(Photo via @UNC_Basketball)
(*INFLCR is a proud partner of Front Office Sports)
When it comes to impressing recruits and adding value to current student-athletes, some Power Five programs have turned their focus to innovative ways outside of great facilities and a cornucopia of uniform options.
One of those ways has been through tech, specifically when it comes to distribution of content created by in-house digital staff members.
Five years ago, tools like this wouldn’t have been necessary, but an increasingly connected world, coupled with top players becoming immediate social sensations before they even get to colleges, being able to get content into the hands of current team members helps in more ways than just one.
For a program like Kentucky basketball, the trickle-down effect of having student-athletes share content on their own channels is something that doesn’t go unnoticed, especially when it comes to recruiting.
“INFLCR is not used directly as a recruiting tool, but in a broader sense everything we do touches recruiting,” mentioned Guy Ramsey, director of strategic communication for University of Kentucky athletics. “When I mentioned that our student-athletes reach an audience we can’t, I’m talking in large part about recruits. Athletes follow athletes; they don’t always follow brands. Oftentimes, recruits are exposed to us primarily through our current players.”
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Top-flight recruits seeing their content more could be the difference between getting a blue chip one to commit, or seeing them go to another Power Five program.
When it comes to recruiting at UNC, a players point of view is crucial. There, the digital team is leveraging the tool to make sure that the social feeds of the players are populated with content that will give recruits a look into what it’s like to be a part of the program.
“They are recruiters just as much as our coaches,” said Dana Reynolds, director of social and digital media for UNC athletics. “The clearer it is for prospective student-athletes to see themselves as a UNC basketball player through game photos, candids on road trips, and videos, the better.”
Not only are the student-athletes benefiting from the partnership, so too are the professionals working in the department in a job where every second can count and there is usually not enough time in the day.
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For Reynolds, the assist from INFLCR comes in the form of being able to cut down on her workflow, going from an email, text, airdrop process to one in which she is depositing the content in one place. It does this by tagging content based on which players are in it, creating personalized mobile galleries that live on their phones. It is here that they can share content to their social platforms with INFLCR tracking their activity and audience reach for their team.
In this case, both the staff and the student-athletes win as she uses it as a “cloud service to post content from.”
Along the same lines as Reynolds, Ramsey and his team have benefitted from being able to use the tech to “not only make the jobs easier, but make them better.”
Time will tell if either of these programs will be dancing come March, but one thing is for sure: when it comes to finding ways to lure recruits and make the lives of everyone in the athletic department better, tech is playing an increasingly important part of the equation.
(*INFLCR is a proud partner of Front Office Sports)
