Social Pros 10 – Lauren Teague, PGA Tour

This is Episode 10 of the Social Pros Podcast : Real People Doing Real Work in Social Media. This episode features Lauren Teague, who handles social media for the PGA Tour. Read on for insights from Lauren, and Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week (this week: is CEO engagement on social media channels important?).

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Huge thanks to data-driven social media management software company Argyle Social for their presenting sponsorship, as well as Infusionsoft and Jim Kukral at DigitalBookLaunch. We use Argyle Social for our social engagement; we use Infusionsoft for our email; and Jim is our guest host for the podcast and a smart guy).

Social Pros Transcript For Your Reading Enjoyment, Thanks to Speechpad for the Transcription

Jay: Here we are on episode number, is this ten, episode ten of the Social Pros Podcast? Is that correct, Eric Boggs?
Eric: This is number ten, Jay. Indeed it is.
Jay: Man, we’ve hit double digits. I think we ought to just ride out in a blaze of glory right now. This ought to be it. We ought to just cue the theme song.
Eric: No, I think we should go to 11 so at least we can say that Social Pros Podcast goes to 11.
Jay: Goes to 11, very nice. The voice you hear is Eric Boggs from Argyle Social, my trusty sidekick. I am Jay Baer from Convince & Convert. Sponsors for Social Pros, Eric’s fantastic company, Argyle Social, that we use for all of our social media stuff. Our friends at Infusionsoft, who are in the middle of their big annual conference this week, InfusionCon, so they’re freaking out. And our buddy Jim Kukral at DigitalBookLaunch.com.
We are actually recording Social Pros today, and it is the day of the big NCAA basketball final. This is it. Kentucky versus Kansas. Eric Boggs, being a huge college basketball fan, I suspect that you hope somehow both teams lose.
Eric: I would love it if both teams would lose, and then both teams go on probation because of all sorts of recruiting violations.
Jay: Both coaches get malaria . . .
Eric: I think it’s a safe bet that UK will go down in flames, because of recruiting violations or some other problems relating to John Calipari, but KU, I kind of like those guys.
Jay: They seem to be doing it right. They’re a classy bunch over there, those Jayhawks.
Eric: Too many Tarheel ties with the Jayhawks to not like them.
Jay: Yeah, that’s probably your second and third most hated teams after Duke, I presume.
Eric: Yes.
Jay: It could be a good night for you. Speaking of sports, I’m fired up about the show today, because we have our friend Lauren Teague joining us in a little bit. She runs all things social media for the PGA Tour. Maybe you’ve heard of it. A bunch of guys hitting a ball. This is a big, big week. It is Masters week. My favorite. I have spent a little time in Augusta, love it down there. My wife scheduled an Easter party that we’re having for friends and family during the final round of the Masters on Sunday. I was not happy about that.
Eric: Not to reuse one of your jokes, but given that it’s Masters week, I bet Lauren and her team are freaking out.
Jay: Yeah. Well, the nice thing is that the Masters folks have enough of their bodies to probably pitch in. They have more people mowing the grass than most state governments have in their entirety.
Eric: Well said.

Jay’s Thought of the Week

Jay: It is amazing. Tell us, Mr. Boggs, what is the social media stat of the week? Actually, you know what? I’m going to rant first. Here’s the thing. There is an article today that I saw, and we actually included it in my email newsletter, somewhat to my chagrin. There’s an article that said, “Has Hunger Games fundamentally changed the way digital marketing works?” or something like that.
Eric: Oh god.
Jay: Then the subtext of the article was that they were able to open a $155 million weekend, but they spent so little in advertising and they were social media geniuses because they were able to do that. I said, hey, look. I’m all for social media. I make a good living being a social media consultant. But maybe it had something to do with the fact that they sold 100 million copies of the book before the movie was made.
Eric: Exactly. Two steps to becoming a social media hero. Step one, write “The Hunger Games.” Step two, tweet about it.
Jay: Exactly. So well said. This is like the post-modern version of what was a year or two ago the whole Old Spice thing. Old Spice was held up by people like Ad Age, as the greatest example of a social media success. I said, “Yeah, they had some interesting YouTube videos and a Twitter program, but maybe the $10 million in paid television commercials that preceded that may have had something to do with the success of that program.” I get so tired of listening to people who have no business experience say something like, “Oh, you shouldn’t do any traditional marketing. You should just do all social media, because that’s where the future is.”
