Pride of the Internet It’s not enough that Pride II is drop-dead gorgeous and has a widely-known and deeply-respected captain. She also kills it on social media, thanks to the efforts of Patrick Smith When a planned Tall Ships America conference session on best social media practices was abandoned after the event went virtual, it left us no choice but to talk directly with Pride II Programming Coordinator Patrick Smith. Marlinspike: Patrick, your title of “programming coordinator” obviously encompasses a lot of different responsibilities. Patrick Smith: It’s really a catchall. I change the light bulbs, I change the air filters in the office, and then I coordinate our guest crew program. I’m coordinating the upcoming ‘Deeper Dive’ virtual lecture series. As Jan would say, I wear a lot of hats! MS: How’d you get the hat that says “social media” on it? PS: I got into the fleet in the beginning of 2014 as a deckhand, but I’ve always taken an interest in the office side. I started to learn our [customer relationship management software] Salesforce, and I knew one of the people that had this job at the time, so even as a deckhand I would email her photos. Then in 2016 we were in the Great Lakes, in Chicago, it was just easier for the ship to take over the Instagram. And so I started doing the Instagram. It was pretty funny because I had to go to Captain [ Jan] Miles for every post to have him look it over, to make sure it was okay. Trying to explain some of the quotes or captions to Cap was always a fun experience. So I started with the Instagram, and then I got an internship with the office that fall. That was the trial by fire. I was suddenly working with all the channels, Twitter, Facebook, trying to figure out our YouTube channel, get that started. And now, zoom, it’s 2022 and I am coordinating our social media. MS: Over those five or six years, you have built a reputa16
tion for doing a great job with Pride II’s social media. Can you talk a bit about the organization’s media strategy? Who develops it? Who implements it? What are its goals? PS: We as an organization work together to create quality content. I am responsible for implementing our social strategy it but it’s kind of a project-to-project thing. Our social media content falls into a handful of categories. There’s the simple, ‘post a pretty picture of the boat’ and that’s something I can do any day of the week. And then there’s the more informative posts, where we talk about caulking, points of sail, different things like that. And for that, I usually double back to the ship’s officers just to make sure everything I’m saying is correct. We’ve really built a pretty cool system, a cohesive team, when it comes to our social media. Jan and Chief Jeff Crosby have been really good about getting content to the office for me to work with. I can always reach them for clarification or caption help. When it comes to marketing things like day sails, deck tours, guest crew opportunities, that falls on me to just get the word out. We’re really lucky in that we’ve got a beautiful boat that’s got a 40-plus-year reputation, going back to [the original Pride, launched in 1977]. The boat’s no stranger to a lot of people, and social media plays a good role putting the pieces together on that. I can’t tell you how many times somebody will comment, “Oh, my father used to take me down to the shipyard to watch the boat be built,” and then they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize I could do guest crew!” So we’re lucky in that the boat has a reputation, and our social media just kind of helps us tell more of that story and get it out to people. Ninety-nine percent of our social media is organic. We don’t do any ads, or targeted ads. We just don’t have the budget for it. And a lot of it is posted real time, and that’s a personal thing for me. I’m not a big fan of Hootsuite or any of those scheduling apps.
MarlinspikeMagazine.com
