Promoting and Communicating
Your Team Via a Team Website
by: Bill
Utsey, Director of Athletics, Greenville County Schools,
Greenville SC
 When I started coaching I was
told that a coach wears many different hats-- teacher,
counselor, administrator, role model, etc. For today's
coaches, the world is demanding one more hat to wear--website
manager/administrator. People get their "news" in the
palm of their hand (their smart phone or tablet). Even
television "news" is beginning to see the impact of social
media. In the "old days" the media would come to you and
your school seeking information-- to interview coaches, take
pictures, get rosters, etc. Today, the local paper no longer
comes to you. The print media is a dying business
and to stay afloat it's fast becoming more electronic.
Because of this, coaches have to put on their own promoter
hats and generate team news and information. Put
figuratively, a webpage is like your "front porch." If kept
attractive and clean-- regularly updated and loaded with
interesting news and information your athletes, parents,
fans, and community will visit it often. They'll want to
"sit on it" with their friends and have conversations with you
and your coaches.
Almost two years ago, we contracted with a national website
management company - National Amateur Sports
- to create an athletic website for our large school district,
and for each of our schools and each of their sports
teams. Why did we do this and what were the selling
points in getting buy-in from our schools? I'm about to
explain because my goal in this article is to convince you of
the value of doing whatever it takes to establish and maintain
a team webpage for your program and athletes.
For a good many years, our coaches and athletic directors
had been constantly complaining about the lack of media
coverage. About twenty years ago, our local newspaper
The Greenville News, was our state's largest
newspaper. The coverage our high school sports teams
received was phenomenal. They reported on virtually all
of our sports teams as well as football and basketball
throughout the entire state. They sponsored events such
as district-wide track meets and coordinated and gave coverage
to all-district teams in most sports. Slowly, all of
this disappeared. The newspaper's circulation dropped
significantly, its staff shrunk in size, and our sports team's
media coverage became a trickle. Most days, there is now
not even a single item on high school sports in our local
paper's sports section. Although most coaches hardly noticed
this subtle paradigm shift, shift it did and so must we! I'm
guessing the above story is a familiar one in your own
community because of the tidal wave of 24/7 news coverage via
social media through smartphones, tablets, and smart
TV's. These devices, in concert with the Internet are
driving change. It's happening in every community across the
country and around the world. Today, I get my newspaper
delivered electronically and read it on my I-pad.
Everywhere you see people gathering, they are glued to their
smartphones reading or sending tweets or texts, and getting
news and sports updates, instagram's, and instant messages
from major news and sports media outlets. We can now follow
games with live streaming and get live scoring via website
links. It's a whole new world and it is how people expect news
and information to be shared with them.
So what should you do if you want to promote your team and
athletes? You can't wait for the local media to come to
you. Instead you must "send" or "post" information to
them or provide them with "smart" access to your team through
your website. Ask yourself these key
questions:
- How do people find out about your team and your program?
- How are people likely to find your team, how it operates
and its accomplishments?
- How can people learn about your team?
- How can you best establish credibility with your
athletes, parents, and fans?
- How can you best promote your team and your athletes?
- How can you get the media to follow your team
proactively?
Bottom line is, if you don't have a team website, you are
missing out on a huge amount of potential, positive exposure
for your team and athletes. Your website can and will be
a significant communications tool that will make your job
easier, and at the same time present your program in a first
class, professional manner. As you will find out later
in this article, if you don't have a website you are also
missing out on a huge fundraising opportunity .
The first step is to create a website for your team.
You may be thinking where do I begin? Who are the website
management companies that market specifically to
schools? For your location it should be easy to find out
by simply searching the Internet. There aren't that many
website providers that specifically work with school athletic
teams. Below are links to some of the larger companies
that target website services specifically for high school
sports:
Although we contacted some of the above companies for our
school district, we decided to go with National Amateur Sports
because it offered us all the services the above companies
offered in a much stronger financial package. In our
search we looked at our needs and determined what services we
felt were essential for our programs. Below are some of
the issues and services we considered in our search for
website assistance:
- Cost effectiveness Many website providers
generate their profit from sponsorships and
advertisements. Others may charge a fee. You do
need to consider financial effectiveness (upfront costs as
well as maintenance costs compared with potential revenue
productivity). Does the website provider offer the
opportunity of generating your own sponsorships and
advertisements for profit?
