Managing a club’s message and image is a very important aspect of running a soccer team at any level. However, mismanagement at the lower levels could kill a club, and sometimes that can happen before they even get started. Between the NPSL, UPSL and USL League Two, there are approximately 178 clubs in operation at what is generally considered the fourth tier in US Soccer. There are another 8 “markets” listed by NISA, but who knows what’s happening there. Other leagues come and go, some are absorbed into the previously mentioned leagues and yet others combine their forces for good and morph into larger regional leagues. Within all of that, hundreds of clubs come into existence - some flourish, others persist, and often, many simply fade away. This fading away is part of a performance issue at this level of soccer; if a club fails to plan then it might as well plan on failing.

At the root of the conversation are two slightly different, but related issues; clubs listed on league websites but anonymous in social media and clubs who talk a mean game but are all over the place, without a road map, and need to reel it in. There’s a lot that comes with joining a league, even one at the bottom of the figurative American Pyramid: communicating with players and families is priority number one, connecting with potential supporters second, and keeping in touch with any media who may be poking around for a story. That may be the least important reason to have a social media presence, but it’s a reason nonetheless. Of course, this article’s focus and point doesn’t apply to every club, there are clubs who have social media communications all dialed-in and won’t need to read this. Additionally, there are clubs who are financially sound, don’t need the hype, and have a first team in one of these aforementioned leagues merely to provide a place to their players who are coming through their developmental funnels. But this article is definitely for two types of clubs:

Silently Deadly - When we take a closer look at the sheer number of clubs, mentioned above, it’s staggering to see how many of them are seemingly devoid of any social media communication. No bragging about recent results, no flashing their hot new scarves or kits, not even listing any upcoming matches with times and locations—those last two bits are pretty important in getting friends, family and even curious supporters out to watch a match. This is all pretty indicting when we see these same clubs disappear a year or two after they join any given league. We assume the worst about their organization and maybe give it a little “pfft” as a mark of judgement. If they failed for financial reasons, maybe they could have reached out to our little bubble of lower league support and asked for our $2.00 to buy a sticker—maybe they could have given away tickets just to get twenty or thirty people out to a match and, once excited about the club, pick up a scarf or a t-shirt. If they wanted to make it, they need to be like the louder clubs in the system. There is truth in the old adage, “The squeaky wheels get the grease.” So squeak!

Annoyingly Obvious - Those boisterous clubs - you know the type - always showing off beautiful fan art, custom jerseys, posting clever gifs and otherwise making themselves known by any means necessary are doing things right. Right? Being active isn’t always good (at least over a certain point), being braggadocious is probably not endearing and slagging off your players on social media is straight up unlikeable. The need for attention has to be coupled with common sense, otherwise you are eventually ignored by your audience. This social media approach makes all those absentee clubs look really good by comparison. Another phrase comes to mind, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

What’s at stake here, for both extremes, is professionalism. Clubs who want to wade into higher profile regional leagues, national leagues, or even into the US Open Cup ought to plan on upping their efforts at communication. Likewise, organizations who mostly have a grasp on how the Twitter-machine, Facebook and Instagram work, need to mellow out a bit on edgy content.

There are resources available to help build a communications plan, and that’s where this is all going. Clubs who are newly-minted would do well to map out roles and responsibilities before a single blog post, flashy gif or snarky meme is posted. Clubs who don’t have this already sussed out, should probably stop for a day and figure out who is the least emotional and most engaging personality for expressing the team’s perspective—this may not end up being the person who wants to do it, rather, the person who is most well-suited to handle the responsibility. Want to express your discontent about player turnout to training or to your matches? Upset about an opponent showing up late and the refs not pushing the first kick time back to accommodate? Just found out a player who promised to play for you found a different place to play? All valid things to be upset about, just don’t take to social media on the team’s account to talk about it.

Once you have your social media maestro picked out, here are some additional steps to developing a social media and communications plan. Remember, the advantage to building this goes to the most thoughtful, not necessarily to the most invested. Actually, when done correctly, a successful plan is marked by its ability to engage and convert at a minimal cost. The very first step is to Set Goals—both short term and long-term goals will help you find the pace for posts and timing between events. Growing a following, converting followers to customers, or simply getting family, friends and volunteers more involved are some examples of goals to set. Knowing your Audience—will directly relate to setting your goals, are demographics important? Do you understand how to tie-in to other regional interests? Are your players and their families primarily coming from a collegiate background or are you drawing players and supporters from raw local talent? Conversely, Knowing your Competitors is just as important. You might not believe it, but if a neighboring team competing to sign your players away from you is not a concern, then a NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS or NWSL team being on television or playing a game simultaneously just might be. Or maybe even an annual arts and wine fair in your neighborhood. Whatever it is, know what is competing for the time and attention of your players and potential fans; schedule accordingly and generate ways to sway some of that attention back your way.

A couple other really important aspects are Picking your Platforms—where you take a deep look into those demographics and figure out how they prefer to receive meaningful chunks of information. There are the few previously mentioned, but maybe LinkedIn works for your organization if you’re helping build your players into professionals who self-advocate. Perhaps Reddit… though I don’t know why anybody still uses it. Also consider your technical capabilities; for example, can you generate video? Does YouTube work for your club? Or maybe you can add MyCujoo to your resources and make your matches available for consumption. Sure, friends and family can watch, but more importantly, it gives scouts from larger clubs a chance to see your players and potentially give them a shout out on their SnapChat account. Lastly, Strategizing your Campaign—taking all of these key points into consideration and building out a schedule, legible graphics, personalized gifs, non-offensive but playful club-specific memes, and player information. There’s so much that goes into this, which includes the possibility of backtracking on planned materials and posts. If the response to something doesn’t go as planned, analyze it, figure out if it was appropriately addressing your goals and don’t be afraid to revise.

As I said before, some clubs are already doing this well, some clubs aren’t doing so well, and others aren’t doing a thing—that could be for a reason outside of our scope of understanding. There are a ton of much more insightful and rich resources in the google universe and I encourage anybody seeking to grow their organization to do some deep digging into social media marketing, search engine optimization and utilizing free sites like Survey Monkey and Campaign Monitor to collect and distribute club information. There are so many leagues and clubs out there, not all of the tools here are applicable to every organization’s specific situation and if your team is doing really well with this, or if I missed something that other clubs might find useful, don’t hesitate to reach out and share the tools you use.

- Joshua Duder