Ever since the beginning of the internet, hunters enjoyed connecting with other hunters through forums. Forums would give hunters the opportunity to communicate with other hunters from around the world, meet new outfitters, brag about their trophy buck, ask questions, get feedback on new equipment, etc. This is really the first form of social media with hunters.
Wikpedia describes social media as: “Media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues.” Today, hunters are using social media sites all over the internet. Twitter is a social network that allows hunters to provide short messages to other hunters. 140 characters is the max amount of characters in a “Tweet”. Hunters are using Twitter as a great communication platform to follow other hunters. Facebook is providing a social network, built on top of the Facebook platform, for website owners and hunting business owners to have conversations with their community. There are many hunters on Facebook today, so it is easy for them to join a community on Facebook and never leave the site.
YouTube is allowing hunters to record their hunts and post them for people to see on the web. YouTube also allows users to easily embed videos into a site or blog. No technical skills are required, just a simple ‘copy and paste’. Flickr is a Yahoo service for hunters to upload their hunting pictures. When pictures are made public, your friends and family have the ability to view and leave comments on your pictures. Google Reader allows users to read all the latest hunting information by simply adding a RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed from a blog or a site into Google Reader. If you have an interest to start your own hunting community, there are many social networks that allow this. Ning and Kick-Apps allow users to create their own social network, complete with blogs, forums, videos, pictures, etc.
Social Media is the wave of the future. Each day, I am seeing more and more hunters joining sites like Twitter and Facebook. Not only are people joining these social networks, but many of the large hunting and outdoors business are joining these social networks to communicate with their customers. This is a great way for businesses to market their business, connect with their customers, and even offer sales and discounts. Best of all, a majority of these services are free. If you have not joined one of these social networks, I highly suggest you become involved now and connect with other hunters.
Dennis McGuire is the owner of the blog FieldJournals.com, a blog that provides an exclusive social media & mobile applications guide for hunters. You can follow him on Twitter @FieldTweets.