Eric: Yeah. Well, I think you can translate that analogy to any number of hot content categories. There are equal number of ridiculous articles written about startup financings and companies that go public by people that know absolutely nothing about startup financings or companies that go public. You said this was in Ad Age?
Jay: No, no. This particular article was not in Ad Age. Ad Age had touted the Old Spice program a while back.
Eric: That’s right.
Jay: This one was in – I’ve got it right here somewhere, I thought I did – PaidContent.org, “The Economics of Digital Content.” The official headline is, “Did Hunger Games Create a New Digital Marketing Template for Hollywood?” I would say, no, they created a new selling books template for authors.
Eric: Exactly.
Jay: That is a different article entirely.
Eric: Does the article cite anything unique about what “Hunger Games” did? I actually read the book in the Philadelphia airport a few months ago, at the behest of one of my employees who said it was the greatest thing of all time. It is a good book. I read it in like an hour and a half.
Jay: Yeah, it’s a page-turner.
Eric: What does the article cite as unique that “Hunger Games” did, if anything?
Jay: Here’s the actual paragraph, which we’ll cite in the podcast.
“Liongate’s campaign differed from most movie campaigns because it created actual social media buzz.”
Basically, anytime you use the word “buzz” in a blog post or article, you’ve already lost my respect.
“The key: instead of paying for likes, the studio put its resources into creating rich-media elements that far outstrip the ambition of simple games and other movie collateral, such as an interactive tour of the source novel’s capital, which was accessible through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.”
Eric: Hang on, Jay. This is the audible sigh. [sighs]
Jay: I want to see how that gets transcribed by SpeechPad. That’s going to be fantastic. Are they saying that most movies succeed in social media, because they go out on a very expensive Facebook “Like” acquisition program? That’s what most people do?
Eric: I guess so.
Jay: I really hope that’s not the case. Well, on a somewhat brighter note, tell us about this week’s social media stat of the week, which is actually pretty interesting and applies to you personally, Eric Boggs.

Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week: 86% of People Rated CEO Social Media Engagement as Important

Eric: Yeah, it does actually. This week’s stat of the week comes from BRANDfog, which is a social strategy agency based in New York. The company surveyed, I think it was around 400 people – I think I saw that in the notes – 400 people of all stripes, which was really my biggest issue with the survey, and we’ll come back to that. Surveyed these people about CEOs, leadership, and social media. There were two key nuggets from the report. 86% of the people surveyed rated CEO social media engagement as important, either somewhat important, very important, or mission critical. 81% of the people believe that CEOs who engage in social media are better equipped to lead companies in this fantastic Web 2.0 world that we live in.
To me, it speaks to the need for trust and transparency from the perspective of buyers and consumers. It speaks to social media as the mechanism to provide that in a lightweight and transparent way.
Jay: Yeah, it’s interesting because before we had social media, whether it’s blogs or Twitter, probably would be the two that most CEOs would be most comfortable participating in. LinkedIn I think has got a little bit of a different dynamic. Before those came on the scene, how would a CEO actually communicate to customers and prospective customers in a way that was ostensibly authentic and dispersed and widely available? I’m not sure what the historical analog is.
Eric: Yeah, the annual letter or the video that’s on the commercial or whatever? I have no idea. I think you’re right that this type of opinion is very much reflective of the world that we live in, now that there’s an expectation for CEOs to be out in front and very personable and open and transparent about their business and about their personal lives too to some extent.
Jay: I also feel like there’s a deeper play here, in that the rich get richer, right? If you have a CEO that is routinely using social media in a way that is not purely promotional and all the other things that you can do poorly in social. But let’s stipulate that the CEO is using social media well, like Eric Boggs. Doesn’t that then make it okay for the rest of the organization to use social media well? Doesn’t that person just by definition of their leadership role make social a priority in the organization? I guess what I’m saying is it’s not so much the CEO doing a good job. It’s the fact that the CEO values social, which trickles down to the lowest rungs of the organization.
Eric: Yeah, that’s actually a really good point. What motivates the CEO to do it? Does the CEO do it because he or she enjoys it and honestly values the opportunity to interact and share what’s going on? Or do they do it because they hired Jay Baer of Convince & Convert, and he comes along and says, “Hey, your CEO’s got to start tweeting.” I’m sure I could fabricate some good tweets and pretend to be interested, but I’m genuinely interested in engaging socially. That is an interesting idea.
