Cheer News

Social media and its various tools—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest—provide a wonderful opportunity for gyms to interact online, but the very nature of the beast can sometimes put a gym’s reputation at risk. One derogatory remark on Twitter, and 1,000 re-tweets later, your popularity could hit rock bottom.

The best solution for keeping your social media reputation in check? Implementing a social media policy. Cheryl Pasinato, owner of Tewskbury, MA-based East Celebrity Elite, says that having such a policy in place has been a key factor in managing her gym’s social media activity. “It’s a golden opportunity to represent your gym in a positive manner,” says Pasinato. “Social media is a superb way to market your activities and generate revenue, but a policy helps regulate your online presence.”

Lizzy Stice, a hip-hop coach at Springfield, OR-based Emerald All Star Cheer, agrees. “It’s important for gyms to have a policy for their teachers, students and parents because people can easily throw stuff out there in social media and provide a false reality of the gym—good or bad!” cautions Stice.

If you’re considering introducing a social media policy for the 2013-2014 season, here are some tips to Tweet by:

Keep it short and sweet. A social media policy doesn’t have to be too long or elaborate. For example, the social media policy at East Celebrity Elite is all of 450 words long. It lays out the importance of social media tools in establishing the gym’s image, as well as some do’s and don’ts for all stakeholders—owners, coaches, athletes and parents. Even at a succinct 176 words, the social media policy of Dover-NH based Prime Time All Stars gets across the same message. Most gym owners will put the policy in their handbook, and some may even post it on their website. The key? Making sure all the members of your gym are aware of it through any channels necessary.

Make it meaningful to your gym. What you put in the policy will largely depend on your gym’s experiences and social media requirements. Both Prime Time All Stars and East Celebrity Elite emphasize the importance of putting out a positive image of the gym and not posting anything negative. For example, one pointer in East Celebrity Elite’s policy reads: There will be no negative comments on any forms of social media regarding any athletes, coaches, staff or other programs allowed. Please only post positive comments.

Other pointers include using appropriate language and not posting inappropriate pictures. Alison Reynolds, head coach at Tri-State Cheer All Stars (Havertown, PA), says they have an uncomplicated theory behind their policy. “It’s pretty simple—if you wouldn’t say it to or share it with a child, don’t post it,” says Reynolds. “Our gym owner always says, ‘It’s all about perception.'”

Spell it out using examples. While crafting your social media policy and laying out rules, it might be a good idea to explain every rule with an example. This makes the rules crystal clear to the readers. For instance, here’s the pointer about inappropriate pictures in the East Celebrity Elite policy: No inappropriate pictures posted. If you are engaging in something illegal or inappropriate, please do not share with everyone in social media. For e.g., pictures of underage athletes drinking at a party even though not in ECE clothing.

Personal page protocol: Sometimes members of a gym might be tempted to share a personal tidbit on the team page, but Stice cautions that “too many things can be taken the wrong way over social media, so unless it’s something really positive—like the birth of a baby—they shouldn’t really post it.” This concern can even translate to employees’ personal pages, according to Pasinato. “How a staff member represents themselves on their personal page ultimately has a bearing on the gym’s reputation, so we encourage them to post appropriate content on their personal profiles and pages, too,” she says.

Put emphasis on professionalism. Pasinato says she is very particular about keeping online interactions between members of her gym strictly professional. “We don’t encourage coaches to ‘friend’ athletes on their personal profiles,” she says. “Moreover, some of the coaches are really young and would not be comfortable sharing details about their personal life with the kids.” For ECE, all interaction between coaches and athletes is restricted to the team Facebook page; in fact, even parents aren’t allowed on the team page. “We have a separate page for parents, which we update with team news from time to time,” she adds.

