Utilizing Social Media to Tell Your Own Story [NIAAA]

By: William Condron, CAA - Southeast Alamance High School, North Carolina

The high school athletics scene that most of us grew up in included limited ways for athletics departments and teams to get information out to the public. If you were lucky, your local newspaper covered your games with an article or blurb with a box score included – some of us may still have some of those clippings in a scrapbook.

Dwindling newspaper budgets have meant declining coverage for high school athletics, especially in smaller communities. Luckily, that doesn’t mean our programs and athletes have to go unnoticed! Social media is a great way for us to tell our own story for our athletics departments.

Choosing a Social Media Platform

There are several social media platforms available, each with its own audience. You can choose one or, to reach maximum engagement, post on multiple platforms.

X (Formerly known as Twitter) – A Place for Recruiting, Coaches

Several years ago, X was where most athletics departments, coaches, and teams posted their latest news. The numbers on X have dipped slightly, but there’s still good usage from high school and college coaches and teams. For instance, coaches and teams still use X to find high school football players’ highlights and stats.

Facebook – Where Families Check In

A lot of us are on it, but let's face it – Facebook is mainly for the older crowd. Our Facebook account gets the most interaction from alumni and our student-athletes’ families. Facebook’s interface also makes it easy to post pictures/graphics along with informational text and links.

Instagram – Promotion That Everyone Can Follow

Our most diverse following is on the Instagram platform. Followers include student athletes, parents, and family members. It is a great place to post pictures and graphics. Informational text can be included, but links cannot (unless you post it in a story).

TikTok – It’s Not Just For Dances!

We’ve all seen our student athletes in the hall with their phones propped up on a door handle or windowsill trying to perfect a dance on TikTok. However, there are many uses for TikTok in our athletics departments, including hype videos and student athlete interviews. If you want social media interactions from students, you want some level of presence on TikTok.

*Pro Tip: Cross post and create landing pages! Some social media platforms allow users to cross post. For instance, Facebook and Instagram have options to post simultaneously to both. There are also third-party programs (e.g., Gipper or BoxOut; details below) that will post to multiple social media platforms at the same time. It is also a good idea to have a landing page that contains all of your social media accounts so people know where to go for the latest in your department. Programs like Linktree, Buffer, or even your school website are all great places to publicize what platforms you are using.

Creating Content

Branding

When creating graphics to promote your program, it can be more pleasing to the eye and easier for everyone involved if you nail down your school’s branding. It helps solidify brand recognition and school pride when everyone is using the same playbook. This includes:

• Logos: Create a digital drive (Google Drive works for us) to share acceptable school logos with your staff.
• School Colors: Determine the colors, along with color codes to share with your designers.
• Fonts: Share a few fonts with your staff that can be used for graphics.

*Pro Tip: Monetize your posts! Add social media coverage to your sponsorship packages. Everything you post can have a sponsor logo, which acknowledges sponsors for supporting your athletics program.

Programs

There are many programs that can be used to create professional-looking graphics, some of which are free.

• For technology-minded creators: Canva and Adobe Express can be used for free, with options to upgrade for more features. Be sure to check with your school system before you purchase as many have purchased licenses that teachers/coaches can use. Canva and Adobe Express are similar programs. Both allow users to create graphics from scratch or use pre-made templates. Coaches and administrators who are generally quick learners with technology should have no problem getting started.
• For technology-challenged or time-challenged creators: Gipper and BoxOut are programs that have premade, professional-looking templates that users can easily manipulate to create graphics. They take the guesswork out of the equations and make it easy to make ready-to-post graphics in minutes. You can upload your school colors and logos so they are available for your coaches to use. They also have options to post and even schedule the graphics to go out at specific times. If your coaches are less computer savvy, this is the tool for them. Both platforms have free trials but ultimately charge to use their service.

*Pro Tip: Choose the right size! The programs above allow users to choose a size for their graphics. Each social media platform has optimal image sizes. Some sizes don’t present as well as others. Check each platform to see what size works best.

What to Post and When

Now that you have opened your account(s), it’s time to post something. Consider posting one or more of the following to promote your athletics department:

• Daily/Weekly Schedules: For our athletics department, Sunday is the day to post a schedule for the upcoming week. We also post a daily schedule to remind people what we have going on. Individual sport accounts may also have gameday posts that are more tailored to their programs, spotlighting specific players, game details, team events, etc.
• Score Updates: Let followers know the latest results from your contests! As an athletics department, these posts can be a summary of all the day’s events. Individual teams may post results with pictures or statistics.
• Student Athlete/Coach Spotlights: What better way to promote your athletics department than to spotlight some of your best and brightest. We treat this as a “getting to know you” spot where we share something about a selected player/coach.
• Special Awards/Recognitions: All-conference, coach of the year, player of the year; all these can be promoted on social media.

*Pro tip: Schedule your posts! Some social media programs or software will allow you to schedule posts for specific times of the day. Strategize the best times to send your graphics out – between classes, first thing the morning, Sunday evening. This also allows you to plan out your posts for the week rather than having to remember to post each day.

Post Delegation – Who Posts What

Once you get started, it can become addictive as you gain followers and interactions from your posts, but there is such a thing as post overload. If you post too much, people may start to ignore what you post.

When you launch or relaunch your social media accounts, meet with your coaches to discuss who should be posting what. For instance, we post a daily and weekly schedule for all of our athletics teams. Individual teams may make gameday posts that highlight certain student athletes, team awards, statistics from games, etc. It is a good idea to discuss what kind of posts your teams will be posting vs what the athletics department will post to avoid flooding your followers’ accounts.

*Pro-tip: Create Accounts For Your Department! One important yet challenging aspect when getting started with social media is finding an account name that is available. If a coach creates the account and eventually leaves the school, oftentimes that account name, and the followers it has built, goes with them. It can be daunting and time-consuming to create many shell Google accounts for teams, but when athletic directors create team social media accounts and share them with coaches, account ownership remains in-house even when there is a change in personnel.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

What’s the best way to get engagement on your social media accounts? Pictures! We use pictures from a variety of sources:

• Professional photographers: Many of our teams have a professional photographer come in to capture great looking photos. Check with the photographer about the possibility of accessing these photos for your graphics. They may want you to give them credit for their photos, which also promotes their business – a win-win scenario!
• Yearbook class/club: Most schools have a class or club responsible for creating the yearbook. Keep them in the loop about your athletics schedule and make sure they receive free admission to games. Most students in these classes and clubs are willing to share their photos with you to post on your social media accounts.
• Student media team: Build a media team at your school that includes photographers. We are lucky to have many students interested in photography who are willing to share. Encourage them to create their own photography social media accounts and share their work…tagging your social media accounts when they do!

*Pro Tip: Monitor your department’s accounts! Make sure the story you and your coaches tell on social media represents the department and teams in a positive light. As athletic directors, we should be following all of our teams’ accounts to make sure we are representing our school in a way that reflects our values. Background music, hand gestures, and inappropriate or unsportsmanlike language can reflect poorly on our departments. It is also important to consider which external accounts are interacting with our posts through likes, comments, or shares since these are public. Lastly, caution coaches about following student athletes’ personal accounts from their team or personal social media accounts. If they see something questionable from a student athlete or receive inappropriate messages, these should be reported immediately.

What Are You Waiting For?

Hopefully you feel confident to start promoting your athletic department using social media. Your student athletes and their families are ready to like, love, and share all the good things that are happening at your school.