One Ohio soccer tournament made a bit of national news lately with a neighboring city setting up speed cameras and issuing over 900 tickets. The soccer tournament pled a good case, citing good will and economic impact for the city. The police from the neighboring city had not been in contact with them regarding this enforcement effort, even as the host city police were helping out directing traffic in and out of the park. That alone probably helped plead the case for “forgiving” the tickets.

Contrary to what most people think, the police don’t just ticket people for easy money. The first priority for the police is road safety and preventing accidents. When they see a car racing by at 40-50 mph on a road that is posted at 25 mph, they are going to do something about it. If they see many, many cars doing the same thing, they are going to sit there and pick you off, soccer tournament or not.

What the police know about soccer parents
I have driven to more away soccer tournaments with my kids than I care to recall. Here is what typically happens. We have an 8:00am game, but the coach says we should be at the field at 7:30. No problem. We live an hour away, so we leave at 6:15 am. Plenty of time. Everyone wakes up at 5:50, shower, pack, someone can’t find the left shinguard, oops.. it is now 6:25. No problem, we’ll make up time.

We get on the road, but swing into the Tim Horton’s for coffee. It is now 6:43 and we’re still an hour away. We “make up” a bit of time on the freeway and get to the city the tournament is in at 7:28. But there is a very, very long line of cars waiting to get into the park. It is a one-way turn onto a gravel road. A panicky thirteen year-old is screaming at me that she will be late and the coach will make her run if I don’t get moving. And she has to pee.

I am not paying attention to the road, to the cars around me or anything else except my phone buzzing with text messages from the OneCallNow service, reminding me to have my kid who is screaming at me from the back seat, on the field eight minutes ago. I am a ball of stress who has no business behind the wheel of this much moving steel.

We get to the field, but I narrowly miss a gang of parents and their kids ambling across the parking lot with a popup tent, three coolers and a portable grill.

“It was only fair,” I console myself. “They weren’t paying attention as well.”

After the game, we fast-walk back to the car so we can drive into town and get some breakfast. There is only one road out of the park and twenty-two other teams who also had 8:00am games all have the same idea. We pull out of the parking spot, drive 20 feet and wait. And wait. And wait. By the time we get to the road out, we gun the engine and race to the main road. I know the speed limit was posted at something less than what I was doing, but I was too pissed off to be paying attention to the road. I wanted OUT.

Our advice: I suspect that the police will set up the cameras again next year, but this time post very large signs letting parents know that they will be ticketed if they speed. The speed limit is posted for a reason that has nothing to do with your soccer tournament being held at the park once a year. So, you have to work with that.

Talk to neighboring cities Make sure the police department is on the same page as you are with your event. Approach them with the attitude that you want all of your teams to arrive and leave safely. They will respond to your concern. They do not want to deal with fender-benders or worse, accidents that involve injuries, especially when kids are involved.

Talk to your teams Make sure they are aware of all posted speed limits and that — while the police are there to keep them safe — they will get a ticket for speeding. Most parents will be extra cautious if they know of “speed traps” ahead of time. Use your website, email and social media networks. Post large signs at the park exits, especially if the exit is a long straightaway road that is a temptation to speed.

Direct traffic Have some volunteers direct traffic out of the park to keep the “you go, I go” rule fair. Make sure they wear really bring shirts and reflective gear.

The police and cities want your teams back, but they don’t want to clean up traffic messes. And parents also want to arrive and leave safely. A little bit of prep work, a lot of communication and mutual respect go a long way toward making sure everyone feels welcome and secure.

And then if an impatient parent chooses to speed, I guarantee that the rest of the team parents won’t have much empathy for that decision.

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.)

Social media is a huge cloud of things like blogging, tweets, likes and status updates so it is easy to become overwhelmed and do nothing.

But you need to roll up your sleeves get in there. We’ll help you along the way with this “social media for soccer tournaments” series.*

Social media is becoming integrated into the online experience for most people, so if you have not learned to navigate these waters, you may be risking the reach of your tournament. Social media channels can help you reach coaches and teams where they live and help you keep them updated and interested in your event.

Do not assume Facebook and Twitter are for kids. The largest and fastest growing demographic for Facebook and Twitter is age 35-55. That means a player’s mom, dad or coach is more likely to “like” you on Facebook or “follow” you on Twitter. While most kids over 13 yrs old will have a Facebook account, they connect with their friends, not with brands. If they happen to take a cool photo at your tournament, they may or may not post it. But if they do post it, they will post on their profile, not your tournament page. It’s nothing personal; just how kids use Facebook. Their parents on the other hand, may be more likely to interact on your Facebook page.

Essential social media for soccer tournaments
Social media for soccer tournaments can be boiled down to a few core essential channels: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. But keep this maxim in mind: Social media channels are OUTPOSTS designed to extend the reach of your tournament website and bring teams back to you. It is easy to start engaging in tangent conversation but remember all this data and information — once updated on these sites — does not belong to you. It is “rented space.”