Jay: Well, and I think that’s a really important point. I think the guys at BRANDfog actually specialize in helping CEOs and C-suite personnel do better in social media, and I think that’s an interesting business to be in. I think it can be taught to some degree, but as I’ve said a number of times, if you don’t love social media, you probably suck at social media. It’s really hard to say, “Okay, we brought the consultant in who says you must tweet and send three tweets a day, one about personal and two about business,” whatever your formula is. Can you do that adequately? I think you can. Can you do that great? I don’t think you can. If your heart’s not in it, you can’t do it great. I just don’t believe that.
Eric: I would be remiss if I did not bring up my lone hang-up with this survey is that the sample spans in size from startups to Fortune 500 companies. I’m reading from the report: “All levels of their organizations, representing a wide selection of industries, professions, and regions.” I’m left to actually question who is the CEO in this person’s mind? Me tweeting as the CEO of Argyle is very different than Larry Page tweeting as the CEO of Google. If you were to ask one of my employees about me tweeting versus asking a Google employee about Larry tweeting, and by the way I probably shouldn’t use myself and Larry Page in the same sentence.
Jay: I’m pretty sure you guys have never tried to buy Twitter, so there’s that.
Eric: To me that’s my biggest hang-up when I look at the data is that depending on the company, the company size, stage, industry, the role of the social media CEO can be quite diverse.
Jay: Yeah, if you have your one person cupcake manufacturing empire, whether or not you are tweeting is perhaps not quite as much of a corporate culture driver as it might be for a larger organization.
Eric: Yeah, exactly.
Jay: Good stuff. That’s a good stat. I like that one.
Eric: Thank you.

Special Guest: Lauren Teague of the PGA Tour

Jay: Let’s bring in our pal Lauren Teague from the PGA Tour. Lauren is the head of all things social media and fan outreach for that organization. Lauren, are you with us?
Lauren: Hi, guys. I’m here.
Jay: She is here. Are you outdoors in some sort of sunny Floridian location, drinking a mint julep or whatever you guys do at the PGA Tour?
Lauren: I can see the sun from where I’m at. I’m actually feeling the rays pounding in. It’s about a 90 degree day here in Jacksonville, Florida, where the PGA Tour headquarters are. But unfortunately, I’m neither outside or sipping a mint julep. Although I think those things are more reserved for the Kentuckians who may or may not be consuming very many of those tonight after the basketball game.
Jay: True enough. I think that’s absolutely the case, for the mint julep is based at the Derby I think, if i recall correctly. I had a mint julep once. Terrible. Just a terrible cocktail. Brutal. If you take anything away from episode ten of Social Pros, it’s don’t drink mint juleps. That’s the take-away. Lauren, it is Masters week. It’s exciting. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
Lauren: Yes, I definitely think so. For a lot of the sports fans, golf is just starting to come onto the calendar in their awareness of basketball’s almost over and hockey’s almost over, so it must be time for golf. Actually, our season started the first week of January, so we’re I think a quarter or a third of the way through our season. It’s been a great season so far, if you’ve gotten the chance to watch. Every Sunday seems like it’s must- see TV for a sports fan, because we’ve had so many come-from- behind wins and just really good competition. I think if you haven’t been paying attention, definitely tune in to the Masters this week so you can get a taste of all of the competition in the new versus the old. Tiger Woods is back, and Phil’s got a win this season, and you’ve got the young up-and-comers. It’s really great. The best part about my job is that most of those guys are actually participating in social media, so I get to see it from a whole different lens.
Jay: Yeah, it’s amazing. A couple things that are fascinating about golf. One, you’ve got to beat a lot of people to win, right? It is enormously difficult. But you mentioned the young guys and the old guys. I always feel like that’s such a fascinating dynamic, because you’ve got a multitude of guys who are in their late 30s, early 40s. It’s not like basketball where you’ve got Steve Nash and you’ve got Grant Hill and a couple other guys in their late 30s and that’s it, and everybody else is like 7. In golf, you’ve got a lot of people in every five year bucket of ages playing the same game at the same time. I don’t know that there’s an equivalent for that in sports anywhere.
