Promoting Sport blog

How to get a Sporting Champions visit

Since I wrote about Sporting Champions a few weeks ago there's been a fair amount of interest in how to use the scheme, what visits can and can't be used for and who to talk to about them. So I spent some time talking to Louise Calton to try and clear things up.

Sporting Champions is a Sport England initiative which brings world-class athletes face-to-face with young people* to motivate and inspire them to participate in sport.

Visits are available for free, but there are limited numbers so please book early to avoid disappointment.

What can you use visits for?
In the past visits have been available mainly for schools, but 200 visits are now available for community-based visits and are aimed at increasing participation in community sport. For example at a youth club or young person project.

Community visits from a Sporting Champion can help you:
• Engage young people and get their attention
• Get them excited about sport and joining local clubs
• Motivate them in their wider lives
• Emphasise the importance and benefits of volunteering and getting involved

50 strategic and campaigning visits are also available and can be used for events which are about increasing participation, but don’t necessarily involve meeting with young people. For example a local sports seminar aiming to engage community sports volunteers and build links between school and club sport. A Sporting Champion can help bring a seminar or launch to life by sharing their own experiences.

To qualify for a strategic or campaigning visit you simply need to demonstrate how it would help increase participation by either:
• improving links between schools and clubs; or
• promoting leadership and volunteering.

Who can book a visit?
It’s generally sports development officers who book visits, but almost anyone who works with young people in sport can do so. For example:
• Local sports clubs and programmes
• Local Authorities
• Community Sports Networks
• County Sport Partnerships
• Sport England Regions
• Sport England Support Centre.

How do I book a visit?
County Sport Partnerships (CSPs) are responsible for nominating events in their area, so you will need to contact your local CSP to find out if your event is suitable for a Sporting Champion visit.

For your CSP’s contact details, the online booking tool, or any more information please go to www.sportengland.org/promotingsport and click on “Visits from Sporting Champions”. For more information please call the Sporting Champions Hotline on 0800 328 4903.

*young people here means anyone under 25

Accessing support through Corporate Social Responsibility

Whenever I'm talking to people who work in sport I ask "What's the biggest thing that's stopping you from promoting sport." The answer is nearly always money and/ or resources.

So while I was at the Social Marketing Conference in Oxford this week I took the opportunity to question people about good ways to get hold of money. The recurring answer was that businesses are becoming more and more interested in working with the public/ charity sector, and providing financial or other kinds of support.

So how do you go about accessing this support? Well I'm going to be looking into that further, and one resource I'm definitely going to be checking out is the new book by Phillip Kottler and Nancy Lee "Corporate Social Responsibility - doing the most good for your company and your cause".

It's written for the benefit of businesses, and helping them to figure out how to use CSR to their advantage, and I've been told it includes some great information that we can use to understand how to work with businesses. I'll report back when I have more information.

Incidentally - Nancy Lee was in fact one of the speakers at the conference and I managed to quiz her for 10 minutes on a couple of questions about promoting sport. I'll post more on that when I get back to the office.

Social marketing conference

Im at the national centre for social marketing's conference this week, finding out useful tips on how to promote sport better.

Unfortunately i dont have any internet access so im having to write this on my mobile! Ill write up what i learn when im back in the office.

What would Bob think?

Ever been curious to know what Bob Dylan thinks about the Promoting Sport toolkit? Well wonder no longer promoting sport fans!

(you have to give the video a little while to load, so please be patient)

Google Analytics

Google have got a great little tool that can tell you all about how your website is used. It took me about half an hour to install it in the Promoting Sport toolkit, it's totally free, and it now tells me:    

• number of visits
• number of unique users (e.g. counting someone who's gone on there twice as only one person)
• how long people spent on the site
• which are the most popular pages
• pretty much anything I might want to know

(In case you're curious - those numbers for one month for the toolkit are 3547 visits, 2535 unique users, 3 minutes and the homepage then the photo library.)

You'll need whoever looks after your site for this, as it requires inserting a few lines of code.

All you need to do is:

1. set up a google account (if you have a gmail account you'll already have one of these)

• go to www.google.com
• click on "sign in" (top right hand corner)
• click on "create an account now"
• follow on screen prompts

2. go to www.google.com/analytics
3. sign in using your google account
4. follow on screen prompts
5. It will give you some html code.
6. Get the person who manages your website to insert these 6 lines of code directly before the </body> tag (a line of code at the bottom of any web page)

Once this is done just wait 24-48 hours for it to activate, then go to www.google.com/analytics and when you log in it will show you reports on your site.

If you have any problems with this please enter them in the comments section and I'll do my best to answer them.

A word of warning (by John Ainsworth)

Salespeople from this "official" NHS surgery guide have been calling round trying to sell advertising space. They are nothing to do with the NHS, and are making false claims about other sports organisations already being on board to try and make a sale.

If you want to get out to your local GP surgeries we suggest you go through the official channels. If you're not sure what these are then try your local County Sports Partnership - contacts available here.

Promoting Rowing (by John Ainsworth)

Indoor rowing is one of the fastest growing sports in England. According to the Active People survey around 80,000 adults regularly take part in water based activity with up to 4.7 million involved in gym based indoor rowing.

This article includes an explanation of some of the benefits of rowing and a series of case studies on how people have got involved in the sport, and programmes run locally which attracted new people. These case studies include London Youth Rowing which is a project aimed at increasing the level of participation in youth clubs, schools and disabled organisations, primarily in deprived areas of London.

It also includes a guide on how to promote indoor rowing to adults, schools and details of where you can get more support and advice on topics of interest to you.

Embedding Google maps in your web pages

Credit for this suggestion belongs to John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing.

It just got easier to put a good map on your website. Google maps recently added a feature that makes it really easy to embed a map, rather than simply copy an image or link to a map. This means that you can use a map with all the functionality right on your web page. Many clubs and facilities can benefit from this tool, especially when it comes to local search.

To create a map for your club or facility, simply visit Google Maps, conduct a search for your club (you’ve got to be in the Google Maps directory to show up - get listed), hit the “link to this page” link and copy the HTML code for your map. I’ve simply pasted that code below so the map shows up in this post, but you could put it on any web page. Then create directions in text to your club or facility from various routes and you’ve created some nice local keyword rich content (ie it will help your google search rating.)


View Larger Map