Top 10 things to engage your grassroots sports club in 2021

As we wipe 2020 out of our memory and enter 2021, many parts of the UK in Tier 4, only U18s are allowed to play and train. We are hearing of many leagues being cancelled and therefore we are at risk of losing our club membership and communities for when times are back to normal. It's therefore critical clubs keep engaging with their members. Here are a list of 10 things to help keep your sports club engaged in 2021:

1 - MAKE YOUR CLUB WEBSITE AWESOME

With over 99% of adults (between 18 and 34) being online, we think it’s a little bit crazy to not have a club website. I'm still shocked with how many clubs that do not have a good website. For many individuals, the first port of call when searching for a club is to find their website. Can you imagine the members you may be missing out on by not having your own site?

We recommend PitchHero.com as the platform to build your club site. Amazing functions such as club and manager app, contactless payments, player track and trace, team stats etc make it our best in class web platform.

 2 - GET SOCIAL

Social media has many benefits for sports clubs. New members will almost certainly search for a website/social media account initially and if one doesn’t exist, you may be missing out on these members. Social media is an amazing way to showcase your club and the talent within it to encourage people to want to become a part of it too.

Plus, each social media platform has some clever features which you may find useful:

? The ability to use Facebook’s Messenger service to respond to prospective member’s communication. The average amount of people who open emails are between 5 and 10%. With Facebook Messenger, that percentage boosts to 70-80%.

? Being able to utilise Instagram’s stories to keep followers regularly updated.

? Your tweets being easily shareable (or ‘re-tweeted’) on Twitter to reach larger audiences.

3 - ZOOM TRAINING ON THE PITCH AND ONLINE

If teams can't train due to bad weather or COVID, don't lose the precious time with players. Coaches and managers should use the time allocated to review 4 areas that are often missed with the focus on physical training:

• Tactical learning - maybe watch a You Tube video together and discuss tactics as a group.
• Personal development plans - download some templates and set goals for players.
• Nutrition based learning - set some ingredients and a day when the team should cook. Take photos and discuss the meals.
• Team engagement sessions online - pub quizzes type event. depending on the age of the players, allow them to run this themselves.

4 - PARENT ENGAGEMENT

Parents are the key to success of U18 teams and players. Famously, Sir Alex Ferguson would engage the players mother before the father. "The mother's the secret," he said. "The mothers are always the strong [ones] in the family, without question. I say always, 'Get the mother'. There's always danger with the father. He tries to live his life through the boy, you know. You get a little bit of that. But the mother? No, she won't do it that way. She's "My boy, I want more of this for my boy"

Having 4 sessions a year that engage players and parents to review goals of the team and squads allow for all parties to focus on the team goals. Remember the conversation in the car journey home is one of the most important.

5 - DIG OUT PHOTOS AND VIDEO CONTENT TO ENGAGE

Using ‘visual’ content is great way of making your club’s posts stand out. Did you know that you’re likely to remember just 10% of information 3 days after you read it? But if an image is alongside, 65% of the information is retained.

Also, it’s a fantastic idea to use as much video as you can. Video on mobile has increased by a huge 10 million daily viewing minutes over the last 24 months. Try to take as many videos/photos of training as possible (with your members’ permission of course). This will hopefully increase people’s engagements with your posts and result in you getting prospective new members.

6 - SET TARGETS AND GOALS

Setting targets and goals as a team and as a club is a great way of getting parents, managers, players and coaches engaged. The targets done necessarily need to be win ratios or goals scored. They could be as simple as attendance to training targets or coaches recruited. By getting the whole organisation focussed on a set of targets and goals they will be achieved!

7 - BUILD LINKS WITH LOCAL PRESS

A great way to get in touch with your local area is by using your local press. You could get in touch with your local newspaper or town/village magazine with any stories you think are worth sharing. You can normally either:

? Invite press to cover an event. If your martial arts school is holding a grading with special guests, you could invite the press to cover the event and ask them to mention the fact you’re taking on new members too.

? Write content in your local newspaper/magazine.

? Submit a press release to a local magazine if you have a story you think they’ll be interested in. For example, if a group of your volleyball players have been selected to play nationally. Then you can ask them to mention that you have openings for new players to join.

8 - BUILD LINKS WITH LOCAL HEROS

Whilst people are still stuck at home, there are many local heroes that would happily engage in an online session. It would be a great way to get young players engaged with their heroes by allowing them to ask questions about tips or tricks to improve their game etc.

9 - IDENTIFY NEW AREAS OF GROWTH

Does your club have a girls or Womens section? Does your club have a disability section? Why not sow the seeds to get the section set up?

10 - RUN TASTER SESSIONS

Lots of people may be afraid to join a new club due to them being the only newbies. But if you run a dedicated ‘beginners-only’ sessions, they’ll be rest-assured that they won’t be alone.

It’s also a great way of encouraging people to come along who may be worried about not knowing anyone. Being in a group of people will mean that attendees will be in the same boat as each other and not feel alienated at all. You could hold ‘beginners-only’ gymnastics course consisting of 8 classes over 8 weeks, covering the initial foundations. And when the course is complete, the members can be filtered into the rest of the classes now that their skills and confidence have improved.

Feel free to contact us for more tips and tricks on how to engage with your club at [email protected]