Know the ramifications of pushing the limits. Despite publicizing your social media policy, sometimes there will be cases of misconduct. At Emerald All Star Cheer, the consequences can be serious. “Our policy is that if anything is seen as inappropriate or negative towards the gym, there will be a sit-down conversation with the gym owners and the defaulters,” says Stice. “There is always potential they can be let go.” At ECE, in case of an inappropriate comment on an athlete’s or parent’s part, they generally ask them to take down the post and have a conversation about the incident. “If it happens again, we ask them to leave,” adds Pasinato.

Stay vigilant. While social media is great for your gym’s publicity, you’ve got to be vigilant about what’s happening on your gym’s collective presence—which Stice says can be a pretty intensive endeavor. “I am constantly checking in on our team’s Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, team website and YouTube videos,” she confides. “This can be exhausting, but pays off in the long run because I make sure that everything we do is cohesive and is how we want to be represented.”

-Dinsa Sachan

Julie Johnson’s secret to sanity? Instant smoothie gratification. The Extreme Allstars coach brings her Nutri Bullet blender everywhere she goes for that quick fix she craves—and needs. After all, Johnson is often working in the Melbourne, FL-based gym past midnight.

“I know it sounds funny, but it’s true,” Johnson says. “It gets fruit into my system really quickly. I add a little peanut butter. That gets me going for a few hours.”

Desert Elite Mavericks program director Amy Grey splits her days between the gym and Rancho Mirage High School, where she coaches cheer and teaches English. She gets one hour to herself every day, which she fills with The Beatles and the rest of her favorite musicians. “I use my prep during the school day to listen to music and decompress and not have to deal with stresses,” says Grey.

Most coaches and gym owners have their own Nutri Bullets and Beatles—life hacks that boost their moods. They know what a slew of published research has confirmed in recent years: happy people work smarter.

Not surprisingly, a positive mood has positive side effects. It encourages broader, flexible and more creative thinking; increases openness to new information; affects the manner in which professionals interact with customers; and has been linked on a broad scale to economic success.

Here are five ways to add some pep to your step.

Reach out and touch someone. Those heartfelt hugs after a tough routine hits might be more meaningful than you know. Touch has been shown to lower blood pressure and heart rate, relieve pain and anxiety, and increase happiness. And, of course, the benefits continue at home—when we hug or kiss a loved one, we release oxytocin, which is a powerful hormone. No loved ones nearby? Grab Fido, as petting animals lowers blood pressure.

Retrain your brain. While no one is happy 100 percent of the time, thinking positive thoughts can actually get you one step closer to genuine bliss. Researchers urge the cultivation of positive emotions, which can help people—women especially—through a rough patch. Focusing on things that make you happy such as loved ones, trips to Worlds, pets, favorite activities or funny memories just might improve your mood for real. (One caveat: don’t fake it. Fake smiles are proven to actually worsen your mood.)

Lose the ‘blue’ jeans. What a woman wears is heavily dependent on her mood. (Yes, someone researched this.) The wardrobe choice de jour among the sad: blue jeans. Psychologists suggest wearing clothes that express happiness if you’re feeling down. Happy clothes were defined as “ones that made women feel good,” such as anything well-cut or figure-enhancing or made from bright and beautiful fabrics. (A great excuse to shop at Lululemon or splurge on Juicy Couture for gym wear!) Twice as many women wear a hat when happy and five times as many are more likely to wear their favorite shoes.

Let there be light. Make more excuses to get outside—whether it means holding practice outdoors or planning a team bonding picnic. Sunlight improves mood, thanks to the release of serotonin, a natural mood-booster inside your body. Humans evolved outdoors, and it’s unnatural for us to spend so much time inside. Another natural activity for humans: exercise. Getting in a good workout boosts serotonin levels. Exercising outside? Now you’re in serotonin city.

Let the music play. You’ve probably heard the old saying, “Music has charms to soothe the savage beast.” Let’s face it: everyone has days when they’re the savage beast. Listening to happy music not only improves mood, but also changes the way we perceive the world. And it’s not just listening that helps: singing alone or in a group also induces positive physiological reactions. So crank up the “Glee” music or another favorite for a sing-along stretch—and watch your practice go that much better.