Lauren: No, you’re absolutely right. Our last two major champions, two of them, Keegan Bradley won at age 24, 25. Last year, Rory McIlroy won the U.S. Open at age 22. Then you’ve got guys like Phil who just turned 40 last year, so he’s 41, and Tiger’s getting up there in his mid to late 30s. It definitely is a different dynamic. Actually, just talked to the Champions Tour folks, the Champions Tour has nine players in the Masters this week, and the Champions Tour, those guys are over 50. When I tell you there are guys like Fred Couples and Tom Watson, those are guys who are still contending when they want to be. It’s definitely a large dynamic in that who’s competing, you all have to face the same conditions on the same course on the same day. It’s the ultimate meritocracy in that it’s all about who gets the ball in the hole quickest. It’s pretty fun.
Eric: Lauren, did you grow up in a golf family, or did you play golf as kid or in high school or in college?
Lauren: My grandfather introduced me to the game when I was really young. I just remember going to their house on the weekends and getting to watch golf. He would introduce me to the players. I’m from the Northwest. Freddy Couples is from Seattle, so he was our default player. He’s one of the first ones I knew about because that’s who we cheered for. I’ve been playing since I was about ten. I got to about a nine handicap.
Eric: Geez.
Lauren: The worst thing about my golf game, is that I peaked when I was 17. That’s when I turned to maybe working in sports or working in golf. It was in about 2008, the first part of 2008. The PGA Tour put out this job posting for a social media person. And I knew enough about the game and how to play it and how to talk about it and what was going on currently, and combined with trying to figure out social media from a PR perspective had the right package of skills to come into the PGA Tour and help them grow their social media channels.
Jay: It must have just been an incredible ride between now and then. You mentioned earlier about how many players are active in social now. It seems to me like that’s just been a rush in the last 18 to 24 months where you have a couple of early adopters, and now all of a sudden it’s almost weird to not be using Twitter in particular for players. That just has to be an amazing ride for you.
Lauren: It really was. Just like you said, maybe two or three years ago, nobody was really using Twitter. We had maybe a couple people that we were tracking. Even in the PGA Tour account, we didn’t actively take over our own presence until 2009, the first part of that year. Then Stewart Cink followed not long after that in 2009. What really turned the corner for the golfers was Stewart started tweeting about going to Augusta National. Actually, sorry, that was 2010. He started tweeting about going to Augusta National and the drive up Magnolia Lane. The fans really, really got into it.
Well, then you fast forward three or four more months, and Stewart Cink wins the Open Championship over in the UK. Now you have pictures of Stewart Cink hoisting the Claret Jug, but then where it goes. You’re seeing the Claret Jug on the airplane, you’re seeing it on the kitchen counter, you’re seeing it on the breakfast table. That was really kind of the kick start to how our guys started using Twitter, and it just took off from there.
I can’t take a lot of credit for having over 150 Tour players on Twitter, because they’ve actually been teaching themselves how to use it. I’m available to help or make recommendations or get them verified and things like that. But it’s really been a groundswell on the PGA Tour among the players themselves in actually getting to use Twitter. Now you’re seeing it a little bit more with the videos that are coming out. You’ve got Bubba Watson making videos, and that turned into Ben Crane making videos, which brought us the Golf Boys. Thank heaven for the Golf Boys. It’s interesting how they’ve all picked it up, because they’ve realized they connect with their fans one-to-one. It’s really creating this cool dynamic that all of our Tour players really enjoy.
Jay: What I find fascinating about it is that there is not a pure economic incentive, right? If a NASCAR driver does social media well, he or she is going to attract more fans or create loyalty amongst existing fans. But they all sell their own merch. They all sell their own shirts. They all sell their own hats. They keep all that money. On the golf side of it, there isn’t a direct economic win for the players. It’s this notion of connecting with fans is amazing and makes the game more personal and human and all those things. But the Tour wins more so than they win individually, and I think that’s a really interesting situation that you don’t find very often.
Lauren: Actually, I would contradict you there. We know that guys have been getting deals, and now their advertisers are asking for social media reach as one of the metrics. Just because Stewart Cink might not sell his own line of putters or his own golf bags or things, his sponsors are looking to activate and tie into that brand. Now, I’ve talked to guys like Stewart personally and that’s not what he’s in it for, but there is some monetary benefits for these guys.
