All posts by Gerard McLean

Setting clear expectations for scheduling conflicts

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I was tooling around on one of our tournament web sites, prepping up for the weekend and making sure everything was ready to go when I ran across this frequently-asked question. I thought the answer was brilliant in that it set clear expectations for scheduling conflicts, far in advance and in plain view of the public.

What is the policy on schedule requests?

We will do what we can to accommodate your requests, however, the following types of conflict requests WILL NOT be considered as a legitimate request:

  • Can you schedule a game no earlier than noon because our coach is not available?
  • Can you schedule a game in the afternoon because we are arriving from out of state the night before or first morning of the tournament?
  • I have 6 teams in the tournament and want to get to all the games in one weekend?
  • I have 4 teams in the tournament and want to get to all the games in one weekend?
  • I have 3 teams in the tournament and want to get to all the games in one weekend?
  • Can you schedule one game the first day, and two on the second?
  • Can you schedule two games on the first day, and one on the second?
  • Can you reschedule the semi-finals and/or finals to accommodate the 2+ teams I have in the semi-finals and/or finals?
  • Can you reschedule Sunday games to accommodate my teams departure flight times?
  • Can you schedule games on adjacent fields so I can coach two games at once?

Please note that it takes hours and hours to make the tournament game and referee assignment schedule and every schedule change is a big deal. It is impossible to take in to consideration 3 or more teams playing the same weekend. For coaches taking multiple teams to a tournament we encourage you to have assistant coaches who can coach the team in your absence. At best we can try to accommodate 2 teams playing in the same weekend.

I especially like that the requests are termed “not legitimate.” It is a bit like running out of gas on the freeway. While it may be an emergency to you, it is not a legitimate break down as it was foreseen and highly preventable. You will still get a ticket for stopping on the freeway.

Our Advice: We’ve commented on multiple team coaches, late Saturday starts and game conflicts before and our views are pretty well-known. (Go ahead and read the blog posts if you want.. we’ve been ranting on this since 2006.) It is not enough to merely have a policy about multi-team coaches and conflicts; you have to communicate the expectations and boundaries clearly and make sure your staff is 100% on board.

Coaches will keep chipping away at you, your staff or a club coach to find that soft spot in the armor. Don’t let them. Whatever your policy is, stick with it or you will end up with a lot more stress than one coach’s grousing. It’s always better to have one coach irritated at you for not getting what s/he wanted than all of them mad as heck because you didn’t play fairly by your own rules.

Using Google Plus for your soccer tournament

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GooglePlus for Soccer Tournaments

The latest player in the suite of tools known as social media is Google Plus, or more commonly seen as G+ in buttons. While it can’t boast anywhere near the number of users Facebook and Twitter have, it has one advantage the others don’t — Google Search. However, it is growing fast.

Most Internet users start off a web session on google.com, whether or not they know the direct web address of the site they are looking for. Many simply type in keywords like “soccer tournaments in Ohio” or “soccer tournament software.” If these keywords are in your G+ posts, you have a greater chance of being found at or near the top of a search result.

Getting started is easy, but you need a Google Account. If you have a Gmail account, you are already there. Simply go to http://plus.google.com and set a profile for yourself.

Once you have a profile, you can then set up a Page for the soccer tournament. Underneath your name, you will see a page symbol. Click on that to “Manage your pages.” Create your soccer tournament page, upload your logo and start sharing. Be sure to add one more person as an administrator and secure the login/password as part of your tournament assets so that it can be seamlessly transferred to a new tournament director if need be later on.

The instructions for Google+ are sorta “discover as you go” but a good book to read is Google+ for Business by Chris Brogan.

Our Advice: Set up a Google Plus page for your soccer tournament. Repost your front page news, scores, sponsor offers and photos to your page. Don’t worry so much about interacting on your page as a social media channel just yet; that will probably come next year.

Be sure to include keywords in your post and photo captions as these keywords are pushed directly into the Google search engine. The sooner you start, the better head start you will have on all the other soccer tournaments who will discover and set up on Google Plus next year. Be first.

All TourneyCentral events support Google+ In your Admin>Web Site Maintenance Module>Variables you can add your G+ page to the social media sites on the left sidebar along with Twitter and Facebook. (See TheGameOfSoccer.com for a sample)

The TourneyCentral G+ page is here. We post photos, blog posts (including this one) as well as interesting photos fans may share.

This is part of a series on Social Media for Soccer Tournaments. We encourage you to read all the articles below.

Our Mad Men ad

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Mad Men Season 5

It’s no secret that we’re pretty rabid Mad Men fans around the TourneyCentral offices. During the first four seasons, Monday mornings usually hosted a lively discussion time as we deconstructed the episode from the previous night. While drinking strong coffee, of course… nothing stronger. Really.

So we’re pretty excited that season five is just a few weeks away on March 25, 2012. Then we found out that Newsweek is publishing its March 19 issue designed like it is 1964 and they are encouraging their advertisers to submit their ads for that issue designed as circa 1964 ads.

And that we could not resist. We’re not advertising in Newsweek but we are running the ad we may have submitted on the front page of our website. Close enough, right?

Unfortunately, soccer in America in the ’60s was almost nonexistent. There were no competitive youth soccer tournaments ads we could look up and model after. But if soccer tournaments advertised in 1964, we think the ad may have looked kinda like this.

Mad Men Ad

We had to keep the dimensions to fit into a website and not a magazine page and language like “click here” would certainly have been odd in 1964, but we think it hits the mark. We hope you agree.

Here is the Mad Men clip that inspired the headline and the copy.

Our Advice: You may not be a Mad Men fan and that’s ok. The show is not for everyone. What we think is important is that you reach out beyond just soccer and connect with the community your event is a part of. For us, it is that cultural world of old-school advertising. For you, it may be your local park district or the arts department at the high school or even a local rock band. When you reach out to the other interests your club teams are involved in, you create good will for your soccer tournament. People see your event as integral to their community.

When you become part of a community, you may find advertisers and sponsors are more likely to support your tournament. Regardless of the financial impact, being part of a larger community is certainly more fun.

And if you are a Mad Men fan, two full hours on March 25th. See you there.

Trust us. This stuff matters

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If you have spent any time online lately, you’ve probably noticed that there have been some issues of some companies and their privacy agreements. Google has come out with a new policy that combines ALL their properties under one agreement. That means if you have a YouTube account, a G+ page, a Gmail account, a Google Calendar, etc. all of this now is swept under one identity. And if you have multiple accounts, all of those accounts are tied together under you as one user.

More recently, some apps were caught uploading your entire phone book from your iPhone or Android smart phone — without telling you — when you installed their app. They apologize and claim to have removed all users’ data from their servers, but who really knows.

And of course, everyone’s favorite — Facebook — has a long history of deserving our mistrust with their ever-changing privacy policy and moving the settings around so we can’t find and change them easily.

Our Advice: It has taken a long time for people to trust the Internet. As the ability for services to sell services and goods erodes in the wake of alternative free services, there will always be a temptation to monetize customer data to advertisers and sponsors. In fact, you may have already been approached by sponsors asking for your list of teams, players and coaches.

The trust your teams gives you to keep their data away from marketers is not easily gained and can be lost in moments. Once you release data out, it can never be gotten back. Ever. You will be putting those coaches on mailing lists for years to come as the list get sold over and over and over.

At TourneyCentral, we won’t ever rent, sell, lend, lease or otherwise give out email addresses. In fact, every tournament we host agrees to that privacy policy as part of their use agreement.

Trust us. It’s not just something we say to get your business. It’s how we do business.