The 4 Mistakes Coaches Are Making with Social Media

My presentation this year for NCRC had to do with how coaches can use social media better.   I have had a ton of coaches reach out to tell me that they never realized the mistakes they were making in how they were thinking about or working through social media.

Today, I thought I would just walk you through the 4 biggest mistakes I see coaches making with their social media.  If you are interested in digging deeper into this, I will be doing a webinar on Tuesday August 18^th at 12pm EST.

Mistake #1: Relying on Sports Information to post

The sports information person assigned to your team probably does a great job making the game day graphics, posting the live updates, and announcing birthdays and commitments.  BUT, they aren’t there for all of the key moments that recruits need to see to help them determine if your school is going to be a good fit for them.

They are not in your locker room before and after practice or games. They are not in your meetings. They are not on the bus or in the hotel rooms. They are not there while your athletes are eating lunch and walking to class.  That’s when all the stuff good stuff happens that is what I want you to be posting about.  Those are the experiences and moments that makes you different from your competitors and that’s what you’re trying to sell recruits on.

Your sports info person probably has 10 other teams to worry about.  Don’t rely on them to tell your recruiting story.

Mistake #2: Too formal sounding
As adults, we tend to write things how we understand them.   We use our master’s degrees and think that because we are in a position of authority, that everything we communicate to a recruit needs to be formal and professional.

The problem is that your recruits aren’t connecting with the content when it is too formally written.

Marketing experts say that you should try to communicate as if you’re talking on a seventh grade level.

Bottom line, simplify your writing and make it more conversational.  It will be easier to read, understand, and get them to take action on.

Mistake #3: Posting in Real Time

Walking around with your phone hoping something brilliant happens that you can then share with the world is not a good strategy.

I want your feed to be strategy-based and not spontaneous.

I think when you are relying on posting in real time, you are not in control of the story and message that is going out to the recruits who you are hoping to build trust, build rapport, and create connection with.

When you post in real time it pulls you from the moment you’re in. You’re not able to think about a clever or engaging caption, you’re not able to think about what you want your followers to get from the post or even the WHY behind the post.

Mistake #4: Everything Being Posted Looks and Feels the Same as Your Competitors

When I ask coaches to describe to me the top 4-5 things that they sell recruits on when they come to campus, sure they talk about their sport.  What they get passionate about is when they tell me about their values, family, the personalities and character of the team and staff, the academic support, the community, the things to do on campus, etc.

But, when I go to their social media pages, all I see is the sport they coach.

Why are you just posting about your sport?  Sure, that is a big part of the decision-making process for an athlete. But recruits want to know if they will fit in with the team.  What do they do for fun? What are they like?  Do they live together?  Post stuff like that.

When you just post about your sport, everything looks the same as everybody else to the recruits you are after.

It would be like hoping you will get a recruit interested in your program after having seen your website.

Coach, you have very little control over the content for your website. I look at the website of a coach before I do a phone consultation with them.  I look at dozens of websites every month  And they all look the same. They all have the individual names, where they’re from, their height, their position, maybe their major.

How is a recruit able to decide if they will fit in with your team just from the information on the website?

They can’t.

How is a recruit supposed to figure out if they will fit in with your team based off of just seeing game-day pictures or the newsfeed?

They can’t.

The problem with what is getting posted on social media is that everything looks the same. And when everything looks the same to a recruit, they usually decide to go to the school that is giving them more money, or the school that is the cheapest, or this school is a little bit closer to home so mom and dad can come.

We don’t want recruits to make a decision just based on default. You really need to be able to differentiate yourself from everybody else. And so I want you to take a different approach.

To Your Success,
Mandy Green

P.S. If you weren’t able to join the Productive Coach and Recruiter Webinar last week, I am going to do it again this week on Thursday November 5th at 1pm EST.  If you can’t make it but want the recording, please register.