Building strategies for the Twenty-first century club
Coaches as "Educators"
Teaching athletes to improve their performance is the essence of soccer coaching. The format for coaching youth soccer is to use
training sessions tailored towards the four pillars of the game; technique, tactics, fitness and psychology. In addition to the objective
measures coaches can use to assess performance a significant amount of our assessment is subjective. Diligent coaches record observations
of the team and players at regular and frequent intervals throughout the season. These in turn are used for the often required written
evaluations that are shared with the player and in younger ages with parents as well. In comparison to school teachers, where evaluations
and grades are derived from a known standard, soccer player evaluations are a bit more subjective. Additionally, while school teachers usually teach
in the same age group for years at a time and become experts, soccer coaching professionals can have 2-3 teams in different age groups, and might cycle into yet again different age groups every few years. The known standard for soccer coaches is probably a bit fuzzier than it is for school teachers.
The current compensation for professional soccer coaches at the youth level is focused on a fixed number of practices during the week, with a game or
supplemental practice on the weekend. Many players in this model spend a maximum of 4.5 hours practicing and 1.5 hours performing in the game per week and much of the traditional coaching model has the coaches telling players what to do every step of the way. Better coaches use guided discovery and even better coaches are following the best practices in education by using a rich variety of teaching methods. A good Twenty-first Century coach will look for ways to use the new educational model to coach the individual athlete.
The trend in traditional education is the "flipped classroom" where the teacher assigned homework is video created by the teacher
and the content is what you would normally hear in the class lecture, but at the student's pace. Consider how long it takes to
learn technical, tactical and speed/agility movements on the field?
The Twenty-first Century Coach has many new tools at their disposal - Internet, Streaming Video, Smartphone, Tablets and Laptops.
There are many tools (Apps) which make coaching through the Internet much easier and keep compensation in
line with actual hours spent on/off field.
Communication with athlete and parent can be a real drudge but with Cloud based team history you have for each athlete's
tactical and technical analysis which gives prompt feedback and allows smooth coach transitions.
training sessions tailored towards the four pillars of the game; technique, tactics, fitness and psychology. In addition to the objective
measures coaches can use to assess performance a significant amount of our assessment is subjective. Diligent coaches record observations
of the team and players at regular and frequent intervals throughout the season. These in turn are used for the often required written
evaluations that are shared with the player and in younger ages with parents as well. In comparison to school teachers, where evaluations
and grades are derived from a known standard, soccer player evaluations are a bit more subjective. Additionally, while school teachers usually teach
in the same age group for years at a time and become experts, soccer coaching professionals can have 2-3 teams in different age groups, and might cycle into yet again different age groups every few years. The known standard for soccer coaches is probably a bit fuzzier than it is for school teachers.
The current compensation for professional soccer coaches at the youth level is focused on a fixed number of practices during the week, with a game or
supplemental practice on the weekend. Many players in this model spend a maximum of 4.5 hours practicing and 1.5 hours performing in the game per week and much of the traditional coaching model has the coaches telling players what to do every step of the way. Better coaches use guided discovery and even better coaches are following the best practices in education by using a rich variety of teaching methods. A good Twenty-first Century coach will look for ways to use the new educational model to coach the individual athlete.
The trend in traditional education is the "flipped classroom" where the teacher assigned homework is video created by the teacher
and the content is what you would normally hear in the class lecture, but at the student's pace. Consider how long it takes to
learn technical, tactical and speed/agility movements on the field?
The Twenty-first Century Coach has many new tools at their disposal - Internet, Streaming Video, Smartphone, Tablets and Laptops.
There are many tools (Apps) which make coaching through the Internet much easier and keep compensation in
line with actual hours spent on/off field.
Communication with athlete and parent can be a real drudge but with Cloud based team history you have for each athlete's
tactical and technical analysis which gives prompt feedback and allows smooth coach transitions.
Leveraging Social Utilites to build Club brand
Building your club Brand with Social Utilities and Search Engine Optimization is a very broad task without a clear roadmap or set of tools. The club
Brand evolves over time from content created to describe the identity and actions of coaches, board members, teams, parents and athletes.
