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.

Last night, Charlie decided he was going to take his message directly to the people with a live show streamed onto the Internet. You can watch it if you have an hour to kill. I’ve included a screen shot below to illustrate everything that was wrong with the show.

The lighting was bad. The sound bounced hard all over the room. Nobody was mic-ed. The cameras were positioned too low, Charlie did not get proper cues on which camera was live so he was frequently looking into the wrong one. The background was busy. The titles at the bottom covered the action. There were too many “branding” phrases thrown out. I could go on and on. There were a lot of things wrong with the show technically as well as contextually.

There is a reason there is a long list of people who get credit at the end of TV shows. I’m not taking anything away from Charlie Sheen’s talent and he brings a lot to shows like Two and a Half Men and Spin City. But when celebrities begin to think that they alone are responsible for their own fame and attempt to produce their own content, the public quickly finds out how very wrong they are.

Our Advice: Your tournament is run by a team, not just the tournament director. Your event may very well have a talented, dedicated leader and a team that is willing to give them all the credit. That is a good thing. But once the tournament director starts believing his/her own press, your event is headed for trouble.

You could argue that Charlie’s show was “real” and “genuine” or that your tournament is “fun” and “like family.” You would be wrong. What you see as fun, loose and ‘like being with family,’ your paying teams see as messy, unorganized and apathetic. It takes a lot of work (and acting skill) to appear nonchalant. The character of Charlie Harper (Two and a Half Men) can pull it off. Charlie Sheen? Not so much.

Recognize and appreciate your team and their skills in their specialized area, from your sales team to your scheduling team to your website crew. Never think yourself bigger than the sum of them.

They made you great. Never underestimate their power to unmake you. Or — just like Charlie Sheen is doing before our eyes — you unmaking yourself.

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.”

For many soccer tournaments, the immediate goal is to make money for the club or the league. That has to be done for the tournament to continue year after year. But beyond making money, think about how your event is leaving a legacy for each soccer player who participates, each coach who brings their team to play another and each parent who spends the weekend with their kid in the company of other kids and parents. Think about how your tournament shapes your community and contributes to its legacy.

Will your tournament be the subject of a story around the Thanksgiving table that starts out as, “Remember when we went to …” and ends with uncontrollable fits of laughter, followed by knowing glances and wistful sighs?

Our advice: Think about the intangibles about twice as much as you think about the operational parts of your tournament. These things include fair play, good referees, short lines at the concession stand, quality hotels, fun things to do between games, good communication with coaches, friendly field marshals and cheerful volunteers. Update scores as fast as you can. Make sure your maps are clear and correct. Never assume everyone knows what “you are here” means. And perform random acts of kindness, no matter how tired you are or how late it is.

Tell compelling, positive stories about your tournament and the players, coaches and families to anyone who will listen. Share them on your website or blog.

Stay humble and never forget the teams who are playing at your tournament are your guests who chose to come to your event among a large and growing market.

These are the things that create a soccer tournament legacy worth passing on.

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 “answering the question, “What is legacy?”” To explore how others handled the theme, check them out below. I will add links as they publish.

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.

The twelfth annual Dynamo Round Robin, on March 18-20, is a great pre-season warm up. Last year’s tournament featured several defending state champions and state runners-up. Teams from Oklahoma, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and other states were represented. This year’s tournament welcomes all girls’ teams U9 through U19. U9 through U14 teams will play four games while U15 through U18 teams will play three games. Entry fee for U9-U10 is set at $475, U11-U12 is $500, U13-U14 is $525, u15-U16 is $550 and U17-U19 is $575.

The Middletown Spring Blast, on March 19-20, will offer competition for boys and girls in the U-8 through U-19 brackets. The tournament will be held at Smith Park and AK Steel Soccer fields at Jacot Park in Middletown Ohio, and Franklin Community Park in Franklin. Smith Park has been home to many tournaments including the Franchise, State SAY and High School Tournaments. Both parks offer ample parking, playgrounds, walking trails around the park, refreshment areas and with a total 26 fields for your soccer enjoyment. Entry fee is $400.00 for U8-U10 with all others set at $425.00

Information on registration, travel, lodging, scheduling, scores and things to do when you are in town are included on both tournaments respective websites.

