This is definitely one of the downsides of online marketing: people out to make your life miserable. Hopefully the fine folks over at Engage Your Divers can get back up and running soon without any loss of information. When you’re back up, please share with us what happened so we can all take the necessary preventative measures with our web sites. Stronger passwords or something more malicious?

On June 7, 2010 Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4, the next iteration of the popular iPhone mobile device. On the 15th, pre-orders started in the US. Despite some issues, the initial batch online and at both Apple and AT&T stores sold out on the first day to the tune of over 600,000 devices. In less than one day.

Here are some ways we can be (almost) as successful as Apple in marketing our SCUBA products and classes.

Be proud of your product

If you haven’t seen one of Steve Jobs keynotes, you are missing out. He is an incredible presenter and you can see that he is proud of the products he is presenting. Jobs uses words like “magical”, “amazing” and “revolutionary” to describe his products.

Even if your underwater basket weaving distinctive specialty isn’t magical or revolutionary, be proud of your classes. Every class you teach and product you sell is at least “great”, but I’m sure you can come up with more adjectives.

While you should be proud of your current class, be even more excited for the next one. Jobs frequently uses a “one more thing” technique to keep building the excitement. Open Water SCUBA is awesome because it gets people certified to dive, but have you heard about my Advanced Open Water SCUBA class? It’s incredible! Far less class time, more fun dives building on existing skills and far more fun! Enjoying Advanced Open Water SCUBA? You’re going to love my Rescue Diver course! You get the idea.

If you aren’t proud of your classes, stop teaching because you’re doing us all a disservice. If you aren’t proud of the products you sell, why are you selling them?

Roll with the punches

During his keynote announcing the iPhone 4, Jobs was unable to get online for a live demo at one point due to the number of people on the wifi network. Instead of freaking out or stuttering and stammering, he made a joke about it and moved on.

A customer wants a Mares regulator and you only carry Aqualung? No worries! Know the competing product and be able to sell the benefits of what you carry over the competition. A student in your class starts asking too many questions (I typically don’t think there are too many, but we’ve all had THAT student) or is falling behind in the pool? Don’t waste the time of your other students who might get frustrated, but work with the “trouble” student outside of normal class time so everyone is happy.

Allowing yourself to lose your focus can make you come across as uncomfortable or unprofessional. Stick to your game while still taking care of your students and customers.

Scarcity is your friend

Oh this regulator? Super popular, this is our last one. Our upcoming Palau trip? Sold out the first day, but I’ve requested some extra spots, should I put you down if I’m able to get any more? Next weeks Instructor Development Course? I’m not sure we can get your course materials in time, but I’ll try.

Apple and AT&T sold out of over 600,000 iPhone 4 pre orders in less than 24 hours. The AT&T servers weren’t working well and a lot of people were angry. Do you think they stopped trying to get a new iPhone though? Not likely.

As scammy as it may feel, scarcity is an incredibly powerful marketing tool. That’s why stores have one day sales and any infomercial has an “if you order now” statement. Don’t be afraid to use it.

Despite the obvious differences in businesses, it is valuable to look at leaders from other industries to gain some additional marketing insights. Apple is one of many companies that has built an almost fanatical customer base that your SCUBA business should be more than happy to emulate. What marketing ideas have you borrowed from industries outside of SCUBA?

It’s 3 AM. You’ve had too much Caffeine. The thought crosses your mind, “I haven’t looked at my site recently.”

The Big “What If?”

What if it’s not where you left it?

It was on page one for your selected SCUBA-related search terms. Now, thanks to the Google Caffeine update, it’s gone. Or maybe it’s gone completely and no one told you.

These are easy situations to fix.

First, go do a Google search for your preferred keywords. Make sure you aren’t logged in, otherwise your rankings could be skewed based on your activities.

I personally am excited about the Caffeine update. See why? (Sorry, the image is long)

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Sorry again about the long image. The key takeaway is that it appears to the searcher that I am the top eight results for the search term “SCUBA Marketing”. We can thank David for getting the first search result via Google Maps. The next seven are due to the fact that Google likes blogs. I’ve been gone for two months, Google does an update and I move up?

That’s the simple power of a blog.

Do you have a blog? If not, why not? If you do, do I know about it?