Ultimately the measure of success over time is generating links or shares back to Club site, blog and social utilities.
Content created to describe the club stakeholders must be absolutely exceptional. People do not embed or link to mediocre content. If
someone embeds content on their site, blog or social utilities, it has to be because they want their readers/viewers to temporarily disengage from their own content and spend time watching or reading yours. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the quality has to be ground-breaking, but rather that the content must serve a specific need or interest of a defined group—and serve this need extremely simply and effectively.
In the absence of great quality strategy and content, the tendency is for key stakeholders on the individual teams to create their own agenda and social utilities strategy which includes linking to club's content when it is reliable, timely and in some cases entertaining. Too often the Club's Social Utilities will have become littered with fragmented, tedious, uninspired content which is out of date.
A Link Baiting is when a club creates a long term link building strategy which answers these questions - Who blogs? Who tweets? Who comments?
What’s your club’s social media policy? What app's will be used? What accounts will be used for sending and receiving emails to and from bloggers? How will records of (and contact with) link prospects be kept and accessed?
Club must provide an accurate club calendar, field locator, coach directory with assignments, team manager contact info, team and athlete forms, board of directors, timely board minutes, mission statement, discussion of levels of play, tournament results, college recruiting, sponsors and team/athlete
entertaining content. Any changes in club/team details creates opportunity to communicate change using an established club personality and character which includes good readability, keywords, links and proper grammar created using the Club's long term link building workflow. Three screen strategy one year ago was nice to have today it is imperative and includes multilingual content. A three screen strategy is readable and efficient across various screen sizes and devices
So far what has been described if done correctly would get the club "Branded" as well as organized. The real power of a link baiting using social utilities
specifically Facebook, YouTube and Twitter is engaging your opinion leaders with self/other created images and video. This content may have been created for coaching, recruiting and great entertainment and will very quickly build a brand if done properly. Creation of this content is critical, How often have you seen very poor image or video used prominently in one of the social utilities? Your customers will feel that way in the absence of high quality content.
Brand evolves over time from content created to describe the identity and actions of coaches, board members, teams, parents and athletes.
Ultimately the measure of success over time is generating links or shares back to Club site, blog and social utilities.
Content created to describe the club stakeholders must be absolutely exceptional. People do not embed or link to mediocre content. If
someone embeds content on their site, blog or social utilities, it has to be because they want their readers/viewers to temporarily disengage from their own content and spend time watching or reading yours. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the quality has to be ground-breaking, but rather that the content must serve a specific need or interest of a defined group—and serve this need extremely simply and effectively.
In the absence of great quality strategy and content, the tendency is for key stakeholders on the individual teams to create their own agenda and social utilities strategy which includes linking to club's content when it is reliable, timely and in some cases entertaining. Too often the Club's Social Utilities will have become littered with fragmented, tedious, uninspired content which is out of date.
A Link Baiting is when a club creates a long term link building strategy which answers these questions - Who blogs? Who tweets? Who comments?
What’s your club’s social media policy? What app's will be used? What accounts will be used for sending and receiving emails to and from bloggers? How will records of (and contact with) link prospects be kept and accessed?
Club must provide an accurate club calendar, field locator, coach directory with assignments, team manager contact info, team and athlete forms, board of directors, timely board minutes, mission statement, discussion of levels of play, tournament results, college recruiting, sponsors and team/athlete
entertaining content. Any changes in club/team details creates opportunity to communicate change using an established club personality and character which includes good readability, keywords, links and proper grammar created using the Club's long term link building workflow. Three screen strategy one year ago was nice to have today it is imperative and includes multilingual content. A three screen strategy is readable and efficient across various screen sizes and devices
So far what has been described if done correctly would get the club "Branded" as well as organized. The real power of a link baiting using social utilities
specifically Facebook, YouTube and Twitter is engaging your opinion leaders with self/other created images and video. This content may have been created for coaching, recruiting and great entertainment and will very quickly build a brand if done properly. Creation of this content is critical, How often have you seen very poor image or video used prominently in one of the social utilities? Your customers will feel that way in the absence of high quality content.