A few weeks ago, we signed up for a Square account to test with a small consumer product line we have that is mobile.

Wow, were we impressed.

The sign up process was easy. We simply needed an EIN number, a verifiable bank account and we were set up to accept credit cards (on site only, no phone or Internet sales.) Within a week, Square shipped a credit card swipe reader which gets plugged into an iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone. Download the app, log in and you are taking credit cards. You can even take a picture of the customer holding up the product they bought as part of the receipt!

There are no set up fees, no equipment to buy. Square sends the small reader free of charge. The fee is 2.75% per swipe for all cards (higher for manual entry) The funds are transferred into our account later that night and available the next business day.

Our Advice: Sign up with Square and start taking credit cards at the fields for t-shirts and other concessions. Be sure to control the sign up process at the treasurer level and above and make sure the account is set up under the tournament’s brand. Square sends out one free reader as part of the account, but I think they will send out more if needed for multiple locations. We will send them an email and follow up when they reply. Answer is online at this page.

Control the card readers as you would any other financially sensitive equipment. Establish as few points of purchase as possible and only with trusted staff. You may even want to purchase iPads for use by the concessions staff only so your login credentials and accounts are not compromised. Change the passwords immediately after the event or shift change.

You will need an internet connection or smartphone (iPhone, Android) with 3G at the fields.

2012 is the year soccer tournaments will become mobile very quickly. Technology and services like Square will help us get there.

The long, more substantive answer is we’ve never seen early bird or multiple discount pricing actually move the needle on attracting teams to a tournament. Teams who want to come play at your event will come because it is a great experience that fulfills the needs of their team development, not because it is a few bucks cheaper. Everyone SAYS that price determines their participation, but their actual behavior really doesn’t reflect that. For the few teams that it does, you will never be cheap enough anyway…

Generally, though, the teams are all applying later and later to the deadline. I think it is mostly because our culture is moving to a Just In Time mentality where everything is delivered next day, downloadable immediately, etc, etc. Soccer tournaments are just one more thing a coach can apply to today for a tomorrow deadline,.

Our Advice: Instead of giving an early bird pricing break, why not do a guarantee on something teams really value, like custom scheduling? For example, the first three teams to apply in each division guarantee a late Sat start or a multiple-coach schedule with no conflict,.. something like that? Then you have a legit “Sorry, we can’t accommodate your multiple team coach because you applied the day before the deadline” rationale.

The early bird gets the worm. So too should the early bird to apply to your soccer tournament.

We are all set up and ready to go at the 2012 NCSAA Convention in Kansas City, MO. Last night was a great meet and greet opener.

Stop by today (booth 1342) and get your free QR Code sticker and check out why 2012 will be a great year for mobile in soccer tournaments.

Parents just need skip to the end. That is all you need to know. Enjoy.

This year, our 2012 youth soccer tournament calendar is shaping up handsomely, with most of our top of the year events already taking applications. I opened the calendar this morning and already see a Jan 6 deadline for the Total Soccer College Showcase! That sure came fast

2012 will be the year mobile really starts taking off. For our part, we have outfitted all of our tournaments with QR Codes so parents with smartphones can take advantage of fast-loading scores, DEALS and news no matter where they are, on the field or off.

Next weekend, TourneyCentral will be at the NSCAA, THE SHOW to be at for anyone in the soccer industry. We are looking forward to meeting up with old friends and making new ones at the show. Stop on by and say hi!

Overall, 2012 is going to be a kicking year.

This blog post is part of a blog-off series with a group of bloggers from different professions and world views, each exploring a theme from his/her world view. This was about exploring the theme, what are you looking forward to in the new year? To explore how others handled the theme, check them out below. I will add links as they publish.

With some minor adjustments and some traffic increases, it looks remarkably like the 2010 cycle. And the 2009 cycle. And the 2008… you get the idea. The soccer tournament cycle for attention and activity has not changed in a very long time, even as soccer tournaments strive to be top of mind, 365/24/7 for the participants.

Here is a typical traffic pattern for a Labor Day soccer tournament. It looks like every other soccer tournament. Just plug your date in and you will typically see two traffic spikes — one when your schedule is published and the other the weekend of your event — with the rest of the traffic being flat or edging upwards slighting as your day approaches and then dropping precipitously when your event is over. It is what we’ve come to call the 90-Minute Attention Span.

Again, we could go back years and see this has not changed vey much. There are only two major shifts we have seen in recent history. The first is a flattening of the traffic to include the day after, but when everyone got broadband, the day-after-traffic has gone away. It is likely we will see higher spikes during the event with smartphones and QR Codes, but the pattern will stay the same. The second is with online applications. We have seen more applications being submitted the last two weeks running up to the deadline. No amount of incentives have encouraged early registration.

Our Advice: Manage your soccer tournament with data you know, not the gut feel or common wisdom you think you know. Knowing the attention cycle of an event allows us to say things like “pricing incentives for early registration does not work” or “multiple-team incentives don’t work.” We’ve seen the traffic and registration patterns for tournaments with and without incentives. There is no variation.

But just because the cycle has not changed for a long time doesn’t mean it can’t. While the large trending cycle will probably stick around a long time, you may want to think about how you can engage your audience one more day longer or one more day sooner. Think about what you and your sponsors can do to grab just one more day of attention and what that would mean for your soccer tournament and your sponsor’s business.