That makes us happy.

But GotSoccer did get a few things wrong about TourneyCentral. After all, accuracy at a soccer tournament is very important, even more so when you trust software to drive your event. Accuracy makes sure the right teams (including referees) show up on time and at the correct fields and the right teams advance. Accuracy is critical to most soccer teams, coaches, parents and players when it comes to standings and who gets the trophy. If you are going to start comparing yourself to the big dogs in the yard, it’s important to get the big things right.

Here are just a few things GotSoccer GotWrong about TourneyCentral:

Experience vs Software
A TourneyCentral tournament is an experience designed for the soccer parent needs. If you take care of the soccer parent, everything else takes care of itself. Everything about our product is designed to make it easy for the teams to apply, attend and have fun at your soccer tournament. Maps are accurate and schedules are easy to read.

A soccer tournament is not just a bunch of soccer games to schedule but an event experience. Sometimes it is a family vacation, a weekend with friends, a chance to get away to another city. It is dinner in the evenings, entertainment at night and lots of fun in between. A soccer tournament web site is more than the software that drives it; it is a comprehensive easy-to-use set of tools that lets you look up games quickly, share photos, find out what to do between and after games. It is a place you can go back to revisit the tournament experience. It is a place where family that is out of town — here and abroad — can follow along in real time. As a soccer tournament director, it is getting in, updating your event information quickly and easily, allowing you to get back to taking care of your teams.

At TourneyCentral, we understand all the reasons your teams go to a soccer tournament. We understand a tournament web site is not just data managed by software, but a destination for people to enjoy.

Advertising
It’s true we do not send out blast email advertising to thousands of teams every week, but that is not really what we meant. Our integrated advertising module allows you to sell media-enhanced advertising on your web site. You can list your advertisers under our DEALS section that can feed teams coupons, ads and videos. In addition, our social media integration allows you to also link to their Twitter and Facebook accounts.

As for the advertising emails GotSoccer sends out weekly; do you really want to advertise competing tournaments to your teams that applied to your event?

Privacy
And speaking of privacy, your data is your own. Always and forever. We do not sell, lend, lease, rent or give away any of your application data for any reason whatsoever. We feel that since you spent your hard-earned marketing dollars on getting teams to attend your tournament, you should own your data.

We have no other product to sell other than soccer tournament management. We do not sell rankings, team registrations, college profiles or anything else. We have no need to share or use your team registration data (or your team lists or referee applications) for any other reason other than for you to manage your own soccer tournament. Your data is yours. Period.

Costs
We have an Elite level for tournaments that require an entirely custom solution to their tournament. In truth, not many do as our Premier level more than handles their needs. But, it is there if anyone wants it. If you follow the grid closely, the GotSoccer product is actually more expensive and delivers fewer integrated features than the TourneyCentral Premier product.

There’s a lot more things that GotSoccer GotWrong, but why not check us out for yourself? Lift the hood and kick the tires. Call us before you decide to invest your tournament brand with someone. We may not be the right fit for your event and that’s ok if we’re not. But unless you talk to us, you may never know how good we can be together.

And if you are going to the NSCAA January 13-15, 2011 in Baltimore, stop by the TourneyCentral booth (1528). On Thursday we will have a special surprise cooked up by a local Baltimore bakery and we’ll be sharing starting at 9:00 pm. So plan on swinging by!

This morning we saw a support question come over to one of the tournaments from a coach:

With the forecast being for rain/storms, how best can we learn about cancellations/postponements? Website? Email mailing list? Twitter (this would be great)? Phone call to certain phone#?

This would be great! Twitter is a really cool tool to communicate out to followers your local fields, local vendor deals, etc; all without having to set up complex SMS servers and verify cell numbers and email addresses. The user controls how s/he wants to receive your tweets (email, SMS) or if at all.

Our Advice: Get a Twitter account for your soccer tournament. Really, now. Do it. Then, set it up on your TourneyCentral website. By this time next year, you’ll either be in the game with Social Media or playing catch-up.