4 Ways Social Media Can Help Recruiting

At National Scouting Report, we advise prospects to diversify their recruiting efforts.

Social media is one of those diversified methods we emphasize. While it can have minimal effect alone, tied to a strong website, frequent and targeted promotional distributions, social media is essential to rounding out a prospect’s recruiting portfolio.

Every college coach expects prospects to engage in some social media activity. When coaches learn a prospect’s favorite venue, you can be assured they will monitor the prospect’s pages and posts.

For that reason, it is wise for prospects not only to connect on social media but to plan how they will use it to enhance their image and reputation with coaches. Recruiting is, after all, an image-influenced business. Ignoring that fact can hurt a prospect’s opportunities to make a positive and lasting impression on coaches.

Here are four ways social media can enhance recruiting:

1. Name recognition. Savvy promotional groups such as NSR call this “branding.” Like Coca-Cola, Ford or any other well-known brands, prospects need to stay on the minds of college coaches during the recruiting cycles. Social media does this.
2. Relationship building. While most college coaches only watch from a distance, what a prospect posts helps to build relationships with them. Of course, a well-executed plan to reach and impress college coaches includes calculated posts which emphasize positive attitudes and activities. Make coaches want to have you on their team.
3. Re-enforcing character. One of the most important things a social media site can do for a prospect is convince a college coach that the prospect is of good character, makes good choices and hangs with good people. Posting negative images or statements can ruin all the other positive things a prospect has done. Every post counts.
4. Completes the recruiting circle. When a prospect can create a consistent image through his or her NSR webpage and promotions, in addition to social media, coaches’ thoughts about the prospect solidify faster than merely seeing the prospect at events. All these efforts combined create an unbreakable, solid circle that coaches can count on when finally making scholarship offers.