It’s April 2015, and I’m sat down in the Trafford Golf Centre with a young PGA professional by the name of Rick Shiels. The man from Bolton is beginning to make quite a name for himself on YouTube, with somewhere in the region of 75,000 subscribers. A lot of us are still trying to get our heads around the idea of an ‘influencer’, and, back then, it would have been easy to dismiss them as something of a fad.
Now, though, Shiels boasts a staggering 2.46 million subscribers on YouTube, and millions more follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Today, whether you’re researching a holiday, buying a new television or going out for a meal, you’re likely to dip into the world of social media, where you’ll find…