Case Study: Charleswood Karate’s Social Media
Shotokan Karate in Winnipeg
Contact: Ron Porath (Head Instructor/Owner)
Charleswood Karate is a Shotokan Karate club operating in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada since 1993.
With a variety of classes designed to meet the needs of both recreational and competitive martial artists from the ages of 4 and beyond, Charleswood Karate has recently expanded to include Women’s Karate classes and Yoga.
Launched/Expanded: December 2011
Charleswood Karate Online
Charleswood Karate is an active, popular martial arts club in Winnipeg, Manitoba that was started back in 1993 by Ron Porath, who is now a 6th Dan in Shotokan Karate. Its training schedule offers more than 16 classes per week, with both general and specialized activities for kids and adults, beginner and advanced.
With an existing website that shared the schedule and its updates via a WordPress blog that had nearly 100 subscribers, and a Facebook page with just over 20 fans, Charleswood was able to get the basic messages across to its membership through the Internet.
Challenge: Club’s website and Facebook pages were set up, but not much content was produced, and there wasn’t much attention, traffic nor interaction with what DID go up. Inquiries to the club through email or by telephone occasionally came in as a result of web searches but not as often as was desired. Blog posts only got interactions from spammers, and content posted was never shared around social networks.
Solution: Invigorate the existing Social Media profile on Facebook and expand into other popular social media content distribution sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Google+ with a plan to create original content that reaches current membership, attracts new members and earns residual income from Internet viewers who can never become club members.
Getting Going With Social Media
WebGrrl Enterprises started working with Charleswood Karate via its Facebook page by taking over the majority of the administrative functions, including posting and sharing pictures from recent martial arts event relateds to the club. The Facebook Events system has been put into use for seminars, activities and events, and the wall has been used more regularly to post links to clubs and videos that are related to Charleswood and its membership.
With the creation of a Google account came the creation of a Google+ business page, and a Charleswood Karate YouTube account designed to house videos recorded at various karate events related to the club. Members had already posted a few videos, giving the club people to connect up with immediately.
The addition of a Twitter account rounded out this karate club’s Social Media profile. Since Sport Manitoba and Karate Manitoba were already set up on Twitter, Charleswood Karate made some quality connections from the start.
Results Of Growing The Social Media Network
Charleswood Karate is seeing some immediate results with their online Social Media profiles. Here’s a playlist of videos where we’ve taken a tour through their back-end stats for YouTube, Facebook, their website, and more.