Google is slow to index content on Facebook (better on the other channels) but the index points to that channel, not your website. Ultimately, you would like to rank high in a Google search so it is best if you push out content that Google indexes quickly. Updating your front page news on your TourneyCentral website is best, followed by tweets to Twitter, videos to YouTube and finally Facebook and Flickr.

Prep work
As with most things, good solid prep work makes the job easier. Do these four things:

1. Make a SQUARE 200px x 200px logo (avatar) for your tournament. Make sure it is consistent with your tournament logo.
2. Write a short description of your tournament not to exceed 140 characters. (really, under 140 characters) and
3. Set up a gmail.com account as the email account for all your social media channels.
4. Establish a process for securing passwords and access to each social media account. DO NOT establish under an individual’s name. Use your tournament and make the access board-level.

How to use each channel
Facebook: Set up a Facebook FAN PAGE — not a profile — using the name of your tournament. When you post some news about your tournament on the front page of your website, also update the status on Facebook. Do not copy the entire news item content, just a few key items. Then add a link back to your site. If you have an interesting photo, or video, publish that to Facebook as well, with a caption. Be sure to add a link back to your website.

Twitter: Set up a Twitter account using 20 characters max that reflects your tournament name. Your TourneyCentral website is integrated with Twitter. When you update scores, you can send that update notice to your Twitter account. Send quick updates to Twitter during the event, such as sponsor coupons, reminders of lunch specials at concessions, lost and found, etc.

YouTube: Take short videos of some behind-the-scenes, a welcome message from the tournament director, some short game footage etc and upload them to your YouTube account. You can also embed video into your front page and about page of you TourneyCentral website.

Flickr: A great place to upload photos of your tournament. Once there, you can share them with your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Again, make sure you caption them and link back to your tournament website.

In the next week or so, we will have a step-by-step how to on each of these channels, so be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates.

The 90 Minute Attention Span
At TourneyCentral, we like to refer to the time your teams are focused on your tournament as the “90 Minute Attention Span.” This isn’t a good or bad thing, it is just a way of saying that players, coaches and their families care about your event while they are there. Before that, they are busy with their lives. When they leave, they will again be busy with their lives. Your tournament may not ever enter their field of vision until next year.

The goal is to expand their 90 Minute Attention Span by a few seconds or even a full minute. Extend your reach into Facebook and Twitter by giving players and their families a place to “hook” into you as they stream their lives. If they are at your tournament, they should be tweeting “Having a great time at @yourevent” instead of saying “at a soccer tournament this weekend.” If you have a Twitter account, you get named. If not, you don’t.

Our Advice: Be on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr but make sure all the real action happens on your website. It can get easy to get caught up in the hype about “500 million users are on Facebook” and forget why YOU are there.

Make the social media channels a serious part of your marketing and engagement strategy. Do not delegate it off to a “kid in the club.” It is far too valuable to hand off to a kid. Learn social media as seriously as you would learn how to make a schedule.

There are also other channels that you can explore like Tumblr, Rededit, Digg etc. But Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr provide a strong core of social media for your soccer tournament. Keep in mind that each channel requires more time and effort to maintain and you should only start with more if you are committed to keeping up these accounts.

This is the first in a five-part series on Social Media for Soccer Tournaments. Next up: Setting up a Facebook Page.

*Check back for some expanded services.

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.

The photograph above was taken at the Hershey Soccer Club meeting on Tuesday, March 15, 2011.

This donation was a result of the 2010 Hershey Invitational Charity Soccer Tournament played on June 19-20, 2010. The tournament raised $16,000 for the Special Olympics Area M and also $16,000 for the Hole in the Wall Gang Camps. The Hershey Invitational is organized and run by Kicks 4 Kids Charity Soccer Tournaments. To date, Kicks 4 Kids has raised $177,618 for organizations that serve disadvantaged youth.

The 2011 Hershey Invitational will be played on the weekend of June 18-19, and will benefit the Special Olympics Area M and Ronald McDonald House of Hershey. The tournament is expected to host 230 teams from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia.

The Hershey Invitational website can be found here.

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.

In the world of on-line soccer tournament management systems, you get what you pay for. There are services available for tournament directors that come at no cost. One of the most common goals of any youth soccer tournament is to make as much money as possible for the host club. This tempts some to use free services or to depend on a guy in the club who can, “do websites.”

Peak times, like Sunday afternoons, are when you find out that cheap and free are really damaging and costly. That’s when everybody, including the guy in the club who is now watching his kids play, wants up-to-date scores and schedules. You may have saved a few bucks or reduced your entry fee, but the cost to your image and your tournament’s legacy can be devastating.

Our Advice: A website is no longer just “something over there for the tech guys.” It IS the event.

Work with a tournament web site host who has the bandwidth, the experience and the people who are willing to monitor your website for maximum performance, during the tournament, before and after. Your soccer tournament now is a 365 day a year, 24 hours a day, 7 day a week event. You want to work with someone who also understands that. Preferably someone you can email or call to solve problems as quickly as they arise.

Free and cheap rarely gets you that.

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.