3 Reasons Your Region Should Have a Newsletter!

How many times in a season do you get the same question from dozens of parents? How about the early-morning phone calls about whether the game is still on? Here are three big reasons why your Region should have a newsletter. 

1. Communication: Having a newsletter allows you to keep communication open with parents and volunteers. It helps you answer questions before they are even asked! Whether your Region is big or small, having a newsletter will help you stay connected and keep everyone in-the-know. 
2. Sell Ad Space: When you have a strong newsletter going out consistently to an engaged audience, you can sell ad space to local businesses or show love to your current sponsors. 
3. A Place for Content: Your newsletter is a place to publicize early-bird pricing, registration dates, meeting info, volunteer openings, upcoming tournaments, the list goes on! Have a good time using your creative juices, but remember that the most successful newsletters are the clean and consistent ones. 

Print vs. Web Photo/Graphic DPI Resolution

Have you ever printed a photo/graphic that looked great on your computer and distorted or pixelated on paper? At some point everyone has come across this situation. This becomes a problem when you are using photos/graphics at the wrong resolution.

Why is it important to understand resolution? Because if you are looking to print something with quality images or are tasked with including vibrant pictures on your Region website, knowing a few basics will save you a lot of time and give you the best results.

DPI: Dots Per Inch. DPI is used to measure the resolution of an image both on screen and in print . The more dot’s ( higher DPI ) the higher the quality the more detail can be shown in an image. What’

Create an Inviting Experience

Want to ensure that visitors will exit your website almost immediately after landing there? If so, be sure to make it difficult for them to find what it is they are looking for. Want to get people to stay on your website longer and read all about your events and services? Follow these six simple design tips.

1. Have a polished, professional logo--and link it to your home page. Your logo is an important part of your brand. It represents your AYSO Region and activities, so make sure it's located prominently on your site. Use a clear, clean image and feature it in the upper left corner of all of your pages. Also, it's a good rule of thumb to link your logo back to your home page so that visitors can easily navigate to it.

 

Have You Checked Your Region’s Yelp Reviews?

Yelp can be as impactful for your Region as your other social media platforms. Not long ago, great youth programs were marketed by word of mouth, but these days, more and more organizations are relying on online platforms.

If you are going to a restaurant and want to know if the food is good, chances are you might check Yelp to view the star rating and read other people’s reviews. A lot of parents do the same thing when it comes to choosing what league their kids are going to play in. Does your Region take advantage of Yelp reviews?

A Splash of Color

Choosing the colors for your Region website is a very important part of creating an impressive site presence. There is no 100 percent right way to chose your colors, but there are some helpful things to keep in mind that will give your website pop and clarity, without creating the wrong impression.

Your Customer

Your customer is the first and most important thing to consider for all of your Region’s projects, and your color scheme is no exception. Your Region website must be recognizable and memorable, while getting your message across. Try to think like your visitors. What would they like to see? What might they find unattractive? You might need to do some research to find out who your audience is (keep an eye out for a Google Analytics post that will cover that), or even do some testing with potential color combinations. But always keep in mind who you are designing your Region website for.

Your Identity

Your logo is the first thing your visitors see and the most memorable marketing tool in your box. Take advantage of your memorable logo by expanding it to your pages and other designs. Carry your Region’s colors, shapes, and fonts into your projects and layouts whenever possible to quickly associate your Region’s identity with your project’s message.

How to Make Sure Parents Find Your Region

When parents are searching for their local AYSO Region, they typically visit AYSO.org and click on the Region Locator tool. 

Parents then plug in their zip code and the Regions nearest to them pop up in the search results, along with those Regions' websites, the name of the Regional Commissioner, and a phone and email contact. 

The information from the Region Locator is pulled directly from eAYSO, so it's important that your Region's web address, RC info and contact details are all up to date.

Sans-Serif vs Serif Fonts

Choosing the right font for your website is so important when you’re trying to deliver your message in a clear and effective way.

Did you know that all fonts are broken down into two different categories? Those categories are Serif and Sans-Serif. The difference between the two is very simple: A Serif is a small line attached to the end of a stroke in a letter or symbol. For fonts without a small line attached to the end are called Sans-Serif. The word “Sans” originates from the French language, which means without.  

Fonts for Digital Media

Sans-Serif fonts are considered to be one of the most legible fonts on computer screens. Because of the constraints of screen resolution, the Serifs in some fonts can make text difficult to read on screen. For example, the San-Serif font used in this blog is Arial.

Sans-Serif examples: Arial, Verdana, Tahoma

Best used on: Websites, emails and smart devices

How to get more people to like your page

In a “like” driven world, getting more people to give their stamp of “like” approval on your page is hard. Below are just five things that I recommend trying when you’re looking to get more likes on your Region’s Facebook page.

1.    Be consistent
Try to post on your Region’s Facebook page at least once a week, so your page is always fresh with new information. Don’t leave a stale page, it’s the worst advertisement for a Region!

2.    Use pictures and lots of them
There is a reason why platforms like Instagram and Pinterest do so well in the social media realm. They use photos! On Facebook, pictures tend to be the most shared of all posts and you can really say 1000 words with the tap of an upload. Plus, people love to see their kids, so if you have pictures from the games, use them!