What’s more interesting, something that we’ve been telling the agents for quite some time, is that having a Twitter account or a Facebook page is like having a web page ten years ago. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to connect the fans, because you’re going to be asked about how to monetize this, you’re going to have an opportunity to do that in the future. These guys actually are starting to get those questions, and I think you’re seeing it. Even if it’s not being tied in directly to the player, you’re seeing brands like TaylorMade Adidas Golf, who is actually starting to put hashtags on the side of their players’ caps on tour and tying that in with their products and their product launch. So you’re actually seeing more socially savvy businesses tied in with golf using and seeking out these players who have large social media presences. Like you said, it brings the Tour up, but it also brings their existing sponsors up into a more personal and different way to engage their audience.
Jay: From a Tour perspective, are there particular success metrics that you look at, that you measure, beyond fan acquisition and things like that, that you really point to to say, “This is working. Social is driving results for the Tour”?
Lauren: Yeah. Like you said, fan acquisition, that’s a number that I think everybody on a big brand level is going to get judged on. We also look at the engaged fan metrics, so who’s talking about us. Not just the PGA Tour, because we have a hard enough time sometimes getting people to differentiate PGA Tour from PGA of America. We’re two different companies. We also look at the lift and the conversation happening around our tournaments and the names of the events, the courses that they’re playing on, and of course then the players. We’re tracking those things as overall mentions through Twitter and Facebook as well. For any given week, I might look at the PGA Tour mentions, our media partners, our TV partner mentions, mentions of the tournament names, sometimes the course, especially if we’re somewhere like Pebble Beach or Augusta National. We’re going to look at things like who was in the lead, who made news that week, who won. We’re looking at their name and also their Twitter handles as well to gauge and see where the overall golf or Tour footprint is, because we know that we can’t just rely on what @PGATour or PGA Tour on Facebook is doing.
Jay: Speaking of Facebook, the move to Timeline and having milestones on the right-hand side and that dynamic has got to be a huge boon for you, given the tremendous amount of history that PGA Tour has, and the fact that by definition, you’ve got something else happening every single week.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. I was so excited about the Facebook Timeline when we got it for the brand pages. I think a lot of people didn’t think through strategy. That was really important to us, is we knew that we had a month to make the switch, and we wanted to make sure that when we came out into the marketplace we did it really well and did something our fans expected. One of the first things we did was ask our fans what they wanted to see from us on Timeline. Then we mulled around and saw what other brands were doing and other properties were doing. We came up with a really cool strategy where we would take those milestones, like you said, we have so many champions and so many big moments. Actually, if you click back to when the PGA Tour started, on our page we actually go back to 1894 I believe, because that was the first U.S. Open, the first semblance of professional golf being played in the United States. So what we wanted to do with that was capture some of players’ reactions and their memories. We have stuff going back, more so from the last 20 or 30 years, we have a really great collection of milestones, and we asked the current players to chime in on what they remembered about those events. If you go to the Facebook.com/PGATour, all this week we’re going to be pinning Masters milestones and Masters memories that our players have stories about where they were, or what Tiger’s win in 1997 meant to them or why Jack’s win in 1986 really always stands out.
Jay: Because he was super-old, that’s why and he was Jack. He was like 46 years old, that’s why it stands out.
Lauren: Absolutely, but it’s really cool to talk to Scott McCarron and Ernie Els and get their memories of watching that happen. That’s what we tried to feature there on the page, and we’re going to keep adding to it. We have a lot of content still in video form, in photo form. Continuing to ask the guys about their current, as they’re making history and as they’re looking back on it.
Pretty excited about the way the Timeline has turned out. I’m really, really excited about the way our tournaments have embraced it. Our tournaments, some of them have 60, 70, 80 years of history behind them, and you’re starting to see that being displayed in a way that their websites just couldn’t do. It’s a pretty cool new look and strategy for golf in general.
Eric: Yeah, I’m scrolling through the page now, Lauren. It looks very, very cool.
Lauren: Thank you. Thank you. I can’t take all the credit, but it sure was fun putting that together.
Eric: I was going to say it looks like a ton of work went into putting this together.
