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.)