It’s Gone Gone

It’s quite possible your site has gone down completely. If you don’t notice it and no one tells you, you may never know. The thing is, many hosts offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee. If you do the math, that’s still almost 45 minutes per month your site is our of commission. So we can’t get too upset if it goes down every once in a while, but wouldn’t you like to know when it does?

I use a free tool from Pingdom that notifies me via SMS and/or email whenever my site goes down. They even have an iPhone app so I can check in whenever I want.

It’s a quick, effortless way for me to make sure my site is available for visitors to see. I strongly encourage everyone to setup an alert for their web site. Site down regularly? I host with Hostgator and have been very happy. They do have outages, but far fewer and shorter than anywhere else I’ve hosted over the years.

How did the Google Caffeine update impact your search results?

Photo via beverlyealdama

When I teach an Open Water SCUBA class, my purpose is to create a safe diver who had fun and will continue to dive. When I teach an Advanced Open Water SCUBA class, my purpose is to further educate my divers in a controlled environment while showing them some of the many options for types of diving available. When I teach Rescue Diver, my purpose is to make my students hate me because I drive them hard, but at the end of the certification, they appreciate the lessons learned.

For every class we teach, we have a greater purpose than just issuing a certification. The teaching methods may change slightly, the types of language (verbal and non-verbal) may change and the overall tone is different.

Below is a fun example combining the opening music from Baywatch with clips from Lost (an addiction of mine). For those who haven’t seen, Lost is a serious show with a lot of mystery. Baywatch is…well, Baywatch. When we take just the music from the cheesy “fun” show and apply it creatively to a mysterious, serious show, everything changes.

Before you teach your next SCUBA class, consider what message you’re trying to convey. Are you doing it?

By not understanding the purpose of your classes, you could be training your students inadequately for the tasks at hand. Realizing the subtle changes can impact the quality of your divers will help you train more effectively. Teach in a way that reflects the purpose of your classes.

Photo via hawaii

Are you still confused about the various tools available to you on Facebook? Between Pages, Profiles and Groups, there is definitely room for confusion. Plus, this whole social network marketing thing couldn’t actually work, could it? Be confused no more with this simple explanation of which you need!

Profiles

The Profile is your personal activity on Facebook. You have great control over who can see what as well as the greatest ability to “enhance” your account (if Farmville is considered an enhancement). This is what the majority of people have and can be the most powerful tool in your toolkit. I’ve generated far more SCUBA instruction business from my personal profile than any other online tool.

If you are an independent SCUBA instructor, this can be your most valuable tool because you are marketing yourself through personal relationships. So get a profile, share some fun stuff (be sure to include SCUBA-related content from time to time, but not constantly) and start making online friends.

Groups

Groups were a natural evolution on Facebook and have been around quite a while. Direct from Facebook, a group is explained as:

Facebook Groups are the place for small group communication and for people to share their common interests and express their opinion. Groups allow people to come together around a common cause, issue or activity to organize, express objectives, discuss issues, post photos and share related content.

Groups are not the place for Nick’s Independent SCUBA Instruction or Florida’s Best SCUBA Store, LLC!

I went in search of good examples of a Facebook Group being used correctly for SCUBA and after several pages of search results, I came up empty. Lots of businesses and organizations, but not really meeting the true definition of a Group. Something like “Divers for wreck discovery” or “Instructors for better buoyancy” would be great (and appropriate) Groups.

Pages

Pages are a relatively new weapon. There even was a period when Facebook would migrate large Groups to Pages, thereby demonstrating that most Groups should actually be Pages. Again, from the horse’s mouth:

Facebook Pages enable public figures, businesses, organizations and other entities to create an authentic and public presence on Facebook.

If you own a dive center, that’s a business. If you run a dive club, that’s an organization. Even if you’re an independent SCUBA instructor, you’re a business. Inso facto, you are far more likely to need a Page than a Group.

A Simple Test

Ask yourself this question:

Do I want a presence for my general SCUBA business or some very small niche of the SCUBA diving industry?

If it’s for your business, go with a Page. If it’s for some very small niche, you may want to go with a Group. If you’re not sure, be sure to contact me and I can help sort things out.

