So now “the real work begins”, according to Task Force 20/20. The 2009 Shooting Sports Summit in Floriday wrapped up recently with the overal goal of growing participation in the shooting sports by 20% in the next five years. I’m actually disappointed that I wasn’t able to attend, as I’m literally buried under five different projects right now and just wasn’t able to make a trip to Florida.
One of the big “talking points” at the recent Summit was the integration of new media in to promoting the shooting sports – you’ve already begun to see that with efforts like NRA’s outreach to bloggers, the NRABlog, Ruger taking a huge online marketing presence, etc – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s my personal hope to see more and more industry reaching out to new media; and not just for selfish reasons either. I truly believe that the upcoming generation of shooters, the people that we need if we want our sports to prosper are found almost entirely online. I also believe that the aforementioned generation of shooters acquires a tremendous portion of their information from online sources as well, which means to get their all important shooting dollar, you need to be where they are…on Facebook.