Game-Day is that special day of the week circled on everyone’s calendar. The days leading up to the big game build with anticipation and the frequency of communications ramp up… If you’re in charge of communications, whether you like it or not, you’re a key puzzle piece to your team’s game day success. Here’s a few tips on how to be a game-day hero on GroupSpot.
1. Best Practice: Move Your Game/Competition Post to the Top of the Feed
As they say in the media business, never bury the headline. Your game post is your headline on game-day so make sure it’s front and center by moving it to the top of your feed. Game posts are totally unique, unlike standard posts and event posts, because they have extra utility specific to games. This includes the ability to keep score, add play-by-play, and access game-day weather. Score and play-by-play were designed to be kept neatly at the top of your game post and not in an unwieldy string of updates in group chat or comments.
To move your game to the top of the feed, locate it on your calendar or your feed… In the first scenario, when the game is created, it defaults to your calendar only (unless you change it to feed and calendar during post creation). This is to prevent your feed from getting clogged up with games that are likely weeks or even months out. Those games can be moved from your calendar only to your feed and calendar by changing your post display… In the second scenario, the game post is already on the main feed and just needs to be bumped to the top. Either way, it’s easy to move your game post front and center for prime time visibility and engagement.
2. Best Practice: Add Important Game-Day Information to the Details of Your Game Post
This might sound obvious, but anything pertaining to the game should live in the details of the game post. Everything from live streaming details, hotel blocks, parking instructions, ticket information, tailgate protocols, etc. can be housed in the details of your game post. Also, any websites such as a streaming service link are easy to include and they’re easy to navigate to and from on GroupSpot.
It’s important to remember people are busy. They want to check in, get their information, and check out. The assumption is that anything paramount to the game-day experience lives here. If your game-day details are scattered about across multiple posts or even littered in chat, you will end up spending time answering a flurry of questions from members looking for information, when it all could have been avoided by having everything in one single spot, the game post.
3. Best Practice: Take Advantage of Reminders, Mass Communications, and Status Changes
Every game or event post has the opportunity to have push notifications or email reminders added to them. This is a great way to engage your community and remind them that the big game is coming. Some admins like to send an email a few days in advance coupled with a push notification the morning of, but this varies as admins have their preferences. The good news is that the tools are there to choose the cadence and method of delivery best suited to your group.
Mass Communications are the fastest way to capture the attention of your membership. The beauty of a mobile-first platform is the menu of options you have at your disposal to tailor your communications. The method of communication should match the type of communication. So if practice is suddenly canceled due to lightning, that’s a push notification, while something less urgent, like the team merchandise store is closing in a week and please get your orders in now is less urgent and thus more of an in-app alert. You also have group chat and email at your disposal as well.
If there are material changes to your game, adding the new status is extremely helpful. This includes changes to date and time, location, postponement, or even cancellation. To add the status, you just need to edit the game post, find the status row and choose the status that applies. Once you save the edit, you will be asked if you want to notify members. We recommend sending a simple push notification highlighting the change to your members. The new status will be clearly visible wherever the game post appears. You will see it on your feed, your upcoming view, and all calendars. It’s highlighted too so it doesn’t get overlooked.
4. Best Practice: Share Opportunities to Participate with Volunteer Signups
Part of being a game-day hero is knowing it’s impossible to shoulder the burden on your own. You need to know how and when to get team members involved and excited to pitch in. There’s no better way to do this than adding a Signup to your game post.
If you’re a coach or club director, your signups may be more game-day operational in nature like photographer, score book/clock, and chaperones. But if you’re a parent group, especially for teams, your game-day signup may include a pregame parent tailgate or post-game meal with the players. Signups create a natural opportunity for people to pitch in by bringing the items from your Signup. They give people a chance to engage with one another, build community, and thus enhance the overall game day experience.
5. Best Practice: Share the Magic of Shared Photo Albums
Many seasoned GroupSpotters say that Shared Photo Albums are the best-kept secret on the app. They are especially impactful on game-day when emotions run high and the stakes are the greatest.
Different from a traditional photo album that’s put together by an individual, a shared photo album is one where all members of the group can easily add their photos. This matters because sharing photos is generally a disaster. And sharing photos with people not in your contacts or on the same type of phone can be even worse.
Shared photo albums solve these pain points by letting each and every member of the group add their photos to a shared repository. So imagine game-day, when everyone is dressed in their team colors, having fun, and capturing the moment… what better way to participate with your community than by sharing some of your best game-day photos. When multiple people share their photos, it’s a ton of fun to go into the album and see all the different photo contributors with each swipe.
And if you also have a professional game-day photographer working the sidelines, let them post a regular photo album following the game in a new post. Their photos are likely shot on expensive cameras and not immediately available. They’re usually higher-end photos than the ones caught by parents on camera phones, so they deserve their own space and attention and should not be muddied up in the same shared photo album as the non-professionals.
Be a Game-Day Hero by Amplifying Your Game Posts
Game posts were designed to stand out in your feed. The scoreboards in team colors will stop even the fastest scroll. They were created to enhance your game-day experience by giving games that extra punch and utility. And they were designed to streamline your experience by keeping all your important game-day details under one roof in a single post. Make it easy for your members to find what they are looking for on game-day and when you do, watch your post engagement, view counts, and comments take off as a result.
