To Tweet To Tweet – Is It Even A Question? As the online frontier emerges, superintendents grapple with the ROI on social media By Robert Thompson Scott White has a strong perspective on how social media should be used by golf course superintendents. White took to Twitter recently to suggest that the men and women who grow grass on golf courses might consider separating their personal from professional perspective when it comes to social media. It was met with mixed responses, but White, the superintendent at Toronto’s Donalda Club, is convinced that the professionals who maintain Ontario’s golf courses need to filter their private life from their professional one. “To my way of thinking it is about separating church and state,” he says. “Some people have Twitter accounts for their personal life, mine is for work. It is a decision I made early on.”
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Of course White is deep into the world of social media. He runs a blog for Donalda, in addition to his Twitter feed. But at the same time he wonders about the amount of time spent on social media versus the payoff and amount of attention it draws. “I don’t think the balance is there,” he says. “It probably doesn’t pay off when you get right down to it.” Social media is so vast these days that there are as many perspectives on how superintendents should use it as there are Tweets in a day. Should a superintendent utilize a blog to talk to golfers, or is that too time consuming for too little return? Does sending a Tweet potentially bring the ‘super’ into conflict with a member, or is it the best way to connect with golfers? Where does Facebook play