Give Visibility to the Activity of the Snipe Class

by Ivo Gattulli – Promotion Committee Member

Years ago (ten at least… My God!) I argued with Pietro Fantoni about the importance of a properly managed website, and the differences between a web site and a blog. In that period Pietro started to manage the Italian Snipe Class website, and he did a really great job. You might think that SnipeToday came from nothing, and you’d be wrong, because what SnipeToday is nowadays is exactly the outcome of that outstanding job made by Pietro, who was so unknown to so many around the Snipe world.

But years, as I said, have passed and things have changed. Not everything, of course; me and Pietro keep on arguing, but on different matters. One of them is how to bring the Snipe outside the current Sniper’s circle.

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The following is one attempt to do that.

Our Class has based its promotion on personal contacts since 1931, and it’s great and really nice, and it’s working in some way still. But in 2016 it is not enough anymore.

Many people across the Class think we already do “promotion”, through the Snipe Bulletin, SnipeToday, Facebook and so on.. and they are all great initiatives for sure, but they are also a completely different thing. They’re made for and followed by people who already know the Snipe. Promoting it outside the circle is a completely different thing.

The best way we have to do something real and effective about “promotion”, considering contact/cost ratio, is to use a recent invention that everyone knows but few really understand properly. I’m talking about the Internet.

If ten years ago everyone needed a website, today everyone needs a website/facebook page/instagram account, in order to get out on the first page of the main search-engine every time someone makes a pertinent search.

Many of us (and this thing makes me crazy ’cause it is like thinking the Earth is flat) believe we are already searching well, because Google traces everyone activity. So if you visit for instance SnipeToday and then search “Snipe” on Google, SnipeToday will be mentioned on the first page. That’s Alice in Wonderland for flat-Earth believers; in reality it’s just a good job made in Mountain View (California).

The document attached here is just a quotation to make it real. I mean to make it happen that even for those who’ve never been on SnipeToday, if they look for “Snipe”, they won’t find only big rifles.

Indeed we also need to do something more. Monitoring activity to know which terms are more frequently used in any search about (for instance) sail racing, the contents on our web media will be revised to include those terms, so our websites (or FB account, or whatever) will pop up in the first page of all similar searches on Google.

And it’s not over. That activity will produce a report mentioning not only terms, but also generated contact, and visitors brought on our web site, the kind of information crucial to find someone interested to sponsor our activity. Some real sponsor, not some munificent friend (that’s not a sponsor, it’s a donor indeed..).

Obviously it costs money. But it’s not the only initiative that costs; the current Snipe Bulletin is a really nice thing in my opinion, but not so efficient to attract new people, I fear. It’s worth the investment.

I know it’ll sound to someone a little … esoteric! But it’s daily business in many sectors today, and I guess there are no alternatives, if we want to secure to the Snipe Class a bright future. And I guess that should be a common issue, also for those (and God knows how many they are in our Class) always hostile if not to any change for sure to any change in the status quo.

That’s the way it is, to your gentle attention.

snipe_Class_media_agreement_draft_for_ST.pdf