Blogging with other professionals in your field give people the capability to share knowledge with each other and communicate ideas and information. Being the administrator for this blog allows me to control the topic of discussion and monitor the comments that are posted to ensure posts are appropriate and beneficial for all memebers. I'm also able to control who is a member and who is not a member so that way people who post comments that are derrogatory or slanderish, can be removed easily. The value of the blog is tht it gives people on online interface where members can provide valuable feedback and then can refer to that information by just going online at any time they need to access it. Through creating my own blog, I am also able to link to other bloggers sites and work together to pass on information exponentially as links to other blogs and social networks grow. Having a blog is like having your own personal news station that you can broadcast whatever information you want. The key is to keep the information relevant and interesting so members stay interested and visit often.
Twitter is also a form of social networking that has erupted over the past few years. As a coach, I use Twitter to communicate to my followers when practices or games are cancelled due to weather. This allows me to broadcast information to multiple people within seconds. When we are going to have a fundraiser, I am able to communicate details and links via Twitter to all of my followers. In addition, I am able to connect my Twitter to Facebook. That way when I send out a Tweet, I am also posting to my facebook wall. This just provides one more layer of communication for those people to see what the latest news is that I'm sharing. As a soccer coach, when a game was cancelled we used to have a phone tree. I would call my manager, my manager would call the captain of the team, the captain would call the first player on the roster and that player would call the next and so on.... This method was unreliable and often resulted in parents showing up to games because they never got the message. With Twitter, now I send out one Tweet, it goes to all of my players and it take less than 1 minute. The only issue I continue to have is that so many people are still unwilling to sign up or use Twitter. So to accomodate those parents, I do three things to communicate cancellations. I post it on oour home page on our website. I email it to everyone on the team and I Tweet it. Between the three methods, there is no reason the parent's should not have received the necessary information on time. If they didn't get it the fault lies on them. The best part of this is that I don't have to make a signle phone call. Calling parents to cancel practices often gave parents an opportunity to discuss their beef with the team. While I don't mind having those conversations, it was not efficient to have those conversations with 15 other phone calls to make.
I am following the USMNT, the U.S. Men's National Team. This allow me to keep up to date with the U.S. Team's lastest scores, highlights and news. Staying in the loop at the National level is important. As the USMNT hands down info, I can then pass that on to my followers if the information is relevant and helpful to our cause.
Coach Koop - as a former 'soccer mom' I would have loved it if the coach emailed or sent a tweet to keep me up-to-date! One cannot always rely on a child to remember to tell you that you have snacks for the next home game! It'a great idea that I hope your parents embrace.
ReplyDeleteKudos for making your blog apply to your passion for soccer. I think it's a great idea to create a forum for your fellow coaches to follow news and share comments.
Good Luck!