Saltyshores in the Social media, video, internet marketing

Jan 11th 2009

Saltyshore in the Social Media

I was thinking of how many times in the past years of running Saltyshores, that I’ve been like totally blown off. I mean while at boat shows, ICAST etc., I’m looking for products to review.  I’m basically looking for content to add to Saltyshores so everyone can enjoy it.  Me or one of the contributor gets to play with a new toy, the company gets some exposure and readers gets an honest review, everyone wins. One company gave me a couple lures to use and in 30 days, through viral networking, their “new” lure images was loaded and the write up read over 7,000 times.  The lure cost them $2.00 to make.

I  mean I’m not asking for rods, reels, gps etc.. I’m just looking for a lure or gadgets that basically cost them very little. I even offer to send it back after I’m done.  It baffles me that 75% of the companies I speak to looks at me like I’m from outer space, totally clueless.  In the bigger companies most of CEO and people in charge are older people a couple of years from retirement and really don’t understand. One guy I spoke with didn’t even know what youtube.com was and he was the “tech guy”.  It’s funny but very scary if you think about it.

While I was in Louisiana fishing I had a chance to talk extensively with Derek of Boldwater about why many of the companies especially in the fishing industry just don’t seem to care about internet marketing. We both agree that many, if they don’t at least accepted it will eventually fade away. Derek has been in the industry much longer than I and he totally understands the situation. He does all fancy cool website for Jose Wejebe and IGFA (I can’t afford these fancy websites, but he did do the Saltyshores logo for me, thanks Derek!) so he gets to talk to all the successful companies that  “gets it”.

He showed me this video that pretty much explains everything I wanted to say to these companies. However, due to part of them zoning me out and me getting frustrated, because I can tell they are jaded with people wanting free stuff, the message never gets across.  I don’t blame them really. I look around many of these events, and I would dare say that a good percentage of the people walking around are just there to get free stuff or self promote themselves. Some are looking for sponsors to get cash and free stuff from. Many are legit but there are also lots of blow hard that are just full of BS. Honestly, I’d be weary as well.

Well in 2010 this is changing up fast for Saltyshores.com. I don’t know what light switch went on but if you look around, the social media thing is just blowing up. I mean “tweets” on twitter is making the CNN news now. Almost everybody and every company has a facebook or twitter presence. I saw Sony’s BBQ with a facebook page. Heck when I went down to Miami I stopped by a Radiant to get gas and use the bath room.. they have facebook and twitter now, a gas station!  If that’s not big enough for  you, in December Pepsi is saving their 20 mllion dollar skipping out on the super bowl and using the money  for  online advertising.

If you’re a company though, it takes more than just starting a FB or twitter page. You have to have real content. In everyday life if you go to a supermarket to buy a product and it happens to cost little more than another store, you’d probably buy it anyways because it’s a pain to make the drive down the street.  On the internet, if there is something a customer do not like,  the next store is just one click away. If you are trying to market  against the competition you better make the first impression count. I deal with many fishing captains that are not very tech savvy. I would go to their website and it hasn’t been updated for 6 to 10 months. That’s the equivalent of having your store open, but there are cobwebs, dirty floors and most of the lights are off. No one knows if you are open or still in business and many would just leave. I know I would.

The success of Saltyshores derives from “real quality” content. Content you can’t get anywhere else.  Much of the content you get for free on Saltyshores you usually have to pay for in a magazine. They are not your normal every day fishing forum photos of a guy holding a fish up with a boga.  The photos and videos and article on Saltyshores gets shared with friends, colleges and family members via social media.  Saltyshores is always fresh and active.  Readers of Saltyshores are here to enjoy the photos, videos, reviews, stories and interesting articles. There are many fishing websites out there but none as unique, diverse and active as Saltyshores.

Almost fifty percent of our daily visitors are loyal repeat readers. The other fifty percent are viral  or are coming from search engines. People are searching for “Saltyshores”, our contributors and products we write about.  Google is the number one search engine in the world bar none. Saltyshores is so active, relevant and Google friendly, most of the articles gets indexed by Google within 10 minutes of publishing.  I don’t know if it’s good or bad but some sports fishing magazines refuse to print my photos, as they believe we are getting “too much exposure”.

The snow ball effect is happening all around us. As of this writing Facebook has over  350 million users from 100 million just a year a go, from 1 million in 2004. I do not know where all this social media thing is going and do not claim to be the “expert”.  I do know that when fortune 500 companies are starting to pay attention and pulling ads from the Superbowl, there’s probably a pretty dam good reason to be involved.

Mean while, here’s the video of the statistics on social media, I think you will enjoy it.. it’s an eye opener.