By establishing the wrong presence on Facebook, you could be wasting a great deal of time, plus running the risk of being shut down for not adhering to the “rules” of Facebook. By understanding the correct usage of Pages and Groups, you can avoid this problem. So get out there, clean up your Facebook presence and beat your competition to your customers.

(H/T to Rich for this post idea)

Photo via Balakov

I am frequently asked, “How do I know if what I’m doing is successful? How do I place value on Twitter followers, Facebook fans, site visitors or email subscribers?”

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Some experts who use new/social media marketing (I hate the term, but it’s frequently used to describe the concept of using tools like blogs and social networks to more passively market) say you can’t track ROI for social media marketing, but it’s not true.

While some people are looking for the ultimate answer, you must first know the ultimate question. Only you can know your own ultimate question for your SCUBA business.

What Do I Want Out Of This?

Everyone has a different goal, but most people agree that eventually they’d like more business.

Some people focus on Twitter followers or Facebook fans. Having a supportive network can be great motivation. If it results in business, you are a success.

Some people focus on site traffic or comments. Also great motivation and site traffic can be a great indicator that people are paying attention to you. Unfortunately, comments aren’t always the best indicator since most people are Spectators, not Critics.

Some people may not even care about real business conversions, they just like chatting with friends on Facebook or Twitter or sharing ideas on a blog. While I think this is great, that methodology keeps these social tools as social tools, not social marketing tools.

My Example

I’m averaging 1.9 comments per post over the last 8 months, which doesn’t seem like a lot, even to me. Every week, unique visitors are up at least 10%, bounce rate is decreasing by at least 1% and time on site is increasing at least 12 seconds despite shorter articles. Twitter followers and Facebook fans are increasing without any form of active recruitment. Email subscribers are increasing almost 20% every week. I now rank on the first page of the search engine results pages (SERPs) for well over 20 different long tail search terms and within the top 3 for many of those.

BIG DEAL

Those numbers really mean absolutely nothing. Sure, I like to pat myself on the back and say, “Good job Nick!” but a pat on the back doesn’t pay for my SCUBA instructor insurance.

From the beginning, my goal has been to eventually focus on SCUBA, both instruction and marketing consulting. Guess what? Mission accomplished

I can’t provide full details just yet, but I have generated enough business from my site to allow me to do this full time. One guy, one site, eight months.

So does all of this blogging and social networking stuff work? You’d better believe it does.

Photo via BrittneyBush

I love thinking to myself, “Self, I wish someone would put out an easy to read graph/chart that proves your point.” In this case, my point was that Twitter is at least as important for marketing your SCUBA business as Facebook. Yesterday, we talked about how important Facebook Fans are, but check out this great chart:

Oh really? It looks like Twitter followers are more important when it comes to creating buyers and brand advocates than your Facebook Fans!

Is Your SCUBA Business Marketing on Twitter?

I’ll be the first to admit, if you live in a very rural area with no dive tourism, you can safely avoid Twitter for now. If your SCUBA business does not match that criteria, why are you not using every free/easy marketing tool at your disposal?

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Be it a blog, Facebook or Twitter, you now wield unimaginable marketing power. You used to have to own a printing press and a radio station to do what you can now do for free. But please, use it for good.

Being a spammy member of any social network is like being a telemarketer for this new decade. Don’t ruin it for all of us and don’t make your SCUBA business look spammy. No one likes spam.

So What Do I Do?

Engage.

Talk to people. Ask questions. Share links (not just your own). See what people are talking about.

DO NOT repeatedly spam your message out (there are gray areas on this one I’ll discuss later). DO NOT exclusively talk about yourself. DO NOT pretend to be an expert.

You’re probably thinking, “Nick, by telling us what to do and what not to do, aren’t YOU proclaiming to be an expert?” There’s honestly no such thing, but I have been doing this a bit and have seen quite a few examples of what works and what doesn’t. These are all recommendations, not rules.

If your SCUBA business is on Twitter, let me know in the comments and I’ll be sure to follow you!

Photo via Severin Sadjina

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I want to talk about…Facebook. Sorry, couldn’t really come up with anything St. Patrick’s related. There’s some liquor ads in this vintage SCUBA ads article if you’re so inclined

Anyhow, yesterday I shared with you that Facebook had overtaken Google in the US for weekly traffic. We’ve had a couple of people share links to their SCUBA Fan Pages, if you haven’t done so yet, take a moment to do so.