Lauren: That’s the benefit. We have an on-site historian who’s really great, so he helped us compile a lot of that. We just hired a social media coordinator, so he was the one plugging in all the last minute stuff. Then I had gotten together a couple times and talked to the guys here on the Florida swing. I talked to them and got some really great memories. We had Bill Hoss talking about his shot last year at the Tour Championship and what he was thinking when he was walking up to it. All the way back to Tiger’s first win on Tour, or watching Jack win the Masters. Really, really neat.
Jay: Would you say that Facebook is the primary place that you’re trying to make an impact in social? I know you’ve got the full complement of social residences. You’ve got Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and other places, but is Facebook the place where you’re trying to really say look, ideally, this is where we want to interact with you. Is that your home base?
Lauren: Because of the resources that we’ve put behind it and the effort that we have behind it, our Facebook page is our social hub. But we also understand that there’s a lot of people who want to connect and just watch our videos and watch those favorite moments and talk about what they saw on TV. That YouTube channel that we have has I think over 23 million lifetime video views. We recognize that for those fans it’s just as or more important than our Facebook presence. Our Twitter page is awesome. We get so much interaction there. I don’t want to discount any of our social media channels. I think they’re all very unique in their own way, and I definitely believe in speaking to the individual audience. But I think if you had to pick one I would say because of the effort we’ve put behind the Facebook page, the number of fans that we have connected there, and then also you look at some of the other PGA Tour efforts like our PGA Tour Match-ups fantasy application there. That’s something that we’ve only ever done on Facebook. We haven’t put the resources into something that’s so engaging and really specifically for the fans. It’s not even necessarily something you’d see on PGATour.com. It’s a product specifically designed for fans to come in and talk about their favorite players and put some effort behind them and make picks and share that with their friends and challenge each other. PGA Tour Match-ups, that app is a pretty solid component to our social media strategy.
Jay: The social TV aspect is amazing, right? A year ago it wasn’t even a thing hardly, and now it’s dominating the headlines. You see TV shows that aren’t particularly interesting or dynamic rolling hash-tags and everything else. It’s really changed the way people consume and interact with television, this notion of having two screens, one in your lap and one across the room. How often do you get involved with your broadcast partners to sort of coordinate efforts between what’s going on out on the television air and what’s happening in social media and people live tweeting and that kind of program?
Lauren: Well, we have a few different media partners, TV partners in general. I work with our internal broadcasting team a little bit. To make sure that we are coordinated so if a tournament has a specific hashtag or a specific Twitter name, that we’re tweeting about it and the Golf Channel’s tweeting about it. Things like that. We have been taking the step in putting hashtags into the broadcast. That’s definitely a conversation that goes above my level. It’s something we’re interested in doing. I think if you look at what PGA Tour and PGATour.com is producing right now, we are using hash-tags on our live app broadcast, we have more Twitter integration. Whether you want your iPad app and you’re watching live in that and you’ve got a social stream on the right hand rail, or you’re watching it on your desktop and you’re able to switch over and tweet. I definitely think our fans are participating in the two screen experience in that they’re watching and they’re also trying to be connected, because I see it every day. I see the re-tweets that we get on Sundays as it’s coming down to the wire, as competition is wrapping up. So it’s definitely there. As far as who we have to convince and making sure that we go about it the right way. We haven’t done a hashtag on a PGA Tour event yet, but that’s not to say that we wouldn’t do that in the future.
Jay: Hashtag Argyle Social.
Eric: That would be perfectly relevant because of the Loud Mouth Golf fans.
Jay: That’s right.
Eric: Lauren is the connection there by the way. She’s the one that tweeted at Loud Mouth Golf while I was wearing their pants.
Lauren: I did.
Jay: See, so you owe your pants to this week’s guest on Social Pros.
Eric: Yeah, Lauren, based on your tweet I emailed them and they sent me three or four pairs of pants.
Lauren: Really?
Eric: Yeah, thank you.
Lauren: I will have to tell you, Loud Mouth Golf is actually on Pinterest. They’re one of the first golf brands that is on Pinterest.
Eric: Makes sense.
Lauren: They put up the cutest pair of woman’s shorts. I repinned it, and my friend who’s going to the Ryder Cup with me, she commented on my pin of Loud Mouth Golf shorts. She just said, ‘Ryder Cup?’ I thought oh, now I have to reach out to the Loud Mouth people and make sure I get those for September. Maybe you can help with that, Eric. Maybe you can be my connection there.
