Just Another “Facebook For Scuba Divers”!
How many “Facebook for scuba divers” do we need?
It seems like every week or so, I receive a new eMail from a new guy somewhere on the planet who suddenly had the original (!) idea of creating a “community for scuba divers”. I regularly see the expression “it’s like a Facebook for scuba divers”.
Every time I get one of those messages, I scratch my head. Why? What is it with divers that so many of them suddenly feel the need to create their own online community instead of simply contributing to the ones already running?
Scuba diving is a small industry. It’s not as mainstream as buying milk at the grocery and never will be. So… It seems to me that there is no way we can have 1000s of “online communities for scuba divers” that will be thriving. So why do you think your own version of “Facebook for scuba divers” is so much better than the one I received the week before, and the week before that, and the week before that one…?
The other thing that amazes me in these messages is that… They all tell me that it will be great for my dive center to advertise on their website because it will be full of scuba divers. Well… I guess they really do not understand the dive industry or they’ve skipped their Marketing 101 class - or both.
What my dive center needs is to recruit NEW divers - those people bored in front of their TV set tonight. Furthermore, my target market is pretty much local. So… Tell me again why I should jump on the “opportunity” to advertise on a website that will be full of already certified divers from around the world? Uh?
One of them even had a full paragraph explaining to me how it would be so much better to have a targeted bunch of scuba divers on his “Facebook for scuba divers” instead of swimming in a sea of normal people on Facebook. Uh? Let me repeat… Uh?! That sea of normal NON-DIVING people are very interesting to me - they are the ones we need to convince to come give scuba diving a try! Duh!
Let me find that Marketing 101 book again. There must be a chapter I skipped or something?
Or should I look right away into starting a brand new one too, for my buddies and I? What do you think of www.The1000thCommunityForDiversThisYear.com?
Just wondering.
