How to Reach a Bigger Facebook Audience

 Organic reach numbers are decreasing on Facebook business pages all over the country because of the updated Facebook News Feed algorithm. Simply, the new algorithm cuts down the amount of posts that a user receives in his/her News Feed. It’s great for the user, but at the same time prevents some information that your Region might post from getting to your usual target audience. 

What is organic reach? 

Organic reach is the number of people who saw your Region’s post through unpaid circulation. Paid reach is the number of people who saw your Region’s post as a result of Facebook ads.

 

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. 

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?

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! 

Social Media at the AYSO EXPOs

It's almost January, which means it's nearly AYSO EXPO season!

If you haven't heard the news, AYSO Section Meetings have been revamped and revitalized; hence the new name. And this year, I'm happy to report that a social media course will be at every single EXPO location!

Also, for the more seasoned social media people out there, I've been working on an advanced social media course that I will personally be teaching at select locations (as of now, it's Section 6 and the big EXPO in Las Vegas) so if you've taken my webinar before, this advanced course would be the perfect next step for you.

Learn more about AYSO EXPO and register for yours here.

See you there!

How to Embed Your Facebook Posts

Facebook has debuted another fun new feature: post embedding. Embedded Facebook posts will allow you to take a post from your Region's Facebook page (or AYSO's National Facebook page) and embed it on a website, blog and more.

Once the post is embedded, users will be able to view the post anywhere you embed it, and engage with it by sharing, liking or leaving a comment. The above is a preview of what an embedded Facebook post looks like.

Embedding your Facebook posts on other websites is a great way to get your community engaged with your Region and drive valuable traffic to your Facebook page. Here's why:

Schedule Your Tweets Ahead of Time

Twitter is fun – but I realize that not everyone has time to sit at their computers or fiddle with phones to send out tweets periodically throughout the day.

If you handle your Region’s Twitter feed and find yourself forgetting or not having time to tweet, here’s a simple solution: schedule your tweets ahead of time! Buffer is a free and easy-to-use app that will save and send your tweets whenever you want.

How to Advertise Your Facebook Posts

If your Region has a modest Facebook following, it may not make the most sense to invest a lot of time and money in a comprehensive Facebook advertising plan. But, if you have an upcoming registration event, tournament or fundraising opportunity that you'd like to promote, Facebook's single-post advertising could work wonders.

After posting a photo, video or status update on Facebook, you'll see a button at the bottom of the post that says "Get More Reach" as pictured above. Click on this and you'll see how you can promote just this post on Facebook, either just to your fans or to your fans and their friends.

Is Your Region on YouTube?

YouTube announced today that it has reached 1 billion unique monthly users. In other words, YouTube is still a big deal! If your Region isn’t currently on YouTube, it might be something to think about.

Here’s what YouTube said in their blog post:

What does 1 billion people tuning into YouTube look like?
•    Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube.
•    Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences.
•    If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third-largest in the world, after China and India.
•    Psy and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance in front of a packed house 200,000 more times. That’s a lot of Gangnam Style!

Don’t let the idea of needing to create videos scare you away! YouTube can be simple if that’s the way you choose to utilize it. If your Region decides to join YouTube, here are things you could feature in your account:

Increase Facebook Engagement with Images

The Webmaster Info Spot has been on a roll lately with informative posts on using/editing photos. To cap off the unofficial series, I wanted to share this good-to-know tidbit of Facebook advice:

Posts with images will receive higher engagement than posts without.

AllFacebook.com did some research, and they discovered that “images have been the No.1 driver of engagement on a page since timeline launched.” That means that images beat out links, videos and text-only status updates for the top spot. And this means that images catch the eye of your Facebook fans more than anything else.

“Posts including a photo album or a picture can generate two times more engagement than other post types,” reports AllFacebook.com

SUPER Simple Photo Editing

For the more experienced Webmaster, you probably have a photo editing tool/software that you know and love. For those on the more inexperienced side, like myself, (I try to stick to writing, editing and social media), we need a simple, easy-to-use photo editor that can get the basic things done quickly.

If I ever need to quickly edit a photo for a Facebook post, inclusion in an e-newsletter, etc., I usually hop on

Brand New Facebook Tools Now Available

The AYSO National Office wants to help make running your Region's Facebook page as fun and easy-to-manage as possible, so we've added a new section to AYSO's Region Toolkit called Facebook Tools.

Featured in the new section are tools to make your Region's Facebook page interesting, interactive and consistent with AYSO's national branding campaigns.

It includes...

Publicize Registration through Social Media

For many of you out there, you’re in the middle of registration for the upcoming season. Here are two easy ways to spread the word about your registration events through social media: 

Send a tweet and “mention” your local press. For example: “AYSO Region 22 in Lakewood, Fla., has a registration event this Sat! www.bitlylink.com [for more info] @LakewoodDaily @FlaPress” 

I often see local newspapers and other press tweeting about AYSO events. If this isn’t happening for you, find these publications on Twitter and mention their handles in your tweets! Hopefully, they’ll RT to their followers and help bring more families to your registration event.

Join the #AYSO Conversation

What’s the last television show you watched? Did you happen to notice a hashtag at the bottom of your screen?

For all of the non-Twitter users, hashtags "#" in front of a word or words (example: #awesome) and are Twitter’s way of making their user-generated content searchable and conversational. If you want your tweet to be discovered by others tweeting about similar things, simply add a hashtag! For example, one of your Region’s parents is on the sidelines watching their daughter play and tweets the following:

“Love watching my little girl play soccer. She scored a goal this morning! #AYSO #Region54 #GOAL”

To find this tweet, go to the “#Discover” section of your Twitter account. Search for either #AYSO or a hashtag that includes your Region number. If it doesn’t show up in the top results, click “All” and it will appear there. 

Widgets Everywhere!

Widgets are becoming more and more popular as a means to import information from other sites and display it on your own. Most of them are fairly simple to add to your website (usually a JavaScript or an iFrame) and they can give your website added value and help increase traffic. Did I mention most of them are FREE?

Some popular uses of widgets include:

Facebook Widget
These widgets let you add a small feed of your Facebook timeline to your website. It helps to let people know that you also have a presence on Facebook and that your Region’s volunteers and parents are engaging there as well. The Facebook Activity widget can be found here.

Twitter Widget
Similar to the Facebook widget, this app allows you to display your Twitter feed on your website. It will let people see some of your tweets and prompts them to connect with you on Twitter for more info. Here’s a popular Twitter widget you can add to your homepage.

AYSO Social Media Webinar Tonight

For the webmasters out there that also handle your Regions' social media initiatives, I’m presenting a webinar tonight that may have some valuable information for you.

Social Media 101: Using Facebook and Twitter to Increase Registration is a webinar focused on how to take advantage of these social media tools and all of the features they offer. I’ll go in depth with Facebook especially, explaining how to use/analyze Facebook Insights (metrics), how to properly adjust your admin and moderator settings and much more.
 
The webinar is tonight, 6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m., PT.

I hope you can join me! Learn more about the webinar and register here.

Facebook Time-Saver: How to Schedule Your Posts

A lot of webmasters also act as the admin for their Region’s Facebook page. If this includes you, here’s an easy time-saving tip that will make your job a little bit easier: Schedule your Facebook posts ahead of time.

Facebook recently added this useful feature this summer – and it’s easy to use. When posting a status update, photo or video, you’ll see a small clock-shaped button in the bottom left corner, as seen here: