How to Get Your Recruit to Engage More with You on Social

Hi Coach,

As a coach, with social media being a visual platform, social media isn’t something you can be ignoring at the moment.  In fact, I believe it will be absolutely pivotal to your recruiting success this year with covid continuing to destroy coaches’ budgets and ability to go out to recruit.

I have sold a lot of coaches lately on using social media to boost their recruiting.  At first, these coaches told me that they may get a few likes here and there, maybe a few more followers, but that’s about it.  They felt like no matter what they posted, they really aren’t getting any traction with their social media recruiting efforts.  So they wanted to give up.

I think they just needed a better strategy.

Personally, a few things are at play here if you aren’t getting much traction.  First, I think it is because they are posting stupid shit that doesn’t matter to recruits and their decision-making process.  Second, you are not asking recruits to take action.

Nothing happens with out action.

I want to give you 4 HUGE ideas that you can use to create more engagement with your recruits this week.

NEVER POST IN REAL TIME

Seriously? Yes. I am telling you to wait. When you post on the fly you’re doing a few things that I wouldn’t recommend: you’re likely slapping on a filter and not paying attention to details, you’re rushing to type a caption (or falling back on emojis!) and you’ll miss the ability to be present in the moment you’re in – you know, the one that you were so eager to photograph.

TIP: Take the shot and then put your phone down. When you have a bit of time, edit it, caption it thoughtfully, and hashtag it intentionally. This will give you the ability to be more present in life and more thoughtful with your feed.

DON’T BE A ONE-HIT WONDER

One of the biggest mistakes I see coaches make is that their feed is one-note. It’s easy (and comfortable) to hide behind your program and the work you are doing, but doing so isn’t helping you create true connections online with recruits. It’s important to show more aspects of YOU than just your school or program. Recruits have to first know, like, and trust you before they will ever consider taking your program and what you have to offer seriously.

TIP: Choose 5 facets of your program that make you, YOU. Rotate through those 5 categories each week so that your feed is multidimensional and interesting. Share things like: what your team does for fun on campus, the city you live in, your pets, your hobbies, travels, the resources your team has access to… keep it as personal as you feel so others feel like they know YOU.

USE CALL TO ACTIONS

With the algorithm, engagement is the name of the game! In order to show up in the feeds of your recruits, you have to prove your content is worthy. What does this mean? You must encourage people to “like” and comment on your content. The more engagement you have, the more likely you are to have your posts be seen.

TIP: Be intentional with each post and include some sort of invitation for your recruits. Ask a question, tell them to “double tap” if they agree, whatever that looks like for you! Just include an invitation to engage with you in every post to boost your algorithm odds!

HASHTAG INTENTIONALLY

Did you know that if you are using hashtags, you are 12.6% more likely to receive engagement on your post? I’ll take those odds and put them to work. It’s time that you get intentional with your use of hashtags and really think about what your dream recruits are searching for, so that you can end up in front of them!

Tip: For every post you publish, you have 30 opportunities to use great hashtags. I love to hedge my bets and use both wide tags and narrow tags. For example, if I am sharing a soccer photo that I took, I might use #soccer AND #division1soccer to reach both a broad and narrow audience.

BUILD YOUR COMMUNITY

It’s easy to login and mindlessly scroll, but what would it look like if you logged in and spent 20 minutes encouraging recruits you follow OR recruits who follow you? Set a timer and log in with the intention of fostering community. It might sound crazy, but some of my best recruits were found on this silly app.

Tip: If people are taking the time to engage with you, take a few minutes to comment back, thank them, or even hop over to their feed and return the favor. Trust me, it will not go unnoticed and it will encourage recruits to continue to engage with you in the future.

Social media continues to change on a daily basis, it’s our jobs as coaches to learn how to pivot when a new change impacts the way we are reaching our recruits online. Have fun with it, share your story, and create true relationships both on and off of the app.

If you’d like to learn more about using social media for recruiting purposes, check out Social Story Recruiting.  It is there that we will dig deeper into the ways that you can use social media to attract your dream recruit.

To your success,

Mandy Green