Veteran Sailors, Steve and Doris Colgate, Make Sailing Come Alive on the Web

Sailing is a wonderful, exhilarating sport for those who have the training and experience to enjoy the ever-changing interplay of wind and water on a boat driven by its sails.

First, you have to learn how to sail.  Happily, like 100,000+ students before you, you can do just that at Fort Myers-based Offshore Sailing School.  Once, you have learned from their skilled instructors, sailing becomes a lifelong pleasure.

But, you can learn even more from the Offshore Sailing School  folks. You can learn a lot about content marketing online.

Bringing Modern Marketing to a Traditional Business

Steve and Doris have been running a sailing school for more than 40 years, building a successful business with multiple locations and a world-class repetition. Although they have been doing this for a long time,  there is nothing dated or old-fashioned about their approach to content marketing. They are fully engaged online with a website, a YouTube channel, a blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account. 

I particularly like what they are doing on their website and on YouTube as examples of how to take a traditional business and bring it successfully into the 21st century content marketing world–with a strong visual approach to everything that they do.

How Their Website Makes It Easy to Transform Site Visitors into Sailing Students

• They feature a big, beautiful slideshow at the top of the page that illustrates the beauty of the sailing experience. There is almost no need for words to introduce prospective students to the idea of a lifelong love of sailing. Their own eyes will make the sale about sailing.
• When it comes to home page copy, they get right to the point. In just two opening paragraphs, they make the case for sailing and for the  Offshore Sailing School:

Be Inspired by Sailing!
We know your time is valuable, so we’ll teach you everything you’ve always wanted to learn about sailing, fast. In just three days, our Learn to Sail Course gives you the confidence to sail mid-sized sailboats with ease. In one week you can gain skills to sail and live-aboard big cruising sailboats with our Fast Track to Cruising® course. Like to sail really fast? If you’re new to racing or currently race and would like hard-core hands-on coaching, you’ll benefit greatly from seven days of race training on our Colgate 26 fleet, with seminars and video recaps by North U. in Offshore’s racing courses.
Whichever sailing course you choose, you’ll be inspired, refreshed, amazed at how much you learn. Whether you want to get away for a day or go around the world, sailing is now within your reach. Offshore Sailing School is the leader in sailing lessons and sailing vacations – discover one of our seven locations today!

• They make it very easy to connect with a prominent "Quick Connect" box in the upper right-hand part of the page.
• They display the latest news prominently on the left sidebar, using complementary images as appropriate.
• They combine text and images frequently with sidebar items such as their featured course, their sailing specials, and their newsletter sign-up.
• They highlight their social media connections on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube  to make it easy to continue the connection.
• They integrate a timely and informative blog, which, in turn, includes numerous videos from YouTube as well as their latest Tweets.
• And, it may be a small thing,but the site’s background is an ocean panorama on what looks to be a perfect day for sailing. For many websites the sort of background would be superfluous. But, for Offshore Sailing School, this is perfect.

Offshore Has Their Own YouTube Channel with Plenty of Engaging Videos

The Offshore Sailing School YouTube page has been nicely designed to complement their website.They have 20 videos which provide sailing instruction, testimonials, and some examples of the sailing experience. Their "Learning to Sail" six minute video has had more than 3000 viewings.That’s pretty powerful when you compare towhat they might have expected from traditional magazine advertising in days gone by.

Does their approach to online content marketing work? Well, if you search for  "sailing school" on Google, you might not be totally surprised that they come up #1 in the organic results.

Not bad for a couple of old salts.