5 Ways Having an Online Presence Can Help Your Sports Team
In today’s day and age, an online presence is a must. No matter what kind of sports team you manage, an effective online presence can help you grow the team in several ways.
In today’s post, we’ll explain what is considered as having an online presence, how an online presence can help your sports team, and share a few tips that will help you get started with creating an effective online presence.
What Is an Online Presence?
You might be thinking that having social media profiles is enough to get noticed. However, keep in mind that you aren’t in control of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others.
As such, you also need a website for your team. Your website is where you have complete control over what you post and the content that gets seen. On top of that, you own your website which means you’re not at someone else’s mercy and risk having it shut down.
In other words, an effective online presence will include both your website and your social media profiles.
Your social media profiles will help you connect with and reach your fans. Once you have their attention, you can then send them to your website to learn more about you and explore what your team has to offer. This way, you social media profiles and your website work together to give you a holistic online presence that helps grow your team.
5 Ways Online Presence Helps Your Sports Team
Now that you know what is meant by the term online presence, let’s talk about how an online presence can help your sports team.
1. An Online Presence Connects You with Your Fans
As mentioned earlier, an online presence helps you connect with your fans. You can share wins and behind the scenes photos as well as keep them up to date on everything happening with your team during the season as well as during the off-season.
This allows you to stay top of mind even when you’re training hard for the season ahead and to continue building and improving the relationship you have with your fans.
2. An Online Presence Can Help You Get Noticed by Sponsors
Another way an online presence benefits your team is by giving you a chance to make a great first impression on potential sponsors.
For starters, your website should work alongside your sponsorship packages. It should be a place where sponsors come to learn more about your team. It should also help them solidify the decision to sponsor you. Your website will also allow them to connect with you on social media.
Your social media profiles can be used to both deepen the relationship you have with your sponsors as well as to establish the initial contact and get on their radar.
3. An Online Presence Allows You to Accept Donations Any Time
If you’ve been at this for a while, you’ve probably had a fundraiser or two to gather funds for your team. As such, you know time-consuming and tedious it can be to get everything organized.
But with an online presence, you can easily collect donations at any time of day or night, without having to go through that whole ordeal. You don’t have to plan for the perfect time or wait for the perfect season. All you have to do is add a donation button on your website and use your social media profiles to drive traffic to your donation page.
4. An Online Presence Makes it Easy to Earn Extra Money for Your Team
Once you have a website up and running as well as your social media profiles set up the right way, you don’t have to rely on donations alone to earn extra money for your team.
You can easily set up a merchandise store and sell your team merchandise. You can also use your website to collect membership dues for your team instead of collecting them in person.
In addition to that, you can also market and sell the same products from your store on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
5. An Effective Online Presence Makes it Easier to Recruit New Members
Lastly, when you have an effective online presence, you can easily recruit new members for your team. An online presence allows your website and social profiles to show up in relevant search results when someone searches for a sports team in your local area. This makes it easy for potential members to check you out and decide if they want to join you.
Make it easy for them to join you by including an application form on your website so potential members can fill it out on the spot.
How to Create an Effective Online Presence?
We’ve covered how an online presence can help your sports team. Below, you’ll find a few tips that will help you get started with creating or improving your online presence.
1. Optimize Your Social Media Profiles
If you already have social media profiles for your team, now is the perfect time to optimize them and make sure the profiles make an excellent first impression. Make sure all the fields are filled out, upload an attractive header and profile image, use your team logo for the profile image, and don’t forget to add a link to your website.
If you don’t have social media profiles yet, start by identifying where your existing fans hang out and don’t forget to check out other sports teams in your area or in the same sport to see where they are active. You’ll then want to create social media profiles for your team and optimize them.
2. Create a Website
The next logical step would be to create a website for your sports team. Luckily, you don’t have to worry about finding a web designer or a developer that meets your budget as you can easily create a website with tools like WordPress.
Pair WordPress with our plugin, SportsPress, and you will be able to share all your upcoming and past matches, create stunning team member profiles, and even set up a store for your merchandise as well as collect donations.
3. Create a Marketing Plan and Engage Your Fans
Once you have a website and you’ve created social media profiles for your team, you need to create a marketing plan that will put you in front of your fans. As complicated as this sounds, the best way to get started is to keep it simple.
For starters, decide how often you’ll be active on social media and what channels you’ll use the most. Then, create categories for different types of posts to share. This can include updates such as a day in a team’s life, team member stories, past match replays, team or sports trivia, and more.
Once you know what you want to share, get out there and start engaging your fans. Start conversations, comment on their posts, reply to their comments on your posts, and be social.
Final Thoughts
An effective online presence helps you get seen by your fans, connect with sponsors, collect donations, and recruit new team members. Follow the tips in this article or download our cheatsheet to create a memorable online presence that will help you grow your team.