Check our blog Thursday for more great tips on “mood food” that can give you a much-needed boost!

-Joe Donatelli

Liz Gigante Ulrich awakes every day with a mission in mind. As the owner of G Force Gym, home to the Vancouver All Stars, she walks the talk she preaches to her athletes and coaches about the importance of a purpose-driven life.

Based in British Columbia’s Port Coquitiam, the gym’s cheer program consists of 20 teams Levels 1 through 5 made up of 400 athletes in uniform, with an additional 150 on half-year prep teams or taking classes. All the teams fall under the guise of Gigante Ulrich and more than 20 credentialed and certified coaches. The program’s IO5 Ice Queens, coached by Gigante Ulrich, took home the silver in April in the international open category at this year’s Worlds competition.

The elite crew’s complicated walk-in paper dolls, Shushanova-inspired basket tosses with half-twists and full-around pyramid—combined with eye-catching sass—helped the Ice Queens drive home the message that Canada is a force to be reckoned with on the international cheer scene. Their style, a reflection of Gigante Ulrich herself, is trending, too. The trademark Ice Queen Stomp has been sighted stateside in routines, and some teams have taken their style cue, sporting tiaras à la the royal crew.

Such achievements aren’t what Gigante Ulrich envisioned as a high school cheerleader, or while cheering at university, taking six classes and working three jobs. Goal-setting helped her earn her bachelor’s in kinesiology and a master’s in education, opening the door for her teaching career starting in 1995. That gig offered the chance to create a cheer program at Port Moody Secondary School.

Not long after starting the school’s cheer squad, Gigante Ulrich coached an all-star team through a camp with students from surrounding high schools. That experience motivated her to open G Force Gym. The 8,340-sq. ft., state-of-the-art training facility opened in 1999, becoming the first cheer gym in Western Canada and the first in Canada to offer two full-sized mats.

Gigante Ulrich still strives for more. She is in the process of relocating G Force Gym to a much larger location with a $3 million price tag. To help make that happen, she joined the Entrepreneur Organization in Canada in 2011 to become more business-savvy by learning from successful business owners from industries outside the cheer world. “I was able to learn a lot more from looking at them than by looking at other all-star gyms,” she shares. “Looking at CEOs and owners of successful businesses, you notice that they all have very similar characteristics and traits about them and the way they deal with issues. That inspires me.”

The organization taught her the importance of investing in her staff and crunching numbers. “I figured out which numbers mean something in my industry to make sure that I am on target,” says Gigante Ulrich. To work toward the expansion, she runs a tighter ship and built a more comprehensive pro shop. She also tweaked G Force’s core values and mission statement, while shifting her own focus: “I am now focusing more on big picture while empowering staff in managerial and choreographer/head coach roles.”

To stay in the mindset, Gigante Ulrich begins her day researching motivational quotes to stay aligned. The gym’s walls and social media outlets are covered with the sayings lest someone forgets to wake up feeling excited to be alive. But at G Force Gym, that rarely happens.

“I get feedback from parents about how much the kids love it, how they breathe it and it is their passion,” Gigante Ulrich says. Families report increased confidence, optimism and ambition in their cheerleaders. “When I hear those things, I feel like I am living what I am meant to do, like that’s my legacy.”

The staff helps members strategize their goals by setting short-term and long-term goals. They also make sure to celebrate the milestones so they feel a sense of accomplishment. “Dream big, don’t give up and go for it,” Gigante Ulrich says, repeating one of her mantras. “We can achieve goals if we set out on a path and stick to the plan.”

–Arrissia Owen

As a gym owner or program director, you have a lot on your plate! So we’re giving you some of our favorite free and low-cost resources to help you be more efficient, organized and profitable in your all-star cheerleading career. (This is Part 2 of this article, so if you missed Part 1, be sure and grab all the cool resources there, too.) These articles are not an advertisement for any listed company or app. It is simply of listing of the tools our consulting clients love the most—and that we love the most—to help you grow your gym.