The 90-Minute Attention Span is a very powerful force. Even grabbing one more minute of attention can move the needle for your soccer tournament. The trick, however, is to add real value to your participant’s lives, not gimmicks like Facebook likes or raffles.

And learn to use the different phases of your tournament wisely. Here are some publications that might help you get started.

That is my social media buddy Jim Long in the photo above. As a cameraman for NBC news in Washington DC who covers the White House, he has got to have one of the coolest jobs in the world. He also goes on press junkets all over the world covering the First Lady, Hillary Clinton and others.

And he is very active on social media.

One of the things I love about Jim is all the “behind the scenes” photos he shares on Twitter and Google+. One of his recent photo galleries can be found here. Almost every morning, he “greets” me by posting a photo of the sunrise over the White House or a Foursquare check-in at his favorite coffee place or just a quip about life in general. It almost always makes me smile and makes me feel like I am standing right there with him.

I think he enjoys his job even more because he knows how much his fans out here appreciate him sharing the unique behind-the-scenes view he has. I think he even spends a good part of his day dreaming up new ways he can entertain us out here, which makes his job even more fun. Like putting on a tournament year after year, tedium can creep into any job. Looking for ways to make the work interesting keeps it fresh and new every day.

Our advice: People love to see how things work! If you are wondering how you can use your Facebook page, twitter account or Google+ account to enhance your tournament, look no further than what you are doing day-to-day. Show your guest teams, sponsors and coaches what you do each day to pull the tournament together.

Carry a smart phone and Flip camera with you wherever you go. When you visit a local restaurant or shop that sponsors your soccer tournament, check in on Foursquare and give them a shout out. Mention their sponsorship and your tournament name. The photos and tweets you share could be as banal as saying you are getting coffee or as serious as showing you on the phone with a soccer coach working out a complex scheduling problem.

Showing the process behind the scenes invites your guest teams in, but it also shows them how much work goes into putting on a great event. Your sponsors and advertisers will appreciate their contributions more, especially the additional subtle exposure you are giving them.

PHOTO: Jim Long, used by permission. He blogs at Verge New Media.

A couple weeks ago, my hi-tech coffee maker broke. All the electronic stuff on it worked just fine, but it failed in the most basic way; the mechanism to bring the hot water from the reservoir through the grounds and into the carafe no longer moved the water. So, I went out to the local Kroger and bought a Melitta coffee cone and carafe for 12.00. I heat my water and pour it through the grounds. My coffee-making experience is now simple and will never break.

What does coffee have to do with a soccer tournament?

Well, for one, it fuels a lot of tournament directors, volunteers and soccer moms/dads for early-morning games, but the real correlation here is the lesson to keep things simple and down to its most basic requirements.

It might seem odd that a technology company would advocate for simple gravity instead of a hi-tech coffee-maker, but that doesn’t really seem odd to us. Even when we’re developing soccer tournament web sites and software, we always ask the question:

What is the simplest way to do this?

Based on the over-loaded technology web site of the average soccer site, keeping things simple is some advice a lot of them could use.

Our advice: Keep it simple, make it work. Nobody cares that you employ the latest AJAX, Java, whatever scoring system on your soccer tournament web site if they can’t find the scores and when they do, they can’t view them on their Blackberry. Apply this to everything, from your sponsorship packages to your web site to the game schedule to your standings and tiebreakers. People understand and accept simple. Like my coffee maker, it can have all the best time-keeping, auto-coffee-making, coffee-to-water-ratio-measuring technology in the world, but if it can’t pour water through coffee grounds, it is a piece of junk.

Do the basics well. Keep the rest simple.

I am at a soccer tourney all weekend. I will get back to you on Tues. The better question is why aren’t you at a tourney?

Talk about knowing your audience, setting expectations and always marketing! We loved it so much, we had to blog about it.

What do YOUR guest teams get back from you when they email you during the tournament?

You’ve probably seen those squiggly black square bar codes on magazine ads, coupons and restaurant tent cards and you may have found yourself wondering what they are. Or you already know what they are and you — like our staff here at TourneyCentral — giggle a little bit when we see one and have to shoot it with your iPhone just to see what is there.

Now, we are bringing those QR Codes to all our soccer tournaments. TourneyCentral implemented an integration of QR Codes for youth soccer tournaments that leads directly to the web application version of the scores, sponsor DEALS and tournament news. The web app is cross-platform and can be used on any smart phone that has a web browser such as Android, iPhone, HTC and other full-screen smart phone. TourneyCentral is the first and only soccer tournament software provider to integrate QR codes for youth soccer tournaments.

We’re pretty excited about the whole deal and we think your guest teams will be too once they try it out. QR codes are basically speed-dial for smart phone. Soccer fans just need to point and click on the code with a web-enabled smart phone to load the mobile site.

The first soccer tournament to be outfitted with a QR code is the CUSA Cup in Centerville, Ohio over Labor Day weekend, September 3-5, 2011. The QR code is displayed on the sidebar of every page on the website. The CUSA Cup tournament is also printing the QR code on the cover of their program as well as displaying at on the scoring boards at each of their four sites.

Screen shots from the TourneyCentral mobile web app

Our Advice: Promote the QR Code everywhere you print materials for your tournament. Make sure it shows up on the back of your business cards, listing ads in your association publication and on your website. Promote the QR Code to your sponsors and advertisers as another way you are reaching out to your guest teams and driving traffic to those who support your soccer tournament. It’s a mobile world. Think mobile.