This week were focusing on the ever changing landscape of golf social media. If you run or help out on your club/course/business social media accounts, it may feel like every time you open Instagram another club’s drone-shot tee-off has gone viral—while your own posts are still waiting for their first dozen likes—you’re not imagining things.
The modern golf marketer lives in a constant tug-of-war: crank out scroll-stopping content at TikTok speed and stay faithful to the polished brand you’ve (or your club) has spent years refining.
It’s a lot of pressure.
Should you prioritize raw, vertical videos that ride trending audio, or stick with carefully crafted images that keep your logo and legacy front-and-center?
That’s the exact question this edition of Grow Golf tackles.
Inside this week's newsletter, I unpack what it really means to go “social-first,” contrast it with a more traditional “on-brand” approach, and map out the upsides, landmines, and middle-ground strategies. By the end, you’ll have a clear playbook—and a few sanity-saving tips—for deciding which path (or blend of paths) fits your club’s goals, resources, and personality.
Grab a coffee, swipe away the notification anxiety, and let’s figure it out together.
Let's Grow Golf.
Should Our Golf Club Be Social-First?
Scroll any feed today and you’ll notice that the golf conversation has moved well beyond tee-times and scorecards. Videos of creative short-game drills rack up millions of views on TikTok, while clubhouse chefs livestream burger “smash-offs” on Instagram Reels. At the same time, golfers still expect a club’s website, member emails and printed materials to feel unmistakably “on-brand.” So which approach deserves priority? Should a modern golf club design every story for social first, or stay anchored in traditional brand-led content? The answer isn’t binary—but understanding the differences, the benefits and the pitfalls will help your team strike the right balance.
What Does “Social-First” Actually Mean?
A social-first strategy begins with the realities of the social platforms themselves: thumb-stopping visuals, vertical video, algorithm-favored formats and community dialog. Content is conceived, shot, edited and published specifically to maximize organic reach, engagement signals (likes, comments, shares, saves) and discoverability in feeds or For You pages and only then adapted for other channels. Marketing consultancies define it as “strategically designing content that speaks directly to your audience, leverages each platform’s strengths and embraces the most engaging storytelling formats”.
Contrast that with an “on-brand-first” approach: starting from the club’s established tone, visual identity, voice guidelines and campaign calendar, then repurposing those pieces onto social. This path often protects brand consistency—logos, typography, color palettes, long-form messaging—but can feel stiff or slow in the fast-moving social environment.
What Do You Have to Consider Before Going Social-First?
Going social-first isn’t without friction. Expect to wrestle with four common hurdles:
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Visual Consistency vs. Speed
- Brand managers worry that a flood of phone-shot vertical videos will erode premium positioning.
- Mitigation: Create simple guardrails—logo watermark placement, color-graded presets, approved intro sting—and provide them in a shared drive for fast access.
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Tone of Voice
- Social thrives on wit and relatability; a stuffy headline or corporate jargon feels off-key.
- Mitigation: Develop a “voice ladder” document: formal copy for press releases, conversational voice for Instagram captions, meme-savvy quips for TikTok replies.
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Resource Strain
- Daily content cycles can now overwhelm a lean team used to quarterly campaigns.
- Mitigation: Batch-shoot on one “content capture day” per month, enlist and empower frontline staff (pros, starters, servers) to submit ideas or clips themselves.
Reconciling Social-First and On-Brand: A Hybrid Playbook
The smartest clubs treat social-first as a mindset inside a larger brand ecosystem, not a replacement for it. Try these tactics:
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“Social-Starter, Brand-Builder” Workflow
- Produce raw social-first assets, then expand the winning concepts into higher-production brand pieces.
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Evergreen Pillars, Episodic Social
- Maintain four or five evergreen brand pillars—e.g., Hospitality, Championship Heritage, Community, Sustainability. When you ideate social content, tag each idea to a pillar so every post ladders back to brand values.
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Branded Utility
- Create downloadable practice plans or printable junior-golf checklists gated behind email sign-ups, but tease them with snackable social clips. That merges platform agility with database growth.
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Design Duel
- Let your graphic designer (or maybe it's you, ha) create two versions of a promo: one social-native (motion text, trending audio) and one brand-polished (landscape, serif fonts). Test both, compare results, and refine guidelines based on data, not gut feeling.
Advice for Clubs Ready to Jump In
- Start With One Channel, One Series, Six Episodes. Too many clubs launch on five platforms at once and burn out. Pick the platform where your target growth segment hangs out—often Instagram Reels for women 25-40 or TikTok for Gen Z—and commit to a six-week run of a single recurring format.
- Appoint a “Head of Clubhouse Stories.” Title it however you like, but someone must own ideation, posting cadence and engagement. Handing social to “whoever has downtime” guarantees inconsistency.
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Adopt the 70-20-10 Rule.
- 70 % community-building (member spotlights, behind-the-scenes)
- 20 % instructional or informational (swing tips, course-care hacks)
- 10 % promotional (events, merch, dues reminders)
This mix keeps feeds valuable and prevents the dreaded “selling all the time” vibe.
- Document More Than You Produce. Many of your most shareable moments—sunrise course setup, caddie jokes, chef plating experiments—already happen daily. Teach staff to capture 10-second clips on their phones; quantity fuels quality once you have editing discipline.
- Tie Social Metrics to Business Outcomes. For example, track whether users who watched 50 % of a “Women’s Wednesday” reel later book the ladies’ clinic. Data like that justifies budget.
GG POV: This is difficult, but for those fighting the good fight, having some metrics to backup participation or attendance is HUGE when asking for alittle extra budget for the next big event.
The Bottom Line
Hermitage Golf Course shows that a public facility with a modest marketing budget can punch above its weight by embracing social-first video. You've definitely seen their golf shop videos, "Golf Shop, This is Chris...". They've done an excellent job of blending personality-driven humor, quick-turn editing and tight booking funnels, the club transformed from a regional favourite into a 100 K-plus Instagram brand and a TikTok staple—all while (likely) boosting on-course revenue.
For clubs wondering whether social-first is worth the effort, Hermitage provides a clear blueprint: start with a relatable voice, post natively and often, and let the community’s laughter drive the business forward.
So, if you're asking yourself...
“Should our golf club be social-first?” is really shorthand for “Are we willing to meet golfers where they spend their time, speak their language and embrace a test-and-learn culture—without losing our identity?”
A deliberate social-first strategy can turbo-charge reach, attract the next generation and turn members into evangelists. A disciplined brand framework ensures that each post feels unmistakably “us.” When those two forces align, the result is content that sparks conversation on screens and drives real-world tee-sheet demand.
So yes—be social-first in mindset, but brand-rooted in mission.
Start small, learn fast, protect the essence, and your club will thrive both in the feed and on the fairway.
Have questions? Reply to this email, and I'd love to connect.
