It is now more important than ever for clubs to use online resources available to them to engage with their current members as well as potential future members. UniSA Sport has put together a list of tips to engage club members online.
What are the benefits of going online?
- It's convenient! Going online allows you to engage and interact with your online community members, anyplace anytime.
- It's free! Setting up a Facebook event via your club's Facebook group is free, easy to organise, can be closed to members only or open to the wider public. Get creative about what the event might include, maybe it's a Facebook watch party of a reel of highlights from your Club's sport? Maybe a Zoom quiz?
- It's measurable! t's easy to track engagement and attendance online than it is at a physical event. See what works for your club and what doesn't. If something works, keep doing it!
- It's where everyone is right now! UniSA students are studying online, people are working from home with no distractions (other than social media) take advantage of this and pump out content consistently and frequently and your members to share the content on their personal pages to increase reach.
What is your club "why"?
Define a strong why by examining the goals of the club. Is it to have fun? Recruit new members? Revisit your plan for the next 12 months? Share ideas? Learn something new?
Then put your why in a statement, and refer back to it to keep you and your club on track.
How well do you know your members?
A cool way to get to know your members is to get them to share something about themselves to their own pages and tag the club. Start a challenge and ask for people to share a pic of themselves participating in their sport, or their earliest childhood pic of participating in a club sport, the idea is for them to then nominate someone to go next. You can also ask members to share thoughts and ideas for challenges, make it a competition for the best most original idea. Getting to know your members creates a stronger committee and member relationship.
Make a plan and stick to it
To keep you and your club on the right path, set some time aside to make a plan. Focus on how to keep the audience engaged, keep it simple. Plan ahead of time to decide on what you will do, the tools the club will use and when you will do it.
Promote your club on social media
If you haven't already, set up both a Facebook and an Instagram page, and start posting. Promote your club and events through social media, club newsletters and emails.
Keep it interactive
Always encourage interaction when you post to social media, even if it's asking for an emoji response to a question.
Provide networking opportunities for members through speakers, check-in with your sponsors and partner-up. Think of an event experience to deliver to remote attendees – keep it interesting!
Stay in touch
Engage with members on social media. Respond to their comments and open up a dialogue. And be consistent with your posting, try new things such as quizzes, trivia, polls memes (everyone loves a meme)
Remind people of the benefits of being in your club
Are they still part of a likeminded community? YES Do they all still love sport? YES Will the club return bigger and better than ever after isolation? YES
Reassure your members that is business as usual, just online for now. Get them to check in daily to your pages for updates.
Report, analyse, repeat!
Do some post-event analysis to help boost future virtual events. Check if the chosen platform provides insight data, take screenshots of important comments or posts, track the number of shares, number of members invited vs. actual number of attendees, gather feedback by asking attendees what they liked and didn’t like, brainstorm and share ideas for future events.
Here are a few ideas to get you started...
Below are ideas for some ways to engage online with your club members:
- Join online classes as a group like the #TeamUniSA Home Hustle Free Online Zoom Workouts
- Join UniSA MOVEs App challenges as a group
- Online trivia/ quiz night
- Organise a photo/virtual scavenger hunt
- Online gaming/activities (JackBox TV, Board games, Karaoke, eSports, Tabletopia etc.)
- Photo competitions
- Online viewing party on Netflix
- Q&A with an industry professional (live takeover of your social channel - Periscope, Livestream, Facebook Livestream, Instagram Live)
- Online meetings and webinars (Zoom, Microsoft Teams)
- Share videos
- Profile your members and club, or suggest members to UniSA Sport to be profiled in the #TeamUniSA Profile Series
- Share what is to come once isolation is over