Team pages were introduced to 49er.org in the lead up to the 2013 Worlds so that fans of 49er sailing can more easily get to know their favorite teams. For 49er sailing to become as popular as we would all like, we must enable a connection between our fans and you athletes, so lets do it! These pages can be your team websites. They are very easily available to fans and will save you money and hassle compared to managing your own external page. The class will update the features as needed, so if you have requests, or ideas to make them better, let us know.
Get a Team Page
Every member of the class who races as a team can have a team page. If you want one, just email the site admin (ben) with your team members, who is the skipper, and both email addresses.
You will then get an email with your login details and can easily make your site.
Profile, and Social Media
Once you are making your site, fill in the 4 tabs of your profile section. The more info you enter the better:
When it asks you for your number, just put your number, like “88” as it already knows your country from the previous question. If you enter “BRA 88” it screws up the team page listings.
DOB – is date of birth
Enter your weights, ladies, you’re fit young women, don’t fall into the trap of being shy of your weight, be proud of how fit you are and show some leadership for young girls all over.
Please enter your height, nicknames, locations, or if you don’t live anywhere write that. These pages are to try and allow fans some insight into your team, so leaving this stuff blank makes the pages look like ISAF sailor ID’s and that will never work for us.
Sponsors
Your sponsors logos end up on the sidebar of your profile. The area is 300 pixels wide by 88 pixels high. If you put your image into paint you can change it to fit that size and it will look good. You can add as many sponsors as you like, they will cycle through every few seconds.
You can also add your sponsors URL to the image, so when somebody clicks on it they go to your sponsors page. This is a great way to create value for your sponsor. Once you have uploaded your image, click on the image and a box will appear on the side of it. Just enter the URL you’d like to link to and save.
If you look to the right of the ‘Unitecblue logo in the image, you’ll see the URL listed there. In the sponsor upload area just click on the logo and paste the link into the box.
Images and Video
The photo gallery has been updated so that the thumbnails are larger than they were before, so it looks better now. It’s easiest to upload your images to the gallery and then select your profile picture. Speaking of profile pictures, they should have the two team members faces so fans can see who you are – save your sailing photos for the gallery. Please load photos between 200-400 kb, if they are too large the site will slow down.
On the topic of photos, you can post photos of your team when you’re not sailing. One team, for a brief period, had a picture of themselves in evening dresses and without any marketing effort at all had 500 views in a week. Please try to show your personalities in these profiles and we’ll do better to create a fan base.
Youtube and Vimeo videos are easy to load in. Just cut and paste the codes into the input area and order them as you like.
News
For most teams, they have a facebook page where they can tell their fans what is going on. For 80% of what you do, that is perfect. However, facebook posts only last 24 hours, or 48 at the most, and often less. If you have some real news, an interesting story, or want an archive of your adventures, facebook will not always be the best choice. For bigger items, you should be posting a news item into your team page. Google reads articles, especially ones with links and teaches itself how to find content for the world. Facebook posts will disappear but a good news post will continue to drive fans to your page over the long run. Each team should be updating their news at least once per month. It will take an effort like that from everyone to transform our sport to one where we can drive fans to us.
Extra Tabs
For those of you who want to make great pages, like Berry Laventure, extra tabs can be created and labelled as you wish. In the example here, the schedule tab is an easy way to let your fans know where you’ll be all season and what competitions you’ll be entering. Email the name of the tab you’d like to the site administrator (ben) and it’s easy to create.
