductions between people who might have common business interests.

If the writer who left Facebook had asked me how to use it more effectively to benefit his business, here are 10 tips I would have passed along:

1. Hide all the games, virtual hugs, bunnies, flowers, quizzes, and anything else you find distracting. These don’t have to appear on your page.
2. Create a business page to separate business from pleasure. Invite your business friends to become “fans” of the page. Personally, I’m a little turned off by that term, but it’s a connection nonetheless. Post to it or start a discussion every day.
3. Use the business page for business interactions. Give fans a reason to be there. Post teasers and links to current articles and blog posts, initiate discussions, post photos of business travel or samples of your portfolio, talk about what’s going on at your magazine or website. Are you a book author? Here’s about the best book promotion I’ve ever seen.
4. Set up “lists” of your friends. I have lists for Outdoors, hometown friends, Raindogs (look it up), and other categories. When I just want to see what the Outdoors list is talking about, that’s the view I choose. When I’m only interested in the Raindogs, I choose that tab.
5. Build your network. This can only be useful if you have a network. Chances are, most of the people in your email address book are on Facebook; look for them. One easy way to find connections for your network is to look at the friends of your friends, then invite the ones you know or want to know.
6. Promote your page. If you blog, write magazine articles, have a TV show, produce hunting videos, have a website, or have any other public presence, provide a link to your Facebook page. Post a link on Twitter, and add it to your LinkedIn profile.
7. Engage. If you are simply posting to your page but not engaging, having conversations, responding to others’ posts, and being part of a community, you are doing it wrong.
8. Produce some content exclusively for each platform. If you use a social media application like TweetDeck or FriendFeed, it’s easy to post to, say, both Twitter and Facebook at the same time. But don’t make it automatic. Those who follow you in both places don’t want to read all the same posts twice. Also, the practices of Twitter – hashtags, @ replies, retweets, text-speak, the limitations of 140 characters, and other contrivances must be annoying to non-Tweeting Facebook friends.
9. Step outside your comfort zone. Don’t limit your friends to people you already know. Make new connections. Read profiles and learn about other people’s professions and interests. Make and ask for introductions.
10. Talk to people like me. Let us know what you’re working on, whom you need to meet, what types of markets you’re looking for, the connections you’d like to make. Maybe I can make the introduction you need or at least brainstorm the project you’re trying to figure out.

What would you tell the writer who left Facebook about making it a productive place? How do you use it for business?

Connect with Sherry on Facebook

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Tags: 10 Tips, Facebook, outdoor writer, Twitter