College recruiting can be a stressful process for parents and players. It can be even more stressful for college coaches. Too often, coaches make a mistake on a kid. Whether it come down to work ethic, love of the sport, coachability, or just being an overall wrong fit for the program. In the future, I believe there will be a more of a surefire way to make sure that you’re not making a mistake on a player. It starts, with social media.
All across the country, athletic directors and college coaches are making it mandatory for players to allow friendship requests to the athletic department. This of course, is to make sure that the players are abiding by the departments rules and making sure they aren’t being put in harms way.
Now, college programs are starting to follow recruits. Here is how the future of recruiting can forever change.
Imagine if players started posting their game highlights on Instagram and Twitter, attached with a link to the full game footage on YouTube that their club provided. Every time you email a college coach you could link your accounts with all of these highlight clips. The college coach that is in charge of recruiting opens up your file and starts watching all of your posts. Intrigued, this coach starts scrolling to your very first post and its a video of you from eight years ago doing freestyle juggling. Another post shows you at sports performance facility working on running form.
All of a sudden, that coach realizes how dedicated you have been to becoming the soccer recruit you now are and they realize that you aren’t a risk to recruit at all. You aren’t a risk of poor work ethic because there is over two hundred posts of you training. You prove your coach ability because you posted a video of your high school coach at the banquet talking about how you’ve been a three year captain and one of the best teammates he’s ever seen. Your teammates love you because the only pictures on your profile are of you and them.
Social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk in his latest book Crushing It! put it best. “I hesitate to offer parenting advice, but if you’re a parent with a talented child, this might not be a bad place to let him or her showcase their talents. You’re never too young to start building a personal brand. Can you imagine if Justin Bieber’s mom had banned him from YouTube? Maybe manager Scooter Braun or some other talent scout would have discovered him anyway. But maybe they wouldn’t have, and now Bieber could be just another physical therapist with a beautiful voice who’d always have to wonder, ‘What if?’”
Many may scoff at this talking about the exploitation of children or the dangers of social media and predators. You can always make the profiles soccer only, or you can make the profiles private. The potential reward outweighs the potential risk.
Imagine following every program in the country, using their hashtags, and tagging them in many of your posts. The better your content, the more exposure you get, the more that the colleges start following you. Sky is the limit for the possibilities.
All across the country, athletic directors and college coaches are making it mandatory for players to allow friendship requests to the athletic department. This of course, is to make sure that the players are abiding by the departments rules and making sure they aren’t being put in harms way.
Now, college programs are starting to follow recruits. Here is how the future of recruiting can forever change.
Imagine if players started posting their game highlights on Instagram and Twitter, attached with a link to the full game footage on YouTube that their club provided. Every time you email a college coach you could link your accounts with all of these highlight clips. The college coach that is in charge of recruiting opens up your file and starts watching all of your posts. Intrigued, this coach starts scrolling to your very first post and its a video of you from eight years ago doing freestyle juggling. Another post shows you at sports performance facility working on running form.
All of a sudden, that coach realizes how dedicated you have been to becoming the soccer recruit you now are and they realize that you aren’t a risk to recruit at all. You aren’t a risk of poor work ethic because there is over two hundred posts of you training. You prove your coach ability because you posted a video of your high school coach at the banquet talking about how you’ve been a three year captain and one of the best teammates he’s ever seen. Your teammates love you because the only pictures on your profile are of you and them.
Social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk in his latest book Crushing It! put it best. “I hesitate to offer parenting advice, but if you’re a parent with a talented child, this might not be a bad place to let him or her showcase their talents. You’re never too young to start building a personal brand. Can you imagine if Justin Bieber’s mom had banned him from YouTube? Maybe manager Scooter Braun or some other talent scout would have discovered him anyway. But maybe they wouldn’t have, and now Bieber could be just another physical therapist with a beautiful voice who’d always have to wonder, ‘What if?’”
Many may scoff at this talking about the exploitation of children or the dangers of social media and predators. You can always make the profiles soccer only, or you can make the profiles private. The potential reward outweighs the potential risk.
Imagine following every program in the country, using their hashtags, and tagging them in many of your posts. The better your content, the more exposure you get, the more that the colleges start following you. Sky is the limit for the possibilities.