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.