Spread Your Sports Fundraiser Like a Virus

Social media is all the buzz these days with the fast rise of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Many collegiate level coaches are even on board to help with recruiting and exposure of their programs. Kentucky Basketball Coach John Calipari, who is known not to be tech savvy, has over one million people following his Twitter page. Coaches and Booster Clubs must also be aware of the benefits that social media can have on the exposure of their team's fundraiser. Below are two tips that your team can easily implement and will cost you next to nothing.

1) Make a Facebook Fan Page: Creating a Facebook Fan Page for your team is a great way to engage supporters of your program with updates on your team and fundraiser. To make a Facebook Fan Page, you must first have a Facebook profile. Then you can create a Fan Page here. Choose "Brand, Product or Organization," select What sports on the pull down menu and name your page. Next you will need to put in a picture for the pages profile image. That's really the basics to making the page. To see a good example of a collegiate program's Fan Page, visit Ohio State Buckeyes - lots of updates, pictures and discussions.

Now comes the important part to your Facebook strategy: getting a fan base and creating page content. First, you need to get people connected to your program to become fans of your page. Each Fan Page has a link at the top that reads "Become A Fan." Users just click that link and they will receive your pages updates. Make all the players on your team become a fan along with their parents. Then have each of them send a message out to their Facebook friends to also become fans of your team page. This will create an immediate fan base. Second, you will need to be active in creating content for your page. The page should rarely be used to promote your fundraiser. A good rule of thumb is that about 95% of your pages content should be non-fundraiser related. The primary use should be to give updates on your team, game results and best of all, pictures of your team. People love to look at pictures on Facebook. Only every once in while post a note with an update about your fundraiser with a link to an online giving page. You should be putting 5 - 8 updates a week on the page to keep your fans engaged.

2) Insert "Share" Widgets: A share widget is a small button that can be put on websites that allow users to directly relay information from that site to their social networks. An example of a share widget on a team fundraiser web page can be found here under "Help Promote Our Fundraiser." On the widget, if a user selects Facebook, then a brief description of that website will be added to this users Facebook profile. The benefit is that all of the user's Facebook friends will see the post about the website that was shared. So with just one click of the mouse, your fundraising page can get a lot of exposure.

To insert a widget to your fundraising website, you will need your web masters to insert HTML code (this is easier then it sounds). A good widget to add to your website is call "Add This" and can be found here. Get the code for the widget and add it to your fundraising home page. Once the widget is in place make sure to encourage visitors of your page to click on the widget and help promote your fundraiser.