Like everything in the 21st century, college recruiting is becoming more and more digital. In the 90s we used VHS tapes, the 2000s evolved to DVDs, and now everything is easily accessible on the internet. High school programs and athletes who want to attract college coaches turn to digital recruiting strategies to stand out from the crowd.
If you’re not already on board, by the end of this article, you will be. First, we will start off by defining what digital recruiting is and explain the benefits. From there, we will walk you through our 5 best tips to upgrade your digital recruiting strategy to ensure you’re ready to start attracting college coaches online.
What is Digital Recruiting?
Digital recruitment occurs when prospective athletes and their respective programs use technology as a tool to find and attract college coaches for an open roster spot.
Digital recruitment is more than just posting your HUDL link on Twitter. A proper digital recruiting strategy covers everything from displaying prospect information, utilizing techniques across social media, building online relationships, digital branding, and creating efficient virtual platforms.
When a complete digital recruiting strategy covers all those areas and is implemented, reaching your recruiting goals will become a whole lot easier and efficient.
The Benefits of Digital Recruiting
Exploiting the power of digital technology has delivered considerable increases in efficiency and sales across many different industries. College recruiting is no exception. Here are some benefits you will see adopting a digital recruiting strategy:
Greater Exposure
The most significant benefit of digital recruitment is the ability to get in front of more college coaches. Let’s face it, recruiting nowadays is all done in the palm of our hands. Gone are the days of office phone calls, emails, and excel spreadsheets. Honestly, it’s pretty tough to navigate through a spreadsheet on an iPhone, am I right?
Whether through online recruiting partnerships, visually appealing platforms, or social media channels, getting in front of more college coaches can be achieved in just a few clicks. You may argue that camps are the best way for prospects to get exposure, but these only occur a few months out of the year. What’s your strategy for the remaining months?!
Boost Efficiency
Digital recruitment tools not only help you gain exposure, they also allow you to quickly and easily manage your information. There’s no need to manually research and save contact information for thousands of college coaches when they change every year. There’s no need to repeatedly type up prospect info onto spreadsheets, emails, and tweets. There are software tools that handle these tasks automatically. This frees up valuable time to nail the other aspects of your digital recruiting strategy!
Increase College Candidates
If you add greater exposure and improved efficiency together, you will ultimately get an increase in college coaches that are knocking at your door. Think about it – if you can get more eyes to your program in a shorter amount of time, you’re going to land more results. As a high school program, this means boosting college coach satisfaction by delivering the best and most accessible prospect information on the market to help fill their roster spots.
Maximize Returns
Less time spent and higher-quality prospect information means you’re getting more done in less time for greater reward. Especially in the recruiting environment, that means you’re optimizing prospect exposure, and the offers come rolling in.
Better Coach Experience
Especially for young college coaches, digital is where people feel at home. Making the most of digital technologies will improve the coach experience, making it easier for them to engage with your brand, get instant feedback on your prospects, and progress through the recruiting process faster. And, the coaches will want to come back for more!
5 Tips for You!
After hearing all of these benefits, you’re probably eager to get started. So, here are our 5 top tips to start your digital recruiting strategy.
Build a Brand
Branding is one of the most important activities that programs and prospects can engage in. Building a strong, recognizable brand will help you connect with college coaches, attract new ones, and encourage loyalty and recognition.
Develop an identity by using a visually appealing and professional picture if you’re a prospect. If you’re a program, establish a logo and be consistent. Create a Twitter account that is dedicated to recruiting only.
Tell people who you are in your bio. This is your chance to stand out from the crowd by establishing a tagline and a call to action.
Post regularly. The more you post, the more eyes get to your brand, then the more clicks to your account, which leads to more exposure for your prospects.
Create Great Content
With the branding sorted, it’s time to show off what makes your program and prospects great. Digital channels open up great opportunities to showcase what you’re all about, including videos and graphics. This is your chance to differentiate yourself and stand out from the rest.
Create custom graphics to promote prospects, games, and other major announcements. However, make sure they’re high quality. Some options include hiring a college intern or reaching out to some classes at your high school.
Use short and concise highlight videos to showcase your best plays. Sure, HUDL highlights are great, but most of them are a few minutes long. Give your audience a sneak peak by using short videos that can show up and be viewed directly on their timeline!
Use testimonials to tell your audience what other people think about your program. If someone has something great to say about your program or prospects, make note of it and publicize that message in your content.
Social Media Activity
Now that you have excellent content, it’s time to start building a network on social media. Not only is social media a great place to spread your brand, but also a place to position yourself as a leader in the recruiting community!
Share the content mentioned above to create excitement about your program. People love to be a part of something positive and exciting.
Be consistent with your posts! You can’t post one day and wait a month to post another day. Make a schedule and stick to it. There are tons of free tools online that allow you to schedule tweets in advance.
Find college coaches and engage with them first. Don’t sit around and wait for coaches to follow your account. Search for coaches, then like and comment on their tweets as much as possible (this will spread your brand). There is a good chance that if you do this then the coach will follow your recruiting account.
Focus on College Coach Experience
The rise of digital means many online interactions happen very quickly. College coaches now have a very fast and engaging way to find and research prospects. You may only get one click from a coach, so you better be sure you maximize that click for them.
Enable ‘instant clicks’ for your prospects. This means college coaches can click on a single link and it takes them to a profile with all the prospect’s information. The ability to put all the information in one spot is very valuable to a coach as we know their time is very limited.
Use visuals to help promote your prospects and include them in the profiles. Since the pandemic, college recruiting has shifted for good. Coaches want to see and evaluate prospects through pictures or drill videos before they step foot on campus.
Use Partnerships
A lot of high school programs don’t have the time or resources to implement a digital recruiting strategy. However, there are plenty of resources and relationships you can build online to assist with your efforts. Don’t be afraid to ask for help! Here at The Athletic Academy, we can offer very affordable and simple solutions to enhance the digital experience for your program and for individual prospects.
If you would like any more information or tips, don’t hesitate to contact us!