Yes, this looks worse than Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus…

In case you hadn’t heard, there’s an ecological disaster going on in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf of Mexico has some incredible diving.

The Gulf of Mexico has some incredible SCUBA diving professionals trying to earn a living.

Luckily, DEMA has created a web site to help promote SCUBA diving for Gulf State dive centers.

Here’s the problem:

The web site is terrible.

Okay, I’m picky, so we can argue the design all day. But from a sheer search engine optimization and online marketing standpoint, it is a complete failure.

Just look at the title tag: “Gulf State Diving, DEMA San Diego, CA Home”

WHAT? I had no idea San Diego, CA was in the Gulf State area. Maybe that was just one typo, let’s go on to the keyword META tag (which doesn’t mean squat, but it shows the level of care): Gulf State Diving San Diego CA, Scuba Diving San Diego CA, Be A Diver San Diego CA, Scuba San Diego CA, Diving San Diego CA, Snorkeling San Diego CA

It’s a good thing this new site will be helping direct SCUBA divers to San Diego.

Their Facebook page only has 156 Fans. We have 1,128. So please go like their page to show your support.

The unshortened URL has been mentioned on Twitter ONCE. So please go tweet about them.

Here’s what I’m going to do

I’m offering my services.

DEMA, if you want me to help with the Gulf State Diving web site, free of charge, just contact me.

If you are a Gulf State SCUBA Diving operator and would like a little extra publicity, contact me and I’ll do everything I can, free of charge.

This is an ecological disaster, let’s all chip in to do our part to make sure it’s not a disaster for an already hurting industry we call our careers.

Photo via dchrisoh

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?

I’ve been holding onto  this on for over a week, waiting for my big comeback oops, I should have shared this earlier since everyone and their brother has shared it in the last couple of days, oh well.

From YouTube:

World champion freediver Guillaume Nery special dive at Dean’s Blue Hole, the deepest blue hole in the world filmed entirely on breath hold by the french champion Julie Gautier. This video is a FICTION and an ARTISTIC PROJECT.

Even if it is artistic and fiction, it’s pretty spectacular to watch.

Image via yonatan zur

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)

click to enlarge

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

I’ve been here for years

Okay, maybe just 10 and a half months. And I’ve been MIA for almost 2 months.

As the title would suggest, I’m coming back

I quit my old job (nothing exciting worth sharing), I started what has proven to be my dream job (details coming soon) and have been going through some family issues (and no, I’m not sharing here), so needless to say, life has been very very busy these last few months, explaining my hiatus.

Summer is insanely busy for my in my personal life, so I’m going to be a bit more reasonable: I’m going to promise an article a week. I may feel ambitious and do more, but you get at least one.

If you have ideas, questions, comments, article suggestions or anything else, please contact me to let me know.

It’s good to be back

Living in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, I’ve had a fascination with octopus since it’s just about the coolest thing we see around here with some regularity. Here’s an incredible video of an octopus stealing a divers camera and running off with it.

Photo via Morten Brekkevold

Today’s guest post comes to us from David Greenhaw. David is a part time Independent Scuba Instructor in West Texas.  For 30 years David has been working hands-on in the computer industry and has been designing websites and graphics for the last 14 years.  David tells his clients “If it looks professional then people will assume that it is professional”.  “Advertising just gets potential clients to contact you. You are the one that has to make the sale.”

It can take a really long time and a lot of work to get noticed by the search engines when you are starting out. Here is one thing that you can do to help jump start the process. Go to the Google Local Business Center. If you do not have a Google account, sign up for one, if you do have a Google account, sign in.

Click on the “Add New Listing” link. This will take you to a form to fill out with your company information, contact information, web site, etc. After the form is filled in, click on the “Next” button. You will be shown a Google map with other local businesses in the same category as yours. If you are not one of those businesses already on the map, click on the “Add Listing” button by your company name.

What does this do for you? It adds your business to the Google Map. When someone performs a local search such as “scuba yourcity, state”, the Google map will show up in the search results. Your business will be one of the points on the map along with your address and phone number and a link to your website.

With very little time and effort, you have succeeded in becoming visible in a Google search and not tucked away on page 14. Businesses in the same category are listed on the map in alphabetical order so you may or may not be the top listing depending on the names of your competition.

Ranking poorly in Google search results results in a loss of income because your potential customers can’t find you. By following David’s steps to get into Google Local search results, you can quickly and easily be found. Get listed today to begin capturing your share of search traffic, if you run into problems just contact us!