Evernote: Welcome to productivity and research heaven! Evernote makes it easy to remember things big and small from your everyday life using your computer, phone, tablet and the web—putting notes, web clips, and images available in one place. Collaborating online with coaches, vendors and staff is a snap with this tool, and it’s awesomely free. (Upgrades available).

Trello:  Trello is another free productivity and collaboration tool that organizes your projects and ideas into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what’s being worked on, who’s working on what and where something is in a process. Like Evernote, it has mobile apps to keep you informed on the go. Look at both programs and decide based on your personal preference if you want to use both or just one of these very cool platforms to help you and your team run smoothly and stay accountable to all that needs to be done.

SignUpGenius: Here is an awesome one for team moms and your booster club: this site allows you to create forms and then invite others to sign up and pitch in! Need items for the goodie bags? Just make your form here and invite them to sign up for what they want to bring. It has many uses, and the basic version is free!

Google Calendar: Your gym calendar should absolutely be online accessible. Google calendar allows for multi-user sharing and editing with great control over who sees what. Color coding allows for easy organization and visual attention to specific items. Because it’s web-based, you always have it! Google calendar allows you to sync with your other existing calendars easily, such as iCal or Outlook. Yes, it’s free. If you don’t already have a Google account (Gmail, YouTube, G+, etc), just go to google.com and sign up. Then click “calendar” and watch your productivity go way up.

iClass Pro: If you want a more streamlined vehicle to manage your classroom signups, payments and communications via your website platform, this is a great resource. It’s your all-in-one manager for all things class and team related. One of our favorite features here is broadcast text or voice communications for your teams, which is fantastic for on-the-go communications while at competitions or other emergency notifications that your gym families must hear. (ex: “Team Jaguars, our competition time has been changed to 3:23pm. Please meet up at Section 110A by the blue doors 20 minutes earlier than the email notice last night!”). This system offers a free 30-day trial and is priced at $129/month for a single facility thereafter.

Wordpress:  This website platform was originally created to help bloggers easily build their websites. Wordpress is one of the smartest and easiest (and free) platforms to build your entire cheer website, even if you do not have a blog. (Although you should, and that’s an entirely different post.) The simplicity of Wordpress makes it easy to set up, edit your site, add pages, posts and pics…all without needing to wait on (or pay for) a web developer! If you get stuck, though, Wordpress is such a common framework, that you can easily find by-the-project contractors to help you on Elance or Odesk, which we discussed in part one of this article.

BlueHost: There are many hosting companies out there, but we recommend this one because they have by far the most reliable service we’ve seen over the years. You can get unlimited email and storage, and prices start as low as $4.95. Bluehost also offers a huge benefit: a very simple one-click system to add your Wordpress site, complete with super-easy video tutorials. This alone can save you several hundred dollars by not having to hire someone to add your Wordpress to your domain. Full disclosure here—if you do sign up for Bluehost by using this link, we may receive an affiliate commission for referring you. We are transparent about that. But we really do recommend Bluehost because we love it and use it ourselves.

Your own YouTube Channel: Having a YouTube account is different than having a YouTube Channel for your gym. It’s free to make one and will help you drive your brand in big ways, since YouTube is such a dominant search engine. Simply log in to your account, then create your channel by naming it, adding your logo and company descriptions, as well as links back to your site. We suggest naming your channel the same as your Twitter name or website when you set it up. Also, when you begin uploading your videos, place your website link with the complete http:// in the description first, before you start typing what your video actually is. This prevents the link from being cut off in the description section and helps you drive traffic back to your site, which is really the goal in most cases.

It’s been a joy sharing with you.  We consider it a privilege to help build leaders in the cheerleading industry. Stop by and say hello if you run into us during competition season, or stop by our site to learn more about how we can help you in your gym.

