What Social Media Can Do for Your Region's Sponsors

Once you build a sizable and engaged social media audience (for a typical-sized Region, I would say this is about 300 Facebook and/or Twitter followers), your online presence can be a useful asset to your Region’s local sponsors.

Whether you’re trying to please your current sponsors, or looking to bag a few new ones, here are a few ways to use social media to promote your Region’s sponsors (or potential sponsors).

Stuck and Need Help? Google is Your Friend.

We all get stuck when it comes to creating webpages, whether it’s related to programming, or something isn’t working quite right. That’s when you turn to Google. There is an abundant supply of resources online just waiting for you to find them.

The W3C has an extensive website with resources on every programming language out there (web-based anyway). Whether you need help understanding HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP or ASP, their website can help you out. They break down every element of the code, tell you what it does and gives you examples of how to use it. Some of the pages even have a section where you can test it for yourself in real time. It’s a great resource if you’re just learning or don’t understand a certain component of any type of code.

Advanced Twitter Searching

People on Twitter are always talking – about their weekend plans, their favorite teams, even what they ate for dinner. If you’re ever curious as to what the “Twitter-verse” is saying about AYSO, there are ways to find out.

The first step is going to the “#Discover” section and typing in AYSO in the search box. These will give you the top results of people using #AYSO in their tweets. After a quick browse, click “All” too see all of the unfiltered, unranked responses.

Note: If you’ve promoted a custom hashtag in your Region, i.e., #AYSORegion22, try using that as your search term instead.

Using Fonts on the Web

It’s fun to go through all of the fonts on your computer and use them on your Region website. However, keep in mind thatnot everyone will have your fun font on their computer. So, it’s a good idea to use fonts that the majority of people will have and can view. You should also have a back-up font declared so that everyone can see your Region website the way it was meant to be seen..

Declaring Your Fonts

You can declare your fonts in CSS. Follow the format below:

font-family: Geneva, Arial, sans-serif;

You can add as many fonts to your declaration as you like. The first font is what will be displayed. Each font listed after that will be the fallback if the first font doesn’t work. So, say the user doesn’t have Geneva on their computer. It will try to display the page in Arial. If they don’t have Arial either, it will use the basic sans-serif font on the computer’s system.

Common Web Fonts

Choosing a font can be difficult because users work on different types of computers. Macs and Linux have different fonts than regular PCs, so even if your font is a "normal" font on a Mac, it might not be visible for a user on a PC. Here is a list of fonts that render on all computer formats:

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

Video Formats… What Works and What Doesn’t

Videos make a great addition to your Region website and can make it more entertaining and educational (and possibly educational) for your visitors. The National Office has a YouTube channel with videos available for Regions to put on their websites.

YouTube videos are easy to embed on your website. All you need to do is go to the video and click on the embed link. Copy the code and paste it where you want it on your website.

If you would like to use your own videos that are not on YouTube, you might want to follow some of these guidelines:

File Format – There are some common file formats that work universally for the most part. MOV (or Quicktime) files work in any browser and on any iPhone or iPad. FLV is a good format for the web, as it loads quickly and tends to have smaller file sizes. It, however, does not work on iPhone and iPad, so if your audience includes users on these devices, I would opt for another format. MP4 is another QuickTime format that works on all devices and browsers.

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