- Ease of use for managers, users and visitors--
This is a critical concern that must be addressed in the
selection process. The site should be user
friendly for website managers and administrators as well as
customers. A key factor to consider is capability for
multiple site managers with different levels of
accessibility - department level to team level. You
will want a page format that not only looks good but also is
easy to use. Look at sample pages the provider shows
you or visit other school's websites served by the provider
and check for ease of use and accessibility.
- Training and service -- Does the provider offer
free upfront training for your coaches and website
managers? What about ongoing service? You will
need a provider that has a 24/7 service for any issues and
questions that arise for your website administrators and
managers in your school system. Because there is a
high turnover rate for coaches and volunteers within high
school athletic programs you will be changing team page
managers on a regular basis. Does the website provider
offer online training for those new coaches and volunteers
who become team webpage managers?
- Athletic specialty capabilities -- Does the
site provide the capability of automatic updating of league
standings, team-player-program statistics, scoring (what
about live scoring), live video streaming, and the uploading
of pictures and video clips.
- Content volume - The site must have the
ability to house huge volumes of digital data in the form of
statistics, media (pictures and video), rosters, schedules,
etc. All of this should be in place without having to
pay additional fees for extending storage capability.
- Online payment capability and
registration -- You will want your site to have the
ability for parents and athletes to register (creating a
roster and communications database) and the ability to pay
online for fees, donations, tickets, and fundraising.
- Communication capability -- With registration
ability there is a great opportunity for you to build a
database for communicating with your athletes, coaches,
parents, and fans via email, social media, and other
electronic communication tools.
- Booster club and fundraising capability --
Mentioned above under online payment capability, you will
want a website that allows for your booster club to have its
own page and to be able to generate funds through membership
registration, spirit wear-store purchasing, and fundraising
events such as barbecues, silent auctions, golf tournaments,
etc. You will find that booster club pages work real well
because parents will actively work the website.
Why? Because the higher the level of activity on a booster
club page, the higher the income generated!
After you have selected your provider and the website
together with team pages goes live online, then it is up
to the athletic director and coaches to drive the content on
their sites. This is not easy as coaches are very
busy. As an athletic director in a large school
district, my biggest headache is getting our coaches to engage
with and use their team webpage's. I suggest that you
make sure to at least do the basics on your website -
enter your schedules, post contest results, and report some
minimal statistics.
Our provider, NAS Athletics, gave us a guide for the basics
that showed each webpage manager Three
keys to a great team page. This document gave simple
directions for doing three key tasks in keeping their page
updated. Everything else you might want on your webpage
can be categorized as enhancements. Again, our provider
gave us a simple guide for Enlivening
your team's website. These two guides gave us all we
needed to make our website active and effective for our team
community. Webpage effectiveness is measured by how many
visits it gets on a regular basis. Having a team webpage
sounds like a lot of work and it can be. However,
today's coaches needs to take advantage of this electronic
communication mode to communicate with their athletes,
parents, and fan base. Not doing so is failing to be a
competitor in the world of coaching. Making this happen
may require using an assistant coach, a volunteer parent or
fellow teacher, or even a student techno-geek to be your
team's webpage manager. Remember however, that when
selecting your webpage manager, make certain you keep your
school's athletic director and principal informed every step
of the way.
Biography: Mr. Bill Utsey is in his 14th year as the
District's Director of Athletics. He is a 1970 graduate of The
Citadel and holds masters and education specialist degrees
from USC. He has been a school athletic director, teacher and
head coach in numerous sports. Additionally, he served as
principal of Wade Hampton HS for four years. Mr. Utsey is a
member of the South Carolina and National Athletic
Administrators Associations serving as president of the former
(SCAAA). His awards include the SCAAA State Award of Merit and
the NIAAA Distinguished Service Award.
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