Facebook Fans are Buyers and Brand Promoters

For those of you who have already made the commitment to setting up a Page, great job! For those who haven’t, here’s a couple of reasons you should:

That’s right folks, people become Fans of Pages (and their associated businesses) because they intend to buy from those companies and recommend them to their friends. Sounds pretty good, especially since promoting your SCUBA business on Facebook can be completely free.

Why People Become Fans on Facebook

I’m a bit stingy with becoming a Fan of many Pages, so the following graph is incredibly accurate for my usage and apparently I’m not alone:

Even if you don’t offer discounts and promotions to your SCUBA diver (why not?), they still want to connect with you because they’re a customer of your SCUBA business, they want to show support, it’s fun, to stay up to date and to feel like part of a community.

Setting up a Page is incredibly easy and in the coming weeks, I’ll be taking you through a guided tour from first signing up to some advanced customization techniques.

Sounds like an ideal customer to me, so what are you waiting for?

Photo via kern.justin

There are still some of you (you know who you are) who think that using social networks to build your SCUBA business is just a fad and that it doesn’t really work.

However, many of you naysayers are the same people promoting Google ads.

Let me ask this: does it make more sense to advertise your SCUBA store in the stores bathroom or out on the curb? If you said the bathroom, please subscribe, you’re going to need help

If you agree that advertising where people can see your business makes sense, then shouldn’t we do the same online? If you’re still with me on this idea, the latest information from Hitwise tells us we definitely should be on social networks:

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That’s right folks, Facebook has officially received more visitors in a week than Google.

Is your SCUBA business on Facebook? Share a link in the comments!

Photo via inju

So far, we’ve looked at why we should be using email marketing, how to collect addresses and generating content, now we need to look at how to get your message out to your SCUBA customers.

Using Your Email Program

You may already have Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail or some other email program on your computer, so you could just use that, right? Wrong. You could use that – if you wanted to look like an amateur.

There are a few problems with trying to do it yourself:

1. Your design will not be consistent. The built in design tools rarely follow true HTML email guidelines, so your message will appear different across the many systems (not just the desktop programs, but GMail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, etc) that your subscribers may be using.
2. You will not be able to track your success. We always need to keep ROI in mind, so we need a tool that will tell us how many people received our email, how many opened it, what they clicked on, etc.
3. You will not be able to send easily. Most ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) use something called throttling. Throttling limits the number of emails you can send in a certain period of time. Most ISP’s don’t publish these numbers to discourage spamming. That makes for a lot of trial and error.
4. You will not be able to easily manage subscribes and unsubscribes. People will have to reply, you’ll have to mark them somehow and hope you don’t message them again.

Using An Email Service Provider (ESP)

ESP’s fix all of the aforementioned problems. The only possible downsides are a learning curve and expense. We all know the SCUBA industry is a little slow right now, so we’d like to avoid any unnecessary expenses.

Luckily for your SCUBA business, I’ve tested quite a few ESP’s including AWeber, Constant Contact, Vertical Response, MadMimi and MailChimp.

I <3 MailChimp

I use MailChimp and LOVE their service. Here are a few of my main reasons:

1. Their Forever Free plan allows you to have up to 500 people on your list for…you guessed it: Free. Most SCUBA stores won’t need more than that.
2. They’re funny people. Humor is scattered around the site everywhere. I can appreciate that.
3. TONS of design options. They can mimic your site, they have basic templates you can customize, professionally designed templates or basic yet eye-appealing templates. Options are always good.
4. Their email marketing system is easy to use. It’s all wizard-based so you just follow the steps. If you need help, they have great instructional videos at every step of the process.
5. You can use existing lists as long as you captured the email addresses legitimately. Other providers won’t let you use lists unless they are built using their systems.

There are tons of advanced features in their email marketing platform we’ll discuss later.

Sign Up Now

Go get your free account, try it out. I’ll be giving some getting started pointers soon, but you’ll need an account to try them.

