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:

1. Go to twitter.com and push the “Sign Up” Button

2. Set up a Twitter user name using 20 characters max that reflects your tournament name. Don’t select these under an individual’s name. You will also have to select a password. You will need an email account that has not been used for another Twitter account, so if you have your own personal Twitter account, you may want to sign up for a Gmail account first.

3. Select other twitter accounts that you would like to follow. These could be other soccer or tournament related accounts. By following others, others will follow you.

4. With your first tweet, tell the world about your event in 140 characters or less.

5. Set up your profile. Here you will upload your tournament logo in a 200px x200px jpg format. You will also provide a name, location, website and a brief bio.

6. In the design step, you can customize the way Twitter looks for you and how your profile looks to others. Start with a pre-designed theme — and then, optionally, customize it with your own color scheme and background image.

7. Fill in your Twitter account in your Web Maintenance>Site Variables set up on your TourneyCentral website. Your Twitter badge will then display on the left rail so teams and their fans can follow you easily.

Our Advice: Use Twitter to Tweet updates before, during and after your event. Any time you post new content on your website, send a quick Tweet out along with a link back to your website.

Your TourneyCentral website is integrated with Twitter. When you update scores, you can send that update notice to your Twitter account. You can also fill in a Twitter account for your advertisers so that a Twitter button appears in their DEALS listing.

Send updates to Twitter during the event, such as sponsor coupons, reminders of lunch specials at concessions, lost and found, etc. Here is an example of what a soccer tournament Twitter account can look like.

This is the third in a five-part series on Social Media for Soccer Tournaments. Next up: Setting up YouTube and Flickr accounts.

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:

1. Go to www.facebook.com. If you are already on Facebook, log into your personal profile. Under the Account tab, Use the Help Center on Facebook and enter “Create a Page”. If you are not on Facebook and do not wish to have a personal profile, locate the green Sign Up button. Underneath that, there is a link called “Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business.” Click on that to start.

2. Choose Local Business of Place/Sports Venue. Enter your tournament name and the club address or the street address of the main venue.

3. Upload your tournament logo in a 200px x200px jpg format.

4. Write a short description of your tournament in 140 characters or less in the info section.

5. Update your page regularly with the news items that appear on the front page of your soccer tournament web site or photos. Photos are particularly good because they drive page views. Do not post the entire news item, but rather post an excerpt or key words and link back to your site for the entire news item or story. Use the 140 character rule.

6. Start building your fan base by copying the Facebook URL from your page that appears at the top (it will look something like http://www.facebook.com/pages/your-tournament-event/1362877625525) and put that in your Website Maintenance Module>Variables>Go! (if this option is not available or you need help, drop us a support email or call us.) You will then see a Facebook badge in the left rail of your TourneyCentral website.

Our Advice: At this point, you will want to consistently update the page with content, interesting photos or videos and always link back to your website. TourneyCentral.com offers soccer tournament directors integration with social media channels. Your Facebook promotion appears on your website throughout just by turning it on in your variables. Here’s an example of a soccer tournament Facebook page.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are also integrated into the Advertising Module. You can offer your DEALS advertisers additional reach by entering their Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as embed a YouTube video into their listing.

(This is the second in a five-part series on Social Media for Soccer Tournaments. Next up: Setting up a Twitter Account.)

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.

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.

The graphic below shows an example of an unfriendly versus friendly layout.

Web-Unfriendly

Web-Friendly

Most of the time, your maps will come from a parks department or a graphic designer who has designed them to be great for printing in a program, but almost entirely unreadable on a web site. Make sure to specify that you need the maps to work across ALL media — online and in print. If need be, be ready to re-work them with large field numbers however you can if your graphics people can’t. Even if that means white sticky dots and a Sharpie.

Keep your field maps simple and readable. Big field numbers first, secondary information only if there is room. You can always have more detailed maps posted at the fields.

There is no getting around it, running a youth soccer tournament is a lot of work. Even the most organized tournament directors with the best clubs and best software tools take on a huge responsibility. In the end, the hard work is balanced out by the rewards of seeing kids enjoying the game and putting a nice amount of money in the club’s accounts and the local economy. Everybody wants to be considered successful. When it comes to success, an old saying comes to mind, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” A well thought out and executed communication plan, starting at the time of registration and acceptance, can help save headaches later, when you should be concentrating on something else.

