What are people passionate about? Sport, the environment, pets, family members, education, the arts, health, high heel shoes, and much more. Sometimes displaying your life's passion can take tremendous courage, as we now live in a global village through the Internet.
To optimise sponsorship opportunities, it's best to understand your target market's passions and create relevant posts on social media or upload images and information that resonates with your followers onto your website.
If sponsoring a sporting organisation, your target market or fan base would most likely want to know key players' vital statistics or number of goals, marks or tries scored, as well as their overall history within the club e.g. Best and Fairest awards. They really don't want to know about petty squabbles and personality clashes within the teams, nor gory images and details of injuries. Positive information is essential to maintain the organisation's vibrant image and potential for sponsorship.
Of course, first impressions count for a lot. So excellent imagery is essential through the use of digital cameras or mobile phones or stock photos from the Internet combined with
accurate information, which can be understood by people of all ages.
No matter what their age, most people are "Time Poor" due to the busy technological age we live in. So ensure your sponsorship messages, appropriate to your audience, are delivered as succinctly as possible, but in an engaging style.
Another option is posting uplifting or inspirational quotes, which can work well when placed with a photo of a dancer or artist or footballer in action at your club house. For example "The longest journey begins with the first step," or "For everything there is a season…." This has the potential to stand out from the standard Facebook or Twitter post, boosting engagement with your target market and showing sponsors what you are made of through philosophies or mission statements.
Remember you are competing with thousands of other organisations around the world for people's limited attention span. So it's vital to focus on quality rather than quantity and try to look at each image or piece of information from the viewer's point of view.
Before you post something ask yourself "What is my target market passionate about, will they engage with this information or imagery?"
And of course the next step, after passion, is share-ability. Passion is contagious, so not only will people share your image or information posts with their network of friends, family, sports buddies and business colleagues, they will become your unofficial "ambassadors" due to their enthusiasm.
So have faith in your organisation or service, whatever it may be – allow it to shine through social media, traditional media publicity, marketing and your passion for what you do. People engage with passion.