About the MailChimp links: in the name of full disclosure, the links to MailChimp are affiliate links. If you use the Forever Free plan, which I expect most SCUBA businesses to use, I get nothing. So, affiliate yes, retirement no If you think I’m recommending them because of their affiliate program, you’d be mistaken. All of the other providers offer real cash money affiliate incentives, MailChimp doesn’t.

Photo via Mzelle Biscotte

Email marketing is incredibly powerful and, now that you know how to collect email addresses, it’s time to generate some content. Generating content for your newsletter should be the easiest part of this process.

Your SCUBA Business is Busy

I don’t care what you may think about the economy, your business (as long as you’re running a real SCUBA business) is busy. You’re teaching classes, getting new equipment and going on dive trips. This is all content for your newsletter.

Give ‘Em What They Want

Your email newsletter subscribers gave you their address because they want to hear from you! So tell them everything going on with your SCUBA business. Independent SCUBA instructors, stores and dive resorts can all do this!

Tip for the Independent SCUBA Instructors

If you are an independent instructor and don’t have as much activity as a store, another great place to get content is from the Internet. Share articles you find interesting. This creates a personal connection between you and your students.

A great place to start is by subscribing to our list of SCUBA blogs.

Content Length

I haven’t seen any real scientific studies discussing the perfect length of your emails, but I like to keep mine short – no more than 2 pages when printed, preferably 1. People have short attention spans and are inundated with email, so being brief works to your advantage.

I also strongly recommend only sharing an intro to your content via email and linking out to the full article (preferably your blog). This not only keeps your emails even shorter, but it provides an excellent tracking opportunity we’ll discuss later.

I Can’t Write

If you can read, you can write. If you can operate a computer to read this article, you can hit the spell check button. That’s good enough for most people. If you really have a phobia of writing your own unique articles, use the method described above for independent instructors and just share information you find interesting.

What kinds of content do you share in your email newsletter?

Photo via churl

Email marketing can be an incredibly powerful tool, but some people see it as spam (even if done correctly) or incredibly difficult to begin. As we saw last time, email marketing has an incredibly high return on investment and should not be avoided. Both independent SCUBA instructors and SCUBA stores should be actively collecting email addresses.

Collecting Emails

Your SCUBA store or instructor business should be collecting email addresses immediately and at all possible opportunities. While the US Federal CAN-SPAM Act is actually fairly vague and doesn’t do much to protect consumers, we should all still abide by a common sense stance on email marketing: If you would hate the email marketing message you receive, don’t send it yourself.

“Harvesting” email addresses is the main legal issue we’re looking at today for our SCUBA business emails. Using email addresses that you (or a paid list provider) have simply found instead of having been given is considered harvesting and is in violation of SPAM guidelines.

Independent SCUBA Instructor Email Address Collection

As an independent SCUBA instructor, I find it incredibly easy to collect email addresses. The PADI student record folder has a line for email addresses. Be sure to tell your students that you MAY email them about upcoming classes or promotions. This disclaimer makes it legal. Simple, huh?

SCUBA Store Email Address Collection

SCUBA stores have a variety of options to collect email addresses:

• Have your SCUBA instructors get them from students with the disclaimer that they’re going back to the store too.
• Place a sign up form on your checkout counter. Offer discounts, promotions or local diving news.
• Create a customer database to help your customers track their purchases, trips and maintenance. Get their email address to help keep them up to date.
• When doing outside events, offer contests if people leave their email address.

Online Email Address Collection

In case you hadn’t noticed, here at New SCUBA Marketing there are a variety of ways to subscribe to the email newsletter:

• The link to the right.
• On the Facebook Page.
• For new or search visitors, there’s a popup.
• Contests.

EVERYWHERE

Give your students and customers the opportunity to give you their email address as many ways possible.

How have you built your SCUBA email subscriber list?

Photo via KirrilyRobert

I had an email marketing related article planned for today, but Duane at Precision Diving forced my hand.

Duane wrote an article discussing a very simple, yet incredibly powerful technique to market yourself as an independent SCUBA instructor: go SCUBA diving.

“Duh” You Say?

I was fortunate to “grow up” in a SCUBA program that focused heavily on SCUBA diving skills, but I frequently ran into SCUBA instructors from other dive centers while teaching classes that couldn’t teach their way out of a wet paper bag.

The only dives they ever did were with students.

They didn’t talk to anyone outside of their group.

