How to Make Your Instagram Photos Speak

We've all heard the old cliche: a picture is worth a thousand words. When it comes to Instagram, a picture may be a worth new player and volunteer registrations.

So outside of taking great photos, picking the perfect filter and adding a snappy caption (find info on all that here), how can you make your Instagram photos say what you want them to say? The answer is simple: add words!

Building a Lean, Mean, Quick, Web Machine!

Building a website can be a time consuming process. If you use the wrong kind of assets in building your site, it will become a exercise in patience and anger management. Here is a few simple tips to keep that site light on its feet, easy to build, troubleshoot, and maintain.


Small pages = Fast pages

The art of building a site that loads quickly and is quick to transition is a tricky one. no matter a persons connection speed there is always content to download. How frustrating is it when you go to a page you want to view only to have to wait sometimes, what seems like forever, for content to load. We have all been there. (modem era anyone?) Do your viewers a favor, keep those pages small no more than a couple hundred kb. (yes you can still have images and content and keep it that small)

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

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.

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)