YouTube for Booster Clubs

YouTube makes sharing video easy. Creating a YouTube account for your club, you can help showcase the work of participants, benefactors, and volunteers. Filming, editing, and posting videos takes time and energy but there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit -- simple videos that booster clubs can make. What’s great about YouTube is what’s great about online video in general. Ditto for what’s not  so great. PROs Easy to digest. Videos grab attention in a way that an 800 word blog post with … [Read more...]

LinkedIn for Booster Clubs?

LinkedIn is a professional networking site. For some, it’s just a place to post a detailed resume. For others, it’s a forum for discussion, especially related to job searching, business practices, and industry news. For booster clubs, LinkedIn offers a number of opportunities. It’s a good space to recruit for volunteers, and has a few lively discussion groups focused on booster clubs themselves. (We’ve been following discussions on AMP, the Association of Music Parents, as well as the Sports … [Read more...]

Facebook for Booster Clubs

In many ways, Facebook is a lot like Google: an agglomeration of distinct social media services offered under the same big name. Facebook rebranded tools like websites, forums, blogs, and Twitter, incorporating them into one massive site. The end result is some slightly confusing vocabulary.   The Internet, With a Different Name Both Pages and Groups can be used as a platform to share basic information, documents, and photos. They also act as web forums; a place for supporters to … [Read more...]

30 Things to Tweet your Booster Club

You understand Twitter, you want to make it a part of your booster club's social media strategy, but you're hitting some writers block? Don't dismay, we've got a huge list of things to post. Photos of your participants doing things Rainouts Photos of sponsors and/or their business Playoff schedule Arch rival updates Articles about your club in the local paper or segments on local television Photos of volunteers doing things Updates on alumni (Did they get a music scholarship? … [Read more...]

Twitter Lingo and Etiquette for Booster Clubs

What the #@”RT? With all of the signs, symbols, and jargon, Twitter can feel like a new language. Luckily, you only have to learn a few terms to effectively manage your Twitter account for a booster club or other small nonprofit. This post is a primer on the most essential ones, and has links to the more advanced stuff. See our previous post on Twitter for Booster Clubs. # (Hashtag) is a keyword that organizes content and codes conversations. On first glance, hashtags are just like blog … [Read more...]

Twitter for Booster Clubs

You probably know that Twitter is a public texting service that distributes 140-character posts to subscribers*. Twitter has facilitated national protests and broken the 4th wall for Justin Bieber's fans (see the hilarious video at the end of this post). But you don’t have to be a revolutionary or a belieber to benefit from Twitter's speed and openness. Booster clubs whose members own smartphones can take advantage of Twitter’s lightning updates. Booster clubs might gravitate to Twitter for the … [Read more...]

Social Media Strategy for Booster Clubs

With booster club board members in mind, we recently began reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of social media platforms. As we researched tips and tricks for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and others, we realize that there is some social media strategy that applies to all of them. Our response is this post on audience, account maintenance, administrators, and the age-old question of what to post. However, before we jump into the great things you can do with social media in booster … [Read more...]

Should Your Booster Club use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, etc?

So you want to use Social Media for your booster club... You connect through social media networks in your personal life, so why not use those tools for your booster club? Creating an account on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social media feed is very easy.  Yet maintaining those feeds efficiently for a small nonprofit presents a number of challenges.  On the surface, it seems like the hardest part is choosing which platform (Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest) is most suitable for the … [Read more...]

You Do Not Have It Covered: 20 Tasks for Volunteers

Sometimes a volunteer catches you flat footed. “You guys need anything? Can I help out?” There’s certainly a lot that you, a booster club leader, need to do. You could use some help. To-do lists are so tightly spooled in your head it feels like they’re going to start fluttering out. Yet it feels like more effort to train this volunteer than to do things yourself. You’re tempted to tell them that you have it covered, or that there’s nothing small enough for them to take on. Don’t give in. Do … [Read more...]

Mission to Metrics 4: Promote Interest in Academics

Academic booster clubs seek to inspire more than high grades. The booster club I’m profiling in this post is more concerned with promoting interest among their participants than a perfect GPA. Grades aren't even mentioned in their mission statement. As with the other posts in the Mission to Metrics series, I show how booster club officers can develop appropriate metrics to measure the goals outlined in their mission statements. (See the intro post to metrics, and links to the other posts in … [Read more...]