By virtue of being mediocre SCUBA divers, not diving regularly and not engaging with other divers, they told people do take classes somewhere else.

Go read Duane’s article, he’s completely correct.

Online Vs. Offline Marketing

I know I focus on the online marketing side of your SCUBA business, but the bottom line is that if you’re not out in the world and available and are a mediocre (at best) instructor, all of the online marketing in the world won’t help you.

Get your SCUBA diving skills figured out first, then market yourself.

Photo via tracer.ca

Twitter, Facebook and Buzz are the talk of the town, but if you aren’t connecting with your SCUBA customers via email marketing, you are missing one of the most lucrative opportunities available to your SCUBA business.

The Statistics Behind Email Marketing

According to the Direct Marketing Association, Return on Investment (ROI) of email marketing was $43.62 per dollar spent in 2009. The next highest ROI came from Internet search advertising at only $21.85 per dollar spent.

Furthermore, Merkle found that Social Networkers actually use email MORE than their non-social networking counterparts. 42% of respondents who use social networks check their email 4 or more times a day. The great news is 63% of those users use the same email for their social network notification as they do their permission-based email newsletters.

Over the coming weeks, I will discuss how to build your subscriber list, what tools to use to distribute your email newsletters to your SCUBA customers and ideas for generating content.

Are you using an email newsletter? How is it working for you?

Image via Yandle

We all go through busy periods in our life, I happen to be right in the middle of one. As these events happen, we need to reduce distractions to be as effective as possible. Personally, I’ve been spending a little extra time cleaning up my Twitter account to eliminate noise as much as possible.

I Have a Billion Followers

It’s Ashton’s fault for racing CNN to one million followers. This created a complex amongst some people that makes them think followers are the most important thing ever.

I disagree.

Making connections, which will hopefully either turn into friendships or business is what is most important.

Simple Math

If you can use a SCUBA dive table (no Wheel needed), this math should make sense.

Let’s say you are one of those Twitter “Rockstars” who has 2,000 followers.

If those 2,000 followers update once every two days (this is just an assumption, not based on any real statistics), that’s 1,000 updates per day.

If you sleep 8 hours per day, that leaves you with 16 hours to be on Twitter (please, don’t stop to eat, shower or go SCUBA diving).

That means you need to be reading 62.5 tweets per hour, a little over one per minute.

Sure, they’re only 140 characters (max), so that should be easy.

But now factor in the idea that you may want to REPLY or CREATE your own original content (you know, to actually ENGAGE), that minute gets really short.

Now lets say you are one of the small handful of EXTREME “Rockstars” and you have 20,000+ followers. Multiply by a factor of 10.

If you wanted to truly ENGAGE all of your followers, you’d need to be reading 625 updates per hour or almost 10 and a half per minute.

I Think this is Absurd

If you have and mention/flaunt that you have 5, 10 or 20 thousand followers you are simply showing me that you don’t understand Twitter as a communications tool and only see it as a marketing tool.

If that’s you, I’ve probably unfollowed you

What do you think? Do you want to be one of 5,000+ followers?

As SCUBA instructors, our job functions often include teacher, marriage counselor (for the couples in the class) and therapist (for people taking the class because they once almost drowned). An often overlooked skill set is that of a career counselor. In order to build our programs or dive centers, we need staff, therefore we need to teach as if every student wants to become a SCUBA instructor.

Push Every Student Through the SCUBA System

I’m not advocating that we create barely passable instructor generation machines, but we need to start thinking that every student that signs up for our Open Water SCUBA classes actually wants to become a SCUBA Instructor.

I didn’t know it when I signed up for my Open Water SCUBA course, but on my first pool dive, I knew I wanted to become an instructor. Luckily, I was in an environment that made that dream a reality.

The Ski Instructor Who Hates Their Job

Imagine going to a ski resort for your first time. You’re excited, otherwise you wouldn’t spend the $100+ for the lift ticket and gear rental. You decide to take a lesson so you are less likely to kill yourself. The instructor acts bored, complains about their pay and doesn’t really want to be there.

You probably won’t enjoy yourself very much and aren’t very likely to learn the skills you need.

Now imagine someone who is excited. A little too excited. It’s a beautiful day, they’re going to show you the best parts of the mountain and they invite you back when done. They don’t talk about the money, they simply love what they’re doing.