As always…we’re cheering you on,

Aly & Andrea

Identical twins Aly Calvo and Andrea Kulberg, M.Ed are leadership development experts and consultants for the cheerleading industry. They are former University of Texas cheerleaders, and former NCA Staff. Andrea is one of the founding partners of a major international event producer, served as the International Representative for the USASF Board of Directors, and is in the USASF Hall of Fame. Aly and Andrea together have been named among the best business coaches in the country and among the “Top 50 Women to Follow on Twitter.” Now, they help coaches, gym owners, and parents have extraordinary experiences within the cheerleading community via their online training, mentorship programs, live events and competitions. For more information about Aly & Andrea, click here or find them on Facebook or Twitter. To request a free consultation for your gym, click here.

A special welcome to our newest writers, Aly Calvo & Andrea Kulberg, M.Ed! Here’s the first of their contributions for CheerProfessional’s website:

One of the greatest gifts about working in the spirit industry is that we have the opportunity to touch lives. We hear you as gym owners and coaches reflect that sentiment to us every day in our work. We as a cheerleading community love what we do! But the truth is, if we don’t run our gyms like a true business that needs to be profitable, we will lose the opportunity to help shape so many lives.

In order to be successful in any business, you must be the master of 3 things: increasing revenue, decreasing expenses and being quickly adaptable.

So today, we’re going to give you some resources to help you do all of that. If you own a gym or manage a program, this is part one of two—giving you free and low-cost systems, policies and technology to help you earn more, save more and free up your time and resources to keep doing what you love.

ELance & ODesk: Welcome to your outsourcing heaven! If your gym owner to-do list is higher than the kick double baskets, it’s time to get some help in the right areas. Elance and Odesk both offer per-project and per-hour contractors to help you with almost any task you can imagine. Even if you have strong admin staff up front, there are some tasks that truly are better off being outsourced simply to protect your time and resources. That is, your time is better spent in the gym coaching, or networking, or building relationships with athletes, families or prospects than it is trying to enter names into a spreadsheet or figure out how to use Photoshop so you can make an image for your next flyer. Evaluate your to-do list and delegate where you can to free up your resources. You’ll be surprised at how inexpensively you can get so much work done without hiring an employee.

Fiverr: You’ll be amazed at what you can outsource for just $5! Need a quick logo? What about a banner for your fan page? Fiverr is a fun resource where you’ll find all kinds of helpful (and sometimes unusual) jobs available for contract at just $5 each. Use it for your smaller, less critical jobs that do not go to the resource above.

MailChimp: If you are still managing your mailing list via Gmail or any other dated database type system, you will love this resource. MailChimp is a free web-based platform that allows you to collect and manage your mailing list via Opt-In forms, auto-responders, broadcasts and more. If you don’t know those terms yet, you should. You can learn more about them and why you absolutely need them for your marketing in a post we wrote for you here. While there are other mid-level and higher priced platforms with more advanced features to help you manage your prospects and mailing lists, MailChimp is the reliable free one. And if you are just getting started, it’s all you need. (Emphasis on “need.”) MailChimp also plugs in nicely to leading class management software, which we will cover in part II of this article.

Wufoo: How will you give your gym family what they want, if you don’t actually know what they want? The answer is to survey them with 1-4 simple questions, with the last one being open-ended so they can say what they want without selecting from a drop-down list. Make your survey name-optional so they can remain anonymous if they prefer. Teach them via regular interaction that you are actually listening and taking action based on their survey results, so they are actually moved to respond. Over time, you’ll get great interaction here. It will help you protect your time and money by guiding you as a gym owner or coach in what programs to deliver, and more importantly, what not to deliver. It will also make for a culture that says your gym actually listens to the people who pay them and trust them with their children. Your free resource for surveys: Wufoo.com. There are fee-based plans, but the free plan is sufficient for most gyms.

