Grassroots Football: Make your club a brand

Session 1 of 4: Samsung Grassroots Football Academy

Learn to elevate your club with the best tips, tricks and pointers from the Grassroots Academy. Created in partnership with Sunday league winners and social media masters, Baiteze FC.

In session 1: Make your club a brand, you’ll find the top tips to help you transform your club so you can follow in the path of Baiteze FC, whilst making it your own.

1. Build your mission

Your brand starts with your mission. It’s the impact you want to have, the change you want to see, the product and image you want to create and most importantly, it’s the story you want to tell. E.g.

“The Samsung mission is to devote its talent and technology to creating superior products and services that contribute to a better global society. To achieve this, Samsung sets a high value on its people and technologies".

“The Baiteze mission is to revolutionise grassroots football by telling stories from communities that are often overlooked, and in doing so change the media perception of those communities."

ACTION: Brainstorm with your team to work out what’s really important and what you want to achieve. Then bring it all together in a clear mission statement.

2. Set ambitious yet realistic goals

Once you have your mission, you need to create a set of goals that will help you reach your mission.

ACTION: Create your goals and then break them down into ambitious, yet manageable tasks. Evaluate your progress and review the outcome of each task.

For example, to reach 10k subscribers in 24 months on YouTube:

3. Hold strong values

Your values embody what you and your team are all about. They’re about the morals, environment and message you want to share with the world. They need to be authentic and true to you as individuals, a club and a brand.

ACTION: Make a comprehensive list of DO’S AND DON’TS that are aligned to your mission and discuss them with everyone in your club, from the striker to your social media manager.

4. Speak clearly

Your tone of voice reflects not only your club, but the community you’re a part of.

Are you serious and competitive? Or more comedic and energetic? Are you more interested in being totally raw or prefer to be family-friendly?

Your tone of voice needs to be consistent and it’s vital you understand it and how it’s delivered across your platforms. No matter who is communicating make sure everyone understands your TOV.

Building a brand can be a long and considered process, so work through it and take your time. People often think starting a club or brand is all about your badge and logo, but that’s normally the last piece of the puzzle.

Once you’ve built your brand, next you’ll want to start building the right content for your audience. Learn how to capture stunning content so you can power up your socials and how to build a football community in these helpful articles.