It would be next to impossible to keep the idea out of your head, “Wow, being a ski instructor would be incredible! Ski every day, meet lots of people, travel to all the best resorts!”

Plant the Open Water SCUBA Instructor Seed Early by Simply Loving Your Job

If you are having a great time while teaching and have a staff that obviously loves what they’re doing, you will see increases in your continuing education ratios all the way to the top of the SCUBA hierarchy.

This Works for SCUBA Resorts Too

A few years ago, I traveled to Cozumel and went diving with SCUBA Tony. Although my wife and I have an unofficial rule of not revisiting the same destination twice, we often discuss returning to Cozumel to dive with Tony because he loves diving. Not only does he love diving, but when talking about the island, we could tell he loves Cozumel. He made the trip enjoyable, his personality showed a passion for his business and it pays off in a steady stream of referral business.

Whenever I visit Hawaii (I have friends who live there, so this doesn’t count in my repeat-SCUBA-trips rule), I try to dive with Keller Laros and Jack’s Diving Locker because they enjoy what they’re doing and share that enjoyment with me.

On the other hand, we traveled to Fiji last year and have less interest in returning because the staff didn’t have the same level of enthusiasm and passion.

Start the SCUBA Career Path Early

The PADI teaching system requires promoting continuing education while teaching. Although it may not be appropriate to promote the Instructor Development Course during an Open Water SCUBA Diver course, why not start mentioning it in the Advanced Open Water SCUBA Diver course?

How quickly do you start identifying potential instructor candidates?

Photo via larryzou@

I’ve argued with myself about if I should have a little rant or talk about one of the many other topics on my mind now. It’s Monday, and I slept terribly, so it’s a rant day

A Tale of Two Twitters

I have two Twitter accounts. One I’ve had for several years and most of my connections are people in the real estate industry (my current day job). There are some that are still just posting their new listings, but for the most part I’ve stopped following them. Although the real estate industry has its quirks that can annoy me at times, this Twitter stream is fairly conversational and less marketing broadcast.

Now lets look at my SCUBA Twitter account. Since I’ve seen that the SCUBA industry is not as far along as real estate when it comes to using social networking tools (Realtors have a lot of free time, I think), I expected fewer people having more conversations. My expectations were turned upside down, and not completely in a good way.

Traditional Networking Groups

I’ve taken part in several networking groups over the years. Imagine this, if you will:

You walk in for your first meeting with a networking group you’ve joined. You’re well dressed, had an extra cup of coffee and a pocket full of business cards to share once you’ve made some connections.

You enter the meeting room and are hit by a tidal wave of noise. It’s as if everyone in the room is talking. “Great!” you think, “lots of business!” Then you start to realize that everyone is talking. Everyone. If everyone is talking, how can anyone be listening?

You start to listen more closely to see what everyone is talking about.

“Widgets for sale, $1.99!”

“Look at our newest product at www.whatever.com!”

“We just closed another deal!”

“I’m just repeating what the guy next to me said!”

“I’m just repeating what the guy next to me said!”

“I’m just repeating what the guy next to me said!”

You get the idea.

This isn’t networking, this is broadcasting. You are part of a group that yells their marketing message at each other, repeats each other for assumed personal gain and does no real networking.

Social Networking

Twitter, Facebook and other communities like them are social networks.

Think about what it means to be social and how you prefer to network.

Is it by telling people what’s new with you without listening to what’s new with them?

Is it by repeating stories you’ve heard other people tell over and over again?

How to Identify the Noise Makers

In an effort to streamline my activities online, I have tried to cut the noise to find the true value.

Here are my two big tips to eliminate noise via Twitter:

1. Login late at night. Check the timeline to see if you see anyone who is very active (their avatar shows up repeatedly). Now look to see if those are just a bunch of @-replies (they may just be having a lively conversation). If they aren’t people in conversation, odds are they are automated accounts. Stop following them (unless you like the social network equivalent of SPAM).
2. Look underneath peoples updates. It will say something like:
   X minutes ago from Application
   If it says something like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or Web instead of Application, you’re probably safe. If it says Twitterfeed or API, the spidey senses should be tingling. Check the rest of their timeline, if it’s predominantly Twitterfeed or API, they are an automated account. Stop following them.

