Many parents and players are using social media channels these days so why not make it easy for them to keep up with your tournament in real-time? It’s a quick and easy way to let teams and parents know standings, scores, photos, and possible schedule changes. Twitter is a great tool to keep everyone involved in your tournament all weekend long, even after the final games have been played.

The Thunder United Classic used twitter effectively this weekend, specifically doing these four things:

1. Tweeting photos in real time
Opening up the event, the Thunder United Classic hosted a skydiver carrying the American flag onto the fields. They tweeted a few pictures of his landing. Sunday before the finals, they tweeted out pictures of the trophies.

Team Fastrax from Start Skydiving drops in the American flag. pic.twitter.com/gswzEvYoZJ

— Thunder Fall Classic (@TUMFCClassic) August 24, 2013

2. Tweeting score updates as they occur
As new scores arrived, Thunder United Classic wasted no time in tweeting that they were available. They also gave the bracket information in the tweet so the teams knew exactly which ones were available.

Scores! BU09Gold BU10Gold BU15Silver GU09Silver GU13Silver http://t.co/nxfs7AkYEO

— Thunder Fall Classic (@TUMFCClassic) August 24, 2013

3. Tweeting sponsor and advertising deals
Thunder United Classic made sure that teams and parents knew about their sponsors by tweeting which ones were at the venue.

Need some breakfast or coffee? Bruegger's Bagels has coffee, muffins and bagels until 11 a.m.

— Thunder Fall Classic (@TUMFCClassic) August 24, 2013

4. Retweeting sponsor tweets
They showed support for their sponsors by retweeting and expanding their network reach to the desired audience.

At @TUMFCClassic all weekend, Lebanon Sports Complex on McClure Rd. Just look for The #BBQ Bus & the smoke! Let your stomach be your guide!

— Historic BBQ (@HistoricBBQ) August 23, 2013

Becoming real-time allows teams to tweet about how great the tournament went and they can even give your sponsors a shout-out. Encourage sponsors to also get in on the action by tweeting about specials and congratulating winning teams. By encouraging sponsors to use Twitter, it can boost the sponsors’ interaction with the teams and make your tournament even more personal and sponsors will be ecstatic to return the following year.

The last game on the last day of the tournament has just been played and you are tired. This has been the busiest year yet and you are ready to take a vacation, kick back and not think about your soccer tournament for several months, maybe longer.

You may want to re-think that strategy. For good or bad, because of the Internet, your soccer tournament is now a 365/24/7 event.

While it’s true that soccer tournaments are 90-minute attention span events, that doesn’t mean you can ignore your event for most of the year. The Internet never takes a break. It is easier to keep pushing off a little bit every week than to get going from a dead stop. Besides, you’ve worked hard to attract sponsors and advertisers to your tournament. It is easier to keep them year over year than by courting them anew every season.

Our Advice: There are a lot of small things you can do during your “off season” that will let your guest teams — and maybe more importantly your sponsors — know that you have not fallen into a deep slumber. Here are just a few to get started.

Do like The Junior Cup did recently and roll your event forward to the next year as quickly as you can. The tournament director realized how much work he had put into getting key sponsors and did not want to start from scratch for next year. I suspect he will do all of the stuff below to maintain the momentum.

Post up news to your front page, even if it is only a holiday wish. There are eleven US Federal holidays and even more non-official holidays. It shows the teams that visit that you are engaged. But be sure to have a short news items ready to publish the day after the holiday. Nothing says “tumbleweed and ghost town” faster than a Happy New Year message in mid-January.

Tweet. Be topical for your tournament or soccer. Or comment on the goings on in your town or something one of your sponsors is doing.

Do a Vine or Instagram video. A Vine is only :06 seconds worth of video, but you can say a lot in :06 seconds! Download the app and take a look around at what brands are doing. Be clever, be targeted, have fun. (Instagram is :15 seconds, but more time doesn’t mean less focus. Be engaging.) Then, do another, and another….

Post Facebook updates and photos regularly. Again, be interesting and try to avoid dry scheduling updates, questions and polls. Link to your sponsor pages and figure out how to draw them into your event more.

There are probably hundreds of other things you could be doing, all taking only a few minutes of time. Try them out; we’ll be watching for creative marketing.

Smartphones are now 53% of the cell phone market. Right now, 87% of all cell phones sold are smartphones. Within the next year, flip phones will be all but obsolete.

Apps and mini-web browsers with 4G or LTE are the de-facto standard of internet access at soccer fields. It is rare that at least half the touchline doesn’t have access to your tournament web site in real time.

And that means scores and standings in real time.

It used to to mean that for teams to get real-time access to scores, you would need to push them out via SMS. For that, you would need to set up an elaborate sign-up system, somehow verify the cell phone number (or not) and send out scores as they were updated. In short, the teams relied on push rather than pull to get the scores.

Not any more. Now, with smartphones equipped with web browsers, social media apps and web-apps, fans can get their own scores and standings anytime without waiting for tournaments to push them out.

Our Advice: Don’t set up an SMS service. Flip phones are the past. By the end of the holiday shopping season, anyone holding out on a smartphone for a good deal will find one, tilting the smartphone into the 70%+ market.

Fortunately, your TourneyCentral tournament site is already mobile-ready.

1. QR Code: Each site is equipped with a QR Code that smartphone users can scan with an app for DEALS, Scores and News. Even if the user does not have a scan app, they can just click on the QR Code to go right to the web-app page.

2. Twitter: Set up a twitter account. When you update scores, your confirmation screen will give you an option to tweet out which divisions were updated. The tweet will also contain a link to the web-app which the QR Code is attached. Your teams can follow your twitter account and turn on notifications at their phone, saving you the hassle of managing SMS lists.

Even if they don’t want to get a twitter account, they can just have SMS messages when you send a tweet by sending a text message to 40404 with the message FOLLOW TWITTERACCOUNT from their cell phone. When the tournament is over, they simply send another text message to 40404 with the message UNFOLLOW TWITTERACCOUNT to stop getting notifications.

3. Facebook: You can also post the scores updates to your Facebook page where friends will be then able to get updates if they friend/like you and have updates turned on in their notifications.

The good thing about using social media to manage your scores push is the user is controlling how they get scores notifications without you spending time (or money) managing SMS lists, whether they be automated or not. Many apps — like twitter and facebook — allow the user to control how they get notified, either through native alerts, SMS or email. And don’t worry about educating them on the app. If they get a smartphone and discover they can get notifications from you, they’ll figure it out quickly.

Just make sure you have your QR Code visible and you market your twitter handle and your facebook page. The content will do the rest.

As the mobile market matures, you can bet TourneyCentral will be there, adding features to your web-app as needed, far ahead of the next trend.