How to Introduce Hudl to Your Players, Team and Club

Big news! You just signed up for Hudl and all of your team and athletes have access to this new technology. But how do you get started? With so many features and benefits to share, how can you generate enthusiasm and prepare for the season? 

As the saying suggests, “You get one chance to make a favorable impression.” Begin by ensuring your members clearly understand what Hudl is and how Hudl will affect their experiences. With so many features, such as video analytics, sharing, personal profiling, collaboration tools, reporting, etc,. introducing Hudl concisely might seem hard to do. 

But there is no better way to make the initial introduction than with Hud’s introductory video for soccer. I recommend linking the video from the Hudl Youtube page to your club’s social media accounts and adding a few words to introduce how Hudl will be used in your club (see image 1).  It’s also helpful to create a technology page on the club’s website (image 2), and send a message to your members with a link to the announcement.

Goals of Introducing Hudl to Your Club

Investing your club’s funds in technology is significant and certainly an opportunity to solicit goodwill and congratulations from your membership. These are important messages that help promote the club as progressive, innovative and successful—communication that will undoubtedly attract the attention of existing and prospective members alike.

Getting Everyone Excited

Each group will, of course, be attracted to Hudl for different reasons. To help you with the marketing rollout for your club, I will share the three primary reasons each subgroup was excited in our club’s adoption of Hudl. 

Parents (customers): We must not lose sight of who pays the fees!

1. Hudl provides an opportunity for parents to watch and share their child’s video highlights with friends and family via social media.
2. Hudl has a noticeable impact on their son/daughter’s development, particularly accelerating the learning process and improving the player’s ability to retain information.
3. Hudl helps a parent use a player’s personal video library for recruitment and/or recognition.  We can argue the merits of parents promoting their child, but we must also recognize such actions are common with in club, high school and college soccer.

Players (consumers): They likely already recognize how video can help them learn and improve.

1. Hudl enables players to establish a custom profile page to store and share their own video highlights. Personal profiling is becoming more prevalent and incredibly important for youth players.
2. Hudl provides players with an opportunity to review game film independently and become more familiar with the coach’s strategic approach.  
3. Hudl also allows players to observe their performance from a different angle and with the benefit of hindsight. With the opportunity of a second, third or fourth observation, players will identify their individual strengths, weaknesses and tendencies.

Coaches: As the primary facilitators of Hudl, our questions are more pragmatic in terms of education benefit and time commitment.

1. Hudl is a terrific teaching tool allowing a coach to engage with players and parents regularly and to establish soccer homework tasks.
2. Hudl Assist provides coaches with game-changing performance insights, without the requirement for the coach to dedicate even more time to analytics.
3. Hudl’s reports and highlight videos provide actionable data at the coach’s fingertips. This data undoubtedly leads to improved performance of the coach and players.