Social Media Must-Haves for Cheer Gyms

We teach entire classes on this and it’s worthy of much more than a paragraph here. But for now, here are the absolute minimum basics for your gym’s social media marketing:

Every gym should have a Social Media Policy and a Defined Content Management Team. Best practice is to have regular meetings reviewing this policy and responsibilities with staff, athletes and parents. Everyone in the gym should know the policies and sign off on them. Anything less is a liability to your brand and the gym culture you work so hard to build. It can even be dangerous to your athletes. Remember, the Internet is permanent.

Talkwalker: This is a fantastic free and easy resource to help you monitor your online reputation in real time via email or in an RSS feed reader. With all businesses, including yours, monitoring your online reputation is mandatory. Be aware of what is being said about you, your staff, your coaches, athletes and your competition. The speed at which your reputation grows or crashes depends on it. Note: In past, we have recommended Google Alerts as a monitor, but it has lately proven unreliable and we no longer advise using it. Talkwalker is a strong alternative for all things being said about you on the web.

Another free and reputable monitor is Social Mention. It monitors your key phrases across the web and social media channels, and also delivers a sentiment analysis across social media mentions and hashtag tracking. #SuperCool

Hootsuite:  We use Hootsuite every day to protect us from the time-suck that social media can be. It allows you to schedule tweets and posts for future release, organize feeds so you can see what matters without distraction, save drafts for multiple posts over time and plenty more. There are other similar platforms out there, but Hootsuite delivers all the features you need. Plus, it is free and easy, and offers an inexpensive upgrade to Pro version if you want to divide social media tasks amongst staff. The only caution we have for any of these platforms is to be careful with duplicate posts across accounts and remember to keep it socially engaging. (Translation: do not post the exact same content across your Twitter and Facebook feed all the time.) Socially engaging means you still take the time to interact with your fans and followers in real time. Scheduling is convenient, but it is not a replacement for real engagement and response to real people behind real accounts.

Coach’s Eye: This handy app for your iPad, iPhone or Android takes coaching for your visual learners to a whole new level.  Simply record video of the skill, and play back for them to watch and learn with features like slow motion, side-by-side comparisons of efforts to show progressions, ability to draw lines, arrows and circles to drive home what you want your athletes to focus on and much more. You can even record yourself giving instruction to the athlete while you play the video and draw on it and then email the recorded lesson to athletes or parents. As a coach, this is one more way to help you speed up learning curves and over-deliver for your teams.

TimeTrade:  Here’s the truth: Your coaches should not have to give out their personal cell numbers in order for athletes to schedule private sessions. Nor should athletes or parents have to call or drive to the gym to find an appointment, only for a staff member to question if the coach is available or not. Introducing your online private session scheduler, TimeTrade. TimeTrade is a low cost platform that allows you to show available times to anyone wanting to schedule a session with you, and they simply sign themselves up in one of the windows you’ve specified. Features like automatic reminders, calendar syncs and invites to sign up make it easy. You can even create custom buttons for your website inviting athletes to “Click Here to Schedule with Coach John.” This is the system we use to schedule all of our consulting sessions and it saves us tons of money on the administration side without sacrificing any customer care. It is very user-friendly.

There are more resources we want to share with you, so join us next Monday at CheerProfessional next time for part two of this article. We’ll share more on organizing your staff systems, world-class parent communications and maximizing marketing dollars with easy tools. We encourage your comments and questions below.

As always…we’re cheering you on,

Aly & Andrea

Identical twins Aly Calvo and Andrea Kulberg, M.Ed are leadership development experts and consultants for the cheerleading industry. They are former University of Texas cheerleaders, and former NCA Staff. Andrea is one of the founding partners of a major international event producer, served as the International Representative for USASF Board of Directors and is in the USASF Hall of Fame. Aly and Andrea together have been named among the best business coaches in the country and among the “Top 50 Women to Follow on Twitter.” Now, they help coaches, gym owners and parents have extraordinary experiences within the cheerleading community via their online training, mentorship programs, live events and competitions. For more information about Aly & Andrea, click here or find them on Facebook or Twitter. To request a free consultation for your gym, click here.