Never assume that coaches who are accepted into your soccer tournament automatically know what the next step is. It is as simple as this: tell them what to do and when to do it. Starting with your acceptance letter, include a timeline or checklist of any items that need to be completed prior to the tourney. Be clear about the dates and if there is any further information or payment needed. Make sure that you also comply by sticking to stated dates.

Anticipate questions and make sure that your tournament website includes the answers. Push as much of the information and communication needs onto your website as possible. It is helpful if your soccer tournament website is more than just a static recruiting tool. A complete, end-to-end soccer tournament management system, like those offered by TourneyCentral, is well worth the investment. Cheap and free systems always have limitations which are more costly in the end.

This may seem like a lot of upfront work, but you’ll be thankful as your tournament dates get closer. It brings to mind another old saying, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.”

The Grand Rapids Crew Juniors 2nd Annual Crew Spring Classic soccer tournament will be held on April 15-17th, 2011 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The tournament is open to U08-U10, U11-U12, and U13 youth teams. Based on the success of last year’s first annual Crew Spring Classic, interest from youth soccer teams around the region is high and space is limited. Registration for the event closes on March 28, 2011.

The main site for the Crew Classic is the state-of-the-art MVP Fieldhouse. There is an additional site in Kentwood, only a ten-minute drive from the main site. Because weather is always a concern in April, all games will be played on turf to maintain field conditions and limit delays. Staying on the turf limits the number of openings so make sure to register soon and be as detailed as possible on your team application. Fees run between $475 and $525 per team.

Use Travelling Teams, the exclusive hotel partner for the Crew Spring Classic, to book your hotel rooms. Travelling Teams offers great rates at a variety of hotels all located near MVP. MVP is located on 28th Street in Grand Rapids, which offers many attractions, restaurants, and two malls to keep you entertained between games.

The Grand Rapids Crew Juniors are looking forward to hosting your team in 2011. Information on registration, travel, lodging, scheduling, scores and things to do when you are in town are included on the tournament website.

Most people would say that bringing hundreds of youth soccer teams and their families to your town for a weekend youth soccer tournament would be good for the local economy.

But how good is it?

Knowing the answer to that question could really make things easier for tournament directors who are trying to schedule fields, get sponsors and generally drum up support from the local business community.

Using an integrated, online solution for marketing, scheduling and managing your soccer tournament could provide some of the answers. One example is the Tournament PulsePoint™ tool standard with every TourneyCentral site.

The tool is available to TourneyCentral tournament directors as one of several administrative modules that take the mystery out of running a tournament. Tournament PulsePoint™ uses numbers from the U.S. Soccer Foundation Economic Impact model, economic impact from the National Association of Sport Commissions and marketing data from the U.S. Census Bureau to provide overall economic impact and other marketing data based on the numbers of teams in your tournament and where they come from.

All of the information can be seen on a dashboard style screen including a map with pin marks on the locations of the teams in your tourney.

Youth soccer tournaments mean business; big business for your organization and for hotels, stores and restaurants in your town. The tools are now available to help you manage and market your soccer tournament like the serious business that it is.

Most youth soccer tournaments are run by volunteers who generously dedicate huge chunks of their time, talent and sometimes even their own money because they love the game and love to see kids get a chance to compete on a high level. But a youth soccer tournament represents big business to the clubs that sponsor them and to the business community in host cities.

There is a new resource for directors of these events and all others who want to share their knowledge or perhaps pick up a thing or two. If you have not already done so, join the Soccer Tournaments Mean Business Group on LinkedIn and start to share thoughts and network with other like-minded, dedicated soccer folks.

Social media is picking up momentum as a means of communication for business professionals in all walks of life. LinkedIn is the recognized leader for people who would rather separate their business interests from their other social networking activity on Facebook and Twitter.

Sharing ideas and making contacts with tournament directors from around the world can put your event on the forefront of using the latest and best tools, software and procedures that will make your event more attractive to youth soccer teams and to the sponsors who want their name and business attached to a winner.

The group was started by TourneyCentral, a provider of integrated online solution for youth soccer tournaments, but is open to everyone in the youth soccer tournament world who wants to dial up the professionalism of their event.