Social Media Recruiting
Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter are revolutionizing the way that many individuals and brands communicate. But, it's also changing the landscape of college athlete recruiting.
As Jack Trotter notes in his ESPN article, talents scouts/recruiters are turning to social media to recruit high school athletes. You can read the article for yourself, but here are a few things I found interesting:
1) The NCAA limits the number of phone calls coaches or recruiters can make to potential recruits. Text messaging is banned completely. Social media, however, is far less regulated.
2) For coaches, it's another medium to contact, recruit and gather information about players.
3) For players, it's a way to get recruited, control the message and interact with fans and other recruits at unprecedented levels.
4) Coaches/recruiters get a glimpse into the athlete's character. What athletes post on social media can give recruiters a good idea of the type of person they're considering bringing into their program. For some athletes this is beneficial, for others it's completely detrimental.
5) There are more than just coaches and recruiters using social media to convince athletes to choose their school. Fans are also playing a large role in the communication to athletes and recruiters (both positive and negative).
Social media has forever changed the communication environment. I'm really encouraged to see college athletics programs using this tool to their advantage rather than writing it off as a fad.
Comments
High School Recruiting
It is pretty awesome to see a Web development firm connect the dots between an ESPN article and corporate social media effectiveness. That's the kind of thought leadership in the area of social media you don't see every day. Most of the time, you'll read a best practices story without any real-world examples. This one is chok full of thots. Thanks, John Frook, business development, buyfuture.com
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