Hey there gang, been a little quiet around these parts while I’m working on some exciting new projects! I’ll be back full swing – including a couple of guest posts – next week.

For now, I just wanted to share my latest article over in X-Ray Mag.

Click here to get the full resolution hi-res complete issue in PDF format. (22 MB)

Click here to get just the section with my piece in it.

It’s time for me to check in with all of you to see what topics you want covered.

I’ve been designing, programming and marketing since the interwebz have been around, so sometimes I have a hard time gauging where all of you are in the process.

This web site is for me to share with you: from the reasons why you should be using certain tools to the nitty gritty code that makes it all work.

So let me know in the comments below or on the contact page what you’d like to learn more about.

Thanks!

After months of negotiations, PADI Americas will acquire New SCUBA Marketing, bringing all employees and assets into their new Future Online Opportunity Leadership Systems department. The Future Online Opportunity Leadership Systems department, known as “FOOLS” internally will be the industry standard for online marketing instruction to members of the SCUBA industry.

“I’ve been trying to get Nick to relent for months,” said PADI Regional Manager Barry Dunford, “but all it ended up taking was a PADI backpack and travel mug to get him to come on board. Ever since Hulu started hosting old SeaHunt episodes, my VHS collection doesn’t hold the bargaining power it once did.”

The new department will focus on teaching diving professionals how to market like traditional internet spammers for fun and profit.

“This is a big step for New SCUBA Marketing,” said Nick Bostic, founder of New SCUBA Marketing, “I look forward to leading a highly motivated team of FOOLS to keep PADI at the forefront of internet marketing for the SCUBA industry.”

Expect new courses, multi-lingual training materials, a member update, various emails, application forms and fees, porpoise-delivered decoder rings and marketing materials in your mailbox by the second Tuesday of next week.

In case it wasn’t obvious, happy April Fools day!

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

David Greenhaw at Liquid Experience has won our most recent contest! He’ll be receiving a copy of The Cove and The Deep.

For those of you who missed it, to enter this last contest, you had to share your online marketing experiences for your SCUBA business. David has a great experience, check it out (emphasis and links mine):

I have had a web site since day one, actually it was ready to publish before I even became an instructor. I have tried the telephone books, newspaper and the local want ads publications for advertising. I hand business cards to everyone I meet. I ask everyone that calls how they found out about me, whether they sign up for a class or not. 96% say “your web site” or “on the internet”. The other 4% are word of mouth referrals from former students or acquaintances. I have never had anyone tell me that they found me through the telephone book or newspaper ads.

With the above in mind, I spend my time advancing and maintaining my placement in the search engines and getting reciprocal links from other scuba resources or free advertising resources such as Yelp. This is a part time venture for me so I don’t really have an advertising budget. Using Google analytics, studying my web statistics and refining my keywords is free and has been time well spent. I no longer advertise in the phone books (other than the free one line ad) or newspapers and my business has continued to grow.

I have an unlinked blog set up but I really don’t know what to blog about. There is not enough scuba “action” in West Texas to keep a blog fresh. I am still thinking and working on getting that going. I just have to decide on a continuous source of content to keep it fresh. Will a blog get me any more clients? Who knows, but it doesn’t cost me anything to try. Same with a newsletter. Deciding what to write about each month is the issue.

David is an Independent SCUBA Instructor in West Texas, but by looking at his web presence, he handily beats many SCUBA shops I’ve seen. He has a brand. He has a web site. He’s on Facebook. He’s on Twitter. He has a staff. A great FAQ. He promotes classes and travel. Compared to my local market, he is by no means a discount SCUBA instructor.

96% of his students find him online, all done without an advertising budget!

As for generating content, one of the biggest lessons I’ve (re)learned over my years of blogging (elsewhere before this, since this site has been around less than a year) is Keep It Simple. The must mundane thing to you could be huge for your potential customer. One idea would be to grab a Flip camera and their inexpensive housing and film your classes. Chop the video up into bite-sized morsels and show off what YOUR class is actually like on your blog. That’s a lot of content right there. Once you get going with it, finding content becomes easy, time is the problem

Congrats on winning the contest and for doing such a great job with your SCUBA marketing!

Photo via Darrren Hester

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:

Click to enlarge

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

Originally, this months contest just went out to email subscribers. I’ve had a few people tell me my emails have been blocked by their corporate spam filters, so I’m opening this up to everyone.

If you are interested in winning some cool stuff, be sure to check out the contest.

You have until the end of today to get your entry in, so be snappy!

Photo via D.Begley