The Basics of Booster Club Twitter Marketing

Introduction

Finding new ways to promote your booster club to your target audience can be difficult. If you are looking for some ways to promote your booster club online, consider Twitter if you are not already on there. Booster club Twitter marketing is similar to managing other social media profiles – but with it’s own set of best practices.

Yes there are a ton of different social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, and many times the first question people ask is: why should I use Twitter? Not only does Twitter limit the length of your posts – it means managing yet another online profile and creating the content targeted towards that audience.

With more than 126 million daily active users, and a good portion of those being of a younger audience  – booster club Twitter marketing may be a great way to talk to a new segment of your local target audience!  Let’s take a deeper dive into why Twitter may make sense as part of your club promotion strategy.

Twitter Has Real-Time Updates and Interactions:

One of the strongest selling points to integrate booster club Twitter marketing is its immediacy. Everything happens in real time and the network gives you instant access to most up to date and relevant content of the profiles you follow. This immediacy that occurs is due to a larger fanatical twitter audience that is continually engaging on the platform.  As you build our your booster club Twitter followers this means your posts will be seen in real time with that same immediacy. Twitter is one of the best tools to provide live updates to your followers and keep people in the loop about what’s going on with your team at the moment.

Getting started with the Basics of Booster Club Twitter Marketing:

Before you jump right into booster club Twitter marketing, you need to identify whether Twitter, as a platform, is the right fit for your club’s target audience and marketing goals. If so, then the first step is to set up your booster club’s free Twitter account/profile and configure it. The basic steps of setting up a Twitter account include:

1. Choose a Twitter user name / profile name – this will also be your twitter address
2. Add a Profile Picture – in most cases your booster club or school logo
3. Set a custom background design that represents your booster club
4. Write a short description of why the booster club exists and what it does
5. Make sure to include your location to help you find other local twitter accounts to interact with

Because booster clubs are completely volunteer run, it is up to the leadership or a volunteer to manage and update their twitter account on a regular basis. If you do not have anyone that is familiar with posting to Twitter, make sure that the person in charge of it, does a little online research regarding posting best practices.  Some things to keep in mind:

1. Make sure to tweet regularly – do not let your profile go quiet for long periods of time
2. Follow other relevant Twitter accounts – a lot of time following other accounts gains your account followers
3. Make sure to tweet relevant quality content – this could be around events, meetings, announcements, school news, fundraising drives, general news around your activity, holiday specific posts – the ideas are limitless, and you can really get creative!
4. Remember that Twitter is designed to be conversational – so not only should you tweet via your profile, but you should engage your audience AND engage with other twitter profiles. One major pitfall people fall into when first using Twitter is just sending messages out and not engaging beyond that. This misses the other ½ of Twitter and how to best utilize the platform.

Twitter Marketing Strategy for Booster Club:

Now that you have learned the basics of running your booster club Twitter account, we can now jump into the meat of booster club Twitter Marketing!  Beyond randomly tweeting, commenting and retweeting – you need to create a strategy for your Twitter account with achievable goals.

Step 1: Define your booster club Twitter marketing goals

The basics of booster club Twitter marketing include figuring out what it is you want to get out of Twitter. Apart from gaining followers, your focus should also consider building booster club awareness and as always fundraising opportunities!  Some things to consider in your booster club twitter marketing strategy include:

• Giving the followers a way to directly get in touch with your club’s team
• Connect with local partners to drive support and awareness
• Cross promote with twitter fans, booster volunteers and local sponsors
• Create a regular posting schedule
• Develop a unique weekly release that happens on the same day and time – could be a video, a weekly contest or quiz
• Set aside time regularly to interact with followers and other profiles
• Consider advertising fundraising drives to build awareness

Most likely your club is already posting on other social media platforms, consider repurposing much of the same content to share with your Twitter audience.  Some people may overlap, but many times people tend to pick a favorite social media platform and are more engaged there than others.

Step 2: Develop a content sharing strategy

Part of any strong social media strategy is having quality content to share.  So… what should YOU share? Well, the answer slightly depends on your booster club Twitter marketing goal. One one hand you want to share useful content for the people you hope to attract. Ask yourself what the club members, fans, potential sponsors or other members of your target group would be interested in. On the other hand you will also want to consider sharing content that is fun, unique and will help your booster club stand out on Twitter.

Some Twitter content ideas:

• Upcoming events
• General information and news concerning your booster club
• Training tips
• Live updates from your competitions
• Highlight reels
• Recaps of events
• Conduct polls to interact with followers
• Create contests with simple prizes

Know that Twitter not only supports text content, but video and image content as well. With this in mind – research has shown that including visuals increases engagement, and sharing a variety of content types increases interest as well.

Step 3: Tweet Regularly to engage conversation

Contrary to Facebook or Instagram, Twitter requires a more regular constant content strategy. Twitter is surely a great place for marketing, however, Twitter’s strength –real-time updates- is also one of its curses. Things move very quickly on this platform.

The average lifespan of a Tweet is not very long and usually lasts 18 minutes. Therefore, it is hard for your message to stick and make an impact. It’s quite easy to get lost in the crowd. The best solution is to make a commitment to publish regular updates in order to stay visible. The sweet spot is anywhere between 3 and 7 tweets per day to maximize engagement. Just be careful, like any other social media platform, over tweeting can be looked upon as spam and end up hurting your booster club Twitter marketing efforts.

Step 4: Time your Tweets to Perfection:

As you are developing your regular tweet schedule, timing is everything. Blasting tweets to your target audience while they’re sleeping is not a great strategy.  There are many best practices around times to send tweets, however the best strategy is to take some time to test tweets with your audience. As you understand your audience and when they engage with your tweets, you can then schedule tweets at key higher traffic intervals throughout the day.

Step 5: Twitter loves hashtags:

You have probably at least heard of hashtags or hashtagging as it is a common practice with multiple social networking sites. The purpose of hashtags is to give users a way to search for topics and content they are interested in. Because they are a method for people to discover your twitter feed, you need to include them with your tweets. Just like over tweeting, don’t over-hashtag, instead keep it to two or three relevant hashtags per tweet.

Step 6: Interact with Potential Followers:

Now that you understand the basics of booster club twitter marketing, it’s time to start tweeting and building a following. One of the most effective ways to grow your Twitter followers is to be proactive and start following similar (but not competitive) Twitter accounts. By following other accounts, you give them a friendly nudge follow you back. If you want to continue to encourage accounts to follow you back, go through their tweets and like, retweet, comment, interact, and mention their account in your tweets. Many times, this interaction with their feed and content will help you catch the attention of potential partners, fans, and amplifiers who will then reciprocate and follow you!

Twitter offers unique marketing and promotional opportunities your booster club should take full advantage of. The basics of booster club twitter marketing mentioned above will help you create an optimized Twitter profile so you can get started promoting your booster club vie tweets, retweets and partner interactions.  Happy Twittering!