The wrestling camps marketplace is an ever growing industry that is beginning to mature online. Camps like Ken Chertow's and J Robinson's dominate the market but there are literally thousands of camps competing for various markets throughout the United States and your goal is to win as much of your market as possible. I am going to cover a couple basics of marketing in this edition so there shouldn't be too much difficulty grasping this lesson

Promoting through video: For some reason, wrestling took a bit longer than most niches to catch on to using Youtube and other video sites as a promotional tool. This is great for you, Dear Reader, because you will not be competing with any experts. You can reach a heck of a lot of people through Youtube, but the audience is very broad. With FloWrestling and TheWrestlingTalk you have just the opposite - both are niche websites that cater specifically to wrestlers. I want you to promote on both sites equally and what I'm going to show you is pretty easy to recreate for your own purposes.

Step 1: Create videos about your camp that include several sessions of technique, break them down by each move, set up, and variation. Next, ask your campers to do a video interview during the camp, explaining what their favorite part or parts of your camps are. Finally, when the camp is finished, get an exit interview with a couple of your campers and ask them what they learned, if they intend to return next year, and who their favorite clinician was from the camp.

Sidebar: You can either address your camp's website or other contact information in the video or as a voice over after filming, depending upon your skill level with video editing.

Step 2: Once the leg work of creating the videos is done pick out a dozen or more techniques and a couple of the interviews and get ready to put them online. Prepare proper titles (i.e. Cael Sanderson Ankle Pick from Front Headlock, Bob Jones on why he's returning next summer to ___ Camps) and descriptions (i.e. In this video Cael explains that the key to the Ankle Pick out of the front head is keeping position over the top of your opponent and keeping pressure over his back at all times). This step is very important and even those who are doing promotion with videos are neglecting to really identify their videos.

Step 3: Head over to Youtube and upload your videos. The reason you pick Youtube as your video host instead of others like FloWrestling and Blip.tv is because you instantly grab a large audience and every wrestling video system automatically accepts Youtube videos, but there is no reciprocity from Youtube.

Step 4: Now that your videos are uploaded to Youtube they will be syndicated on all websites using Youtube's API to show videos and you can begin the process of manually adding them to FloWrestling and TheWrestlingTalk.com. FloWrestling, as far as I know, does not have limitations on the types of videos you can add there, they have a massive wrestling audience, and their system for adding Youtube is very basic. TheWrestlingTalk requires that the videos you add are technique or coaching tips but they can have advertisements (voice overs or text overlays) within those videos.

Step 5: Follow up on video comments and stay connected to the videos you've added to each site.


Promoting through articles: TheWrestlingTalk.com offers authors the ability to add advertisements to each of their articles. Writing quality, well thought out articles on topics ranging from weight management to college recruiting and everything between find an audience. Be sure to select topics that fits the profile of the campers you're trying to target. (i.e. If you run a camp based out of Maryland write an article about the 2010 state tournament discussing the weaknesses of each of the state finals participants and what you'd do to correct those errors at your camp)

Basics of writing: Create a blog at USAWrestlingNation or TheWrestlingTalk.com in the "News" tab or by clicking this link. Be sure to focus on proper categorization and tagging, just like we described in the video promotion section. For more information on writing for TheWrestlingTalk.com check here.

Promoting through link exchanges:  Seek out sites to propose link exchanges with on Google.com by searching for things like, "high school wrestling", "Youth Wrestling" and similar searches within your target audience.  Request a link exchange in a personal note to the webmaster.  Here is a suggestion on how to form the note:

Dear New Highland Wrestling Club Webmaster,

I am interested in creating a link exchange between our two websites.  I believe my camp website is a great fit for your visitors and would be honored to create an exchange with you.  My URL is: http://www.thewrestlingtalk.com/wrestling-camps/ and you can link to it with the title: TWT Wrestling Camps.  I will be happy to return the favor.  Please send over the title you'd like to use for your link and we'll get our networking started!

Sincerely,

Joe CampDirector

TheWrestlingTalk.com, HS Wrestling.Net and MatFish.com are always actively seeking link exchanges and I would be happy to run you through building a linking campaign as well... just ask in the comments.