Eric: I don’t know. I seem to think that your connection with the PGA is probably a little bit more valuable than my connection to marketing software nerdery.
Jay: I will be at the Ryder Cup as well, but I will not be wearing the Loud Mouth woman’s skirt pants or whatever you’re talking about. Although maybe I will. You never know.
Lauren: Maybe you can borrow a pair from Eric.
Jay: By that time Eric and I might be the same size. That would be a win for me. We’ll see.
Eric: Go Jay, go.

Social Pros Shout Out

Jay: We’ll see. Lauren, do you have any Social Pros shout outs? This is the part of the show where you talk about what you love, what inspires you in the world of social media and content marketing. What do you think? Other than a well-struck two iron, what inspires you?
Lauren: Actually it’s the hybrid these days. I was thinking about this and honestly, I’m so into the golf world, that sometimes I forget to pull myself and think about who else I’m following and who’s teaching me all of this great stuff. I have a quick little list. Most people you’ve probably had referred once or twice, but obviously Jason Keath of Social Fresh. That’s actually how I met both of you, so I thought it was only fair to put Social Fresh on the list. Also a few of the people that I love to listen to or connect with when I get a chance. Peter Shankman, who founded ‘Help a Reporter Out‘ and a bunch of other companies along the way, was actually one of the first people I started tweeting with back five years ago when I was trying to figure out PR and social media in general. I was actually an original member of the Facebook HARO group.
Jay: That is old school. Nicely done.
Lauren: I was really old school. I was a fledgling PR pro at that point.
Then I watched Amy Jo Martin, who now owns Digital Royalty, I watched her from when she was at the Suns because at the time we were one of the first couple women doing social media and digital in sports and being on Twitter to represent our brands. Obviously she’s been a little more successful than I have, until this point. Amy Jo Martin and the Digital Royalty team, they’re great. They do a great blog. If I have a question about something that’s up and coming or emerging technologies, that’s definitely where I go to check that out.
Jay: Yep, they just had their three year anniversary last week, which is awesome. Congratulations to them. I used to work with Amy back in the day when I was in Phoenix.
Lauren: Golf claps for them. Then I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Chris and Kristie, from Social Media Club Global. I think the Social Media Club, what they’re doing on an international level in scope, it really just started as a heart project and it’s something they really cared about. They transformed it into something that is reaching so many people and educating and really bringing the social media profession along. They really helped me when I went to bring Social Media Club here to Jacksonville, Florida. Just a shout out to all the SMC’ers and Socialmediaclub.org because there’s great people on that site too.
Jay: No question. We should have Chris and Kristie on the show. That’s a great idea. We should have them come on someday as a Sonny and Cher “I Got You Babe” episode. We’re going to make that happen.
Eric: Only if they sing.
Jay: We can do that for sure.
Lauren: Can I give one more?
Jay: Of course.
Lauren: All right, one more. Like I said earlier, we have over 150 professional golfers on Twitter. The easiest way to find those, we have Twitter lists for all of our tours, even their caddies and their wives in our tournament. You can find all of those at bit.ly/golflists. That’s the easiest way to do it. Or twitter.com/PGATour and click on our list button. Then you can follow and see any of the golfers or anybody associated with the PGA Tour there on Twitter. It’s pretty fun. I think Ben Crane earlier today posted a YouTube video driving down Magnolia Lane. You actually got the whole experience.
Jay: Awesome.
Lauren: So cool.
Jay: That is fantastic. I’m going to check out that list of lists. That’s a good idea. Lauren, you were terrific. Thank you very much for being on Social Pros. It was a delight to have you. Good luck this week at the Masters. I will see you at the Ryder Cup, if not before. Mr. Boggs, always a pleasure. It was delightful.
Next week on the show, who is our special guest next week?
Eric: I think Vanessa from Hilton.
Jay: Oh it is, that’s right. Our good friend Vanessa Sain-Dieguez from Hilton Hotels. She’s going to talk about some amazing stuff that Hilton’s got going on, most particularly their program where Hilton actually solves your Twitter questions, even if you’re not staying at their hotel. It’s amazing. Tune in for that. Thanks as always to Eric’s company, Argyle Social, to our good friends at Infusionsoft, and to our buddy Jim Kukral from Digital Book Launch. Until next week, I’m Jay Baer. Thanks so much.