Twitter is a service that you can use to fire out quick updates or messages to your followers. This makes it a great tool for youth soccer tournaments and tournament directors because they can immediately announce game scores, special promotions or upcoming events on their smart phones, computers or via text messaging.
Here’s how to set up your Twitter soccer tournament account:
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Facebook is becoming the de facto place to organize event information and share content within a circle of friends. While it will never rival the specialization of a soccer tournament website like TourneyCentral for registration, scheduling and scores, it makes sense that your soccer tournament is available on Facebook for your teams and their fans to find and connect up with you there if that is more convenient for them. It is an additional marketing channel you should not ignore.
However, you should always make sure the hub of your event is your tournament website. You publish content to your Facebook page in order to draw fans to your tournament site to support your sponsors, advertisers and centralize your communications to the teams to avoid confusion.
This post will walk you step-by-step through setting up a Facebook Fan Page to reach soccer coaches and teams to get them interested and keep them engaged in your youth soccer tournament.
Here’s how to set up your Facebook Fan Page:
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Soccer tournament directors are aware of the ways that tournaments reward teams who place in their event. This is a story of one recent tournament where one small detail really damaged the reputation of an otherwise fine event.
A team of U13 boys played very well in a third-place game and beat a team they had lost to quite soundly the week before. The tournament was giving out water bottles as a third-place trophy.
It was not long after the presentation that one of the boys walked up to his coach and said, “Hey coach, look at this.” On the water bottle, the words, “BELIEVE, ACHEIVE,” appeared wrapped around the tournament logo.
Only the the word “ACHIEVE” is spelled incorrectly.
While the coach was proud that his players had paid attention to their spelling lessons in school, he was amazed and embarrassed for the tournament organizers. It was all anybody could talk about.
A few weeks later, the tournament sent t-shirts to the boys as a replacement.
Our Advice: Work with a trusted vendor. Somewhere along the line, a busy tournament volunteer rubber-stamped the artwork for the water bottle without taking a real look at it. Bad enough, but a true vendor partner would have questioned the artwork regardless of the approval signature. The mistake was more costly than just the price of the water bottle and the replacement t-shirts. It became the stamp of the tournament.
The vendor should have picked up the phone.
The vendor should have picked up the phone.
There will be a special place in heaven for youth soccer tournament directors. These largely volunteer people give countless hours of their free time to help raise funds for their club and give kids a chance to play competitive soccer. They have to convince teams to play, armies of volunteers to work and sponsors to participate. There is no doubt that, at least on some level, tournament directors love the game of soccer.
But running a successful tournament needs more than just enthusiasm and “want to”. It requires the ability to remove yourself from the emotions and personalities and make real business decisions. Teams that sign up to play and the fans that follow them are real customers. Sponsors that support your event, even the ones who do it for good will purposes, are real business partners.
Our Advice: It’s time to realize that you are not in the Soccer Business. You are in the Event Management Business that happens to feature a youth soccer tournament. Highly successful events take a good hard look at every aspect of their event and make educated business decisions on what they should do, and what they should not. Those who leave things to chance, well, they leave things to chance. Being a volunteer does not mean you have to be an amateur.
Newsflash: the NCAA Basketball Tournament starts this week. March Madness has become a stamp on the brains of the American public. Millions of people are busy filling out their brackets for their office pools and the bracket sheet will be their best friend for the next three weeks. On first glance, youth soccer tournaments don’t have much in common with this huge event. But if you look closer, there is much that soccer tournament directors can learn.
March Madness is all about Bracketology. The NCAA found magic in a bottle with their tournament bracket sheet, and has it the front and center of everything they do. The fact is that due to the over-exposure on TV and loss of talent to the NBA, interest in the college basketball season has waned. But the interest in March Madness has never been higher, because it goes beyond hard core sports fans. It all works because the NCAA figured out what it does well and spends all of its time talking about it.
Our Advice: Figure out what your youth soccer tournament does well and what you want to be known for. If it’s about your schedule, make it about your schedule. If it’s about your facilities, make it about the facilities. If it’s about the food, make it about the food. By focusing on your strengths and sharing them with your guests, you create an atmosphere that people want to be part of. The feeling that your tournament is “The place to be” starts with you, infects your volunteers and reflects on teams, sponsors, parents, grandparents and fans. Your own Mini-Madness will have them showing up and coming back year after year.