Social media, specifically Twitter, has become main stream with today’s millennial generation. It is only natural that college coaches and athletic staffs use this platform to their advantage when recruiting the next superstar for their athletic program.
The NCAA has rules regarding social media and its use for recruiting, but the rules do allow for some “loopholes”.
The NCAA social media rules, which Todd Hefferman in The Southern briefly discusses, state that a coach can direct message an athlete without time or message limits. A coach can also message recruits on Facebook because the NCAA officially views these messages as emails.
With 130 million active users of twitter, and the use of social media being incorporated into professional sports by networks like ESPN, coaches everywhere should be aggressively becoming fluent in this digital media.
The opportunity to stay in constant contact with the recruits to make sure they are the program that the athlete chooses is a huge advantage over schools who are still in the dark when it comes to this new age recruiting .
Louisiana State University head football coach Les Miles, known on twitter as @LSUCoachMiles has 125K followers and is an active user, tweeting over 600 times. In December (2013), he used twitter in a genius way, sub-tweetinga recruit during the recruiting dead period.
Social media is growing... it's all over, a great tool for marketing, nice post!
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