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! 

Catch common usability problems before user testing.

There is a saying I always liked: "Don't try to say again what has already been said better," With that on my mind, I present to you the following link. http://userium.com/ This a excellent checklist/tool in your web development arsenal that allows you to catch common usability problems before user testing. Enjoy, and happy coding.

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Do's and Dont's of HTML Email Blasts.

Hey everyone, after a week off we are back with more helpful hints.

With the proliferation of email-blast software and websites all over the internet, its becoming increasingly popular for people to turn to these avenues in order to drive sign ups, direct to seasonal events, and really reach out and impress where a regular email would fall short.

One of the best aspects of these sites is their ability to let you craft a beautiful email-blast whether you have skills in HTML or not. Many people though can sometimes be a little to ambitious when diving into the HTML editors as they tend to carry their skill sets in designing websites into crafting their email blasts and they can be frustrated when the results do not match their efforts

Email clients such as Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Gmail, etc., can render your emails in different ways. What looks one way in Yahoo or Outlook 2003 may appear very different in Gmail or Entourage.
The root of this problem is the variance among email clients in the level of support for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

There is no real standard for what an email client should support and how it should go about supporting it. Every email client takes its own approach to rendering HTML and CSS – which is why an email that looks fine in one email client can look different in another.

So how can you or your designer ensure an email design remains consistent and looks great across all these different email clients? Here's a helpful list of "Do's and Dont's" on email blasts and HTML.

Make the Most of Registration Email Campaigns

Email campaigns are a great way to get information out to your membership. As as webmaster, these duties may cross over onto your task list. We have some tools available to help make it easier to send out registration emails.

Favicons are Fun!

Have you ever noticed the cool little icon in the browser bar when you visit a website? Those are called favicons and they show up when browsing a website or adding the site as a bookmark in your browser. They give a website a more legitimate and secure feeling, as well as adding a small branding element to the website.

Any website can have a favicon and they're pretty simple to create. You don't even need editing software to create one! There are bunches of websites out there that will generate the file for you. All you need to do is upload an image.

Favicons are images that are created with an .ico file extension. You place this file in the root of your website, add some small code and it will show up in the browser.

Choosing the Right Images for your Website

Images say a lot about a website and we want to make sure you use the right kind of images to get the mission and vision of AYSO out to your Regions.

Images can be difficult to come across, especially when you have to worry about permissions and copyrights. We discourage using images from google, since you can’t show any sort of ownership or rights for that image. Here are some places to find appropriate images and guidelines to use when choosing photos:

Use Your Own Images

If you’re using your own images, make sure they are lit properly and well composed (meaning that people aren’t cut off in the images, and they aren’t oddly lopsided) and don't have any names or contain anything offensive (ex: no alcohol, tobacco, weapons, etc.). Please try to follow our Safe Haven guidelines to make sure the photos are appropriate for AYSO. If faces appear in the images, make sure that you have a release from each person in the images so you don’t get in trouble for posting their picture on the website. To make this part easier, you could have every parent sign a release form for themselves and their child when they register or before they play their first game. It will assure you that every person in the photos have a release signed.

Planning Social Media Promotions for 2014

As you know, AYSO turns 50 next year, and the National Office is busily getting ready for the celebration and all its festivities. 

Have you started thinking of ways to modify your Region's website and social media presence on our Golden Anniversary? Here a couple easy ideas:

Make Your Site Say AYSO!

Branding is important in AYSO so that parents know it’s a large, nationwide organization. We have a great selection of branding items available in the Region Toolkit on AYSO.org. Anything you can add to your site that will help it look professional and maintain AYSO branding, will make parents feel that they have chosen a quality soccer organization for their children.

Logo Usage
It’s a good idea to use the National AYSO logo as much as you can in conjunction with your Region logo. We have a logo frame that has been created to help with this venture. It is simple to download and add your Region logo. It helps parents and families see that your local Region is part of a larger national organization that is committed to youth soccer across the country. The logo frame can be found in the Region Toolkit under the AYSO Logo section.

AYSO Colors
It’s also important that the colors used on your website are the correct AYSO colors, and not an offshoot of those colors. You want to make sure that the red and the blue match the colors in the AYSO traditional logo to maintain consistency throughout your website. Below are the color codes that can be used for the AYSO red and AYSO blue:

	AYSO RED	AYSO BLUE
HEX CODE	#EF3E33	#034EA2
RGB CODE	rgb(239, 62, 51)	rgb(3, 78, 162)