Disclaimer

I believe a small degree of automation is great. I use a Twitter Publisher to send my blog posts to Twitter automatically. I use Networked Blogs to send them to Facebook. When someone leaves a comment, Twitterfeed pumps those out to Twitter.

But I am also interacting with people (when I can find someone who isn’t a bot). I’m sharing links I find interesting. I am networking for the benefit of all of us in the SCUBA industry.

Finally, a huge Thank You to the people I’ve had conversations with, who reply to their @-replies and direct messages and otherwise are connecting with myself and other. You make it enjoyable to login to Twitter.

Won’t you join me?

Photo via oliverchesler

Last night, Google announced their Ocean Showcase, an extra layer for their free Google Earth product.

The Ocean Showcase features a National Geographic tour, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s US West Coast discoveries, Eco-Nova’s Shipwreck Central, dive sites from WannaDive and 3D models of wrecks in the Great Lakes from NOAA.

Integrate Google Into Your SCUBA Store

I envision a modern dive center incorporating a large projection screen with computer attached (you should have this for teaching anyway) with a wireless mouse and keyboard.

As your customers come in asking about diving in new and exotic locations, let them “drive” Google Earth on a tour of the locations they’re interested in.

This is unique, cool, modern and will get people talking about you. And might just make them want to come back to play some more.

Are you using interactive media in your dive center?

Photo via Google LatLong

Last week, Apple announced their upcoming iPad and Des was first on the scene to discuss the implications of the iPad for the SCUBA professionals among us.

Although I am seeing more and more potential uses for the iPad as the days go by, there are 4 reasons why I won’t be using one for SCUBA instruction:

1. It’s the first generation. Anyone who follows Apple knows you are taking a large risk by purchasing anything from Apple on their first attempt. (Kind of like the 27″ iMac I’ve eyeballed)
   If this is the only device you decide to bring to class or out on a dive weekend, do you really want to risk problems to be an early adopter?
2. No multitasking. When I teach, I’m often jumping in and out of the presentations to take notes, show other videos or look something up. Relaunching everything doesn’t sound very efficient to me. I can see this being even more of an issue when teaching Instructor Development Courses because I bounce around the various course materials even more.
3. No camera. How cool would it be to literally use this as your only device? Snap a photo of your student to keep on file to send with an online PIC when the course is over. As it stands, not only will I not be able to take a picture, I’ll have to carry my digital camera AND a new adapter to get the pictures from my camera to the iPad.
4. No PADI/SSI/NAUI/etc app. This isn’t actually a deal breaker, but can you imagine an app that has your instructor manuals, presentations and a PIC entry system all in one?

The iPad is Growing on Me

When I started this list, I had more items, but I’ve come to realize they aren’t true deal-breakers. Of the four items I’ve listed, only two are real potential deal breakers: multitasking and camera. There are plenty of rumors that the iPhone/iPad OS version 4 will allow for multitasking (Jailbreaking has allowed for it for some time), so that just brings it down to the camera.

I think the price, from entry-level to top of the line, is reasonable and I will not be surprised to see a few in circulation as teaching devices within the SCUBA industry.

Will you be getting an iPad for your SCUBA business?

I had a great opportunity fall into my lap a couple of days ago. A local, avid diver contacted me to let me know that he would be travelling to Ft. Myers, Florida this weekend for work, but would be free either Friday afternoon or Monday evening. He was interested in going into a dive center and discussing marketing. We will then put together a basic marketing plan, provide regular support and guidance and see what we can do in about 5 or 6 months.

So, if you are a dive center owner or employee in the Ft. Myers, Florida area, can be available Friday afternoon AND Monday evening (since we’re not sure exactly which will work out yet) and are interested in having your marketing efforts analyzed and some one-on-one guidance given, please fill out the form below.

The results of the interview will be posted on the site as well as the action plan. The action plan will be easy, even for the non-tech-savvy and I will provide support along the way. At the end of our little experiment, we will publish results. You must agree to these terms to be considered. The cut-off to sign up is Thursday evening. If no one signs up, our “reporter” will pick at random.

So, if you’re interested, sign up here:

We're sorry, this opportunity has passed.