In 2023, there are still a lot of basic features of social media sites that racquetball organizations are failing to utilize to spread their messages about events.

One of the most prominent and simplest is the ‘Check-In’ feature. When a person is investigating the social media of your event partner hotel, or gym, or sponsor, they will be shown the posts of those that have ‘Checked-In’ at the business as well as those posts that ‘Mention’ the business. So, you need to be doing both. Grab those eyeballs for the person that is already interested in the facility/hotel/sponsor and show them some racquetball!

As an example, the Sun Devil Fitness Complex hosts the USA Racquetball National Doubles event every year in February as well as multiple Arizona state/regional events. The top post on the “Mentions” portion of their page, is the one I posted celebrating the winners of the recent Arizona Cup Championships.

https://www.facebook.com/sundevilfitness/mentions

Every post that you make about your future event, should feature a check-in and a mention.

What other benefit do you get from exploiting this feature to grow your audience without paying for an advertising post? The page manager for the facility/hotel/sponsor receives a notification that they were mentioned. This helps cement in their mind that you are successfully promoting their business in exchange for the value they are providing to your event. Make everyone on the social media side of the event happy to have been a part of your event. Check-in and mention in advance, check-in and mention during the event, check-in and mention when you celebrate the winners of your event at the end.

Growth is the goal, get racquetball in front of more eyes and some of those eyes will return to the game. Here’s a quote about the easiest group of players to recruit:

A quick visual reminder of where to find those Check-in options:

To “Mention” a business in your post, start by typing the @ sign, and then slowly type the name the business uses on Facebook.

Here’s an example for Florida Racquetball.

So if I were to redo that post, I would check-in to the DPJCC, mention the DPJCC, include the R2 link (as keeping the link in every post about the event is also critical to actually giving your readers actionable steps that they don’t have to search for, or learn to use a new tool to find), and I would have included a short clip of a rally from last year’s State Doubles tournament. [Side note: I do love the level of detail on their R2 page, absolutely everything that you need to know about the event, and about how it will be run, is included.]

Critical bits:
1) Utilize check-in and mentions to get the facility’s fanbase notified of your event.
2) Include the registration link so that any potential new players for your event have the exact information they need, right there, actionable on your post.
3) Grab some attention with a quick moving short video. (Perhaps even a YT clip, if your event had matches broadcast on YT the last time it was held.)
4) Cross-post into your discussion groups, if your Facebook page is part of one (or more). Utilize Meta Business Suite from a computer to plan and promote your event posts. Take advantage of the free professional tools Facebook makes available to you.

Here’s an example of posting to a Facebook Page, and cross-posting that same content into three appropriate discussion groups without having to Share later, or re-type, or copy/paste, etc.

The preview when everything is in place:

The actual post as it appears in a viewer’s feed:

And here is how it shows up on the DPJCC Mentions:

And here’s the created clip added to that post:

What other basic features of social media do you see racquetball organizations failing to exploit in order to get the best results when promoting their events, to new players, to returning players, and to lapsed players?

Let me know your thoughts on Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter.