College athletics are always looking for new ways to be at the highest level of development, and that currently means putting a lot of importance on social media marketing efforts. College coaches now use social media to help recruit players and also promote their program as well. Now days almost all coaches use social media as way to recruit players whether its Facebook, or Twitter. Also athletic departments will also use various social media platforms to unite with fans and media members. Eight to ten years ago athletic departments were probably limited to phone calls or direct mail to promote ticket deals, a new coach hiring or things that are going around within the college athletic department.
But now, the athletic division in the college is now expected to engage their fans as much as possible and that calls for the use Facebook, Twitter, Instigram, and any other new social media that’s out there. How exactly does the athletic departments successfully use social media to reach the crowds? And how much has new social media changed how recruiting works.

With more than 1.3 billion people on Facebook and 284 million users on twitter, I can see the reason why athletic divisions have gravitated to these two social media platforms in general. One of the biggest reasons is to build a rapport with their fans. Duke University has 22 Facebook pages associated within the athletic department, trying to connect fans with everything from the basketball team to the Iron Dukes fundraising campaign. According to Derek Rucker, an associate professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management “The advantage of social media efforts is that it is not just the brand talking to the consumer, but the consumer has an opportunity to talk to the brand or talk to others about the brand.” Part of that need for a special experience stems from the huge amount of exposure and accessibility that already surrounds most college athletic programs, especially the bigger one’s.

Bigger college programs will have all of their programs televised and also on the radio. So that mans that college athletic department will need to show something new that fans won’t be able to see on their local news channel or daily paper. According to Oklahoma Sooners football coach Bob Stops was asked why he created a twitter account he said, “Strictly for recruiting, Got to. Gotta reach ‘em.” For instance the University of Texas has their own network called the “longhorn network” which started in the 2011 it caused a big uproar amongst other colleges in the state of Texas because in the deal it included that they broadcast 18 high school football games each season. Texas A&M fans and administrators were very upset due to what they called possible recruiting violations and soon after Texas A&M left the Big 12 athletic