Writing and Business Planning For The Scuba Diving Industry
Scuba diving opens up a new world. Scuba divers are like motorcyclist, there is an instant infinity between them. Most of us have a passion for diving. We bask in the shared excitement of diving and often tell “war” stories of our different dives to other divers. Scuba Divers share details of good dives and bad. They talk about our favorite dive sites and almost worship our diving kit. We get tips from more experienced divers and pass on our golden nuggets of knowledge to those new to the sport. When we are on a dive boat, we tend to judge other divers skills as we get ready to dive. We may subconsciously judge who we can trust and who we might need to keep an eye on. Hopefully it not the diver the dive master “assigned” as our dive buddy.
Just as we can often tell if a diver is “faking” it on a dive boat, pretending to be more skilled than they are, we can read an article and tell if the writer is a qualified diver as well. As an example, I once came across an article online about one of my favorite dive sites. Much of the material in the article was copied from pages in my diving book just slightly reworded. As I read it, it appeared to me that the re-writer was not a diver. One sentence really confused me. It stated that the wreck became visible at 60 feet. That wreck is only in 20 to 30 feet of water. It took me a few seconds to realize that I had written that the dive site had up to 60 feet of visibility.
Clearly a rewrite mistake a diver would not make. How often have you cringed at a news article when you read about the “oxygen” bottles that scuba divers use?
Some of my work
In 2014, I produced over 150 webpages, 100 articles, 2 e-books and 200 curated items for Scuba Diving. The majority of those items were written for three websites:
- One based in Britain which I have written for weekly started in Early 2013
- An Australian company with daily dive boats and a Liveaboard which I started writing for in January 2014
- An Ukraine based website which I started writing for in June 2014.
All three continued into 2015. I also did one on-site business evaluation. In previous years I have also done marketing plans for local dive resorts, a business plan for a new dive resort and a concept plan followed by a business plan for a liveaboard.
Johan’s Dive Resort
More recently, I have written for the leading diving websites:
- Deeperblue. com I had a byline column with almost 200 articles. These were a mix of skills, equipment, and destinations. I took a pause from them mostly because of the difficulty finding new topics.
- divezone.net I ghostwrote the majority of the destination guides.
Your goal is to make your website the authority in your niche. You want your clients or readers to always come back for more. To turn to you for advice on that next purchase or guidance for that next dive trip. It is my function to help make that happen, with quality and focused content or business analysis. If you believe that your content marketing and the needs of your clients and customers deserve high quality targeted content, then we should talk.
The Scuba Diving Me
I will admit it was as a child that I first became interested in scuba diving, The Sea Hunt television program and James Bond movies were a big draw. One of my good friends in High School was a YMCA instructor, however, back then the swimming requirement was much more intense than it is now, so I did not get certified back then. For a number of reasons, I did not become a certified diver until 18 years ago. I am an advance open water diver with eight specialties and have over 500 dives. Someday I will take some time and get my rescue diver certification and receive my Master Diver level.
While not a dive professional, I do have experience on the business side having created business plans for both PADI and SSI facilities. I have also helped develop new dive resorts. I have been a member of the Board of Advisors (same as the Board of Directors) of the Subic Bay Dive Association for over seven years. The Subic Bay Dive Association is a Not for Profit organization made up of the owners/ managers of dive related companies in the Subic Bay Philippines area. The association promotes scuba diving to the destination and acts as a representative of its members in issues related to diving to local government units. The association also has seats on a couple of regional tourism organizations. As a member of the Board of Advisors of I have been involved with all aspects of dive operations and dive tourism.
Visit my personal blog the Scuba Diving Nomad
