David Petroff is the Director of Athletic Communications at NCAA Division III Edgewood College in Madison, Wis. and authors the blog entitled "Small School Social", with ideas, advice and tips geared toward athletic communications professionals at small schools and/or those with limited staffs.
Petroff is a member of CoSIDA's New Media Committee and started this blog for small school sports communications professionals to help them produce a strong social media presence - despite not having the resources of the big schools.
Petroff can be reached on Twitter at @DavidPetroff or via email at davidpetroff@hotmail.com.
Photo, below, courtesy of Petroff's blog.
I’ve been conducting social media education with our student-athletes at Edgewood College for the last three seasons. I have a presentation for them during our NCAA compliance meetings (which they LOVE!) and I continue through the year with some basic monitoring, a few friendly reminders and even some sit down meetings with student-athletes to discuss how we can be more effective (or less of a problem).
One thought always occurs to me. Any social media problems that we have, which thankfully have been few, generally come from our freshmen and sophomores. Juniors and seniors tend to get the message and they have an eye looking forward to post-college plans, but the younger student-athletes sometimes stray from the principles of appropriate use that we try to instill. When I think about why that is, the answer becomes obvious:
“How would they know any better?”
The fact is student-athletes, have gotten virtually no help in learning about social media from the first day they touched a computer keyboard until that day in August when I stand up in front of them. They’ve probably gotten instruction on internet safety from teachers and parents, but how many have had guidance of intelligent usage and possible long term consequences of things like foul language and inappropriate pictures? How many fewer have actually gotten advice on leveraging social media for the benefit of their teams, their school, their communities, and most importantly, themselves?
My conclusion was simple: we have to start younger.
About six months ago, I started contacting high schools in my area about taking my presentation to their student-athletes and their coaching staffs. Those that responded generally did so with some variation of, “How soon can you get here?”
The high school students I’ve talked to have been very receptive listeners. At certain points in my lecture, I can look out into the audience and see sudden realization in their eyes…
“You mean anyone can read that?”
“My SnapChat photos might be saved somewhere?”
“I might not get into a college because of a tweet?”
For almost all of them, it’s the first time anyone has talked to them about social media beyond a simple don’t do this and don’t do that command. It might be the first time someone has laid exactly how social media has intertwined itself in our daily lives and how all that inter-connectivity is exciting and powerful, but also potentially treacherous. I’m certainly not the first person to point out the dangers of social media to them, but I might be the first person to talk about social media as a tool that can be used for personal, educational and professional gain and fulfillment.
So if you’re a Small School SID and you cringe every time you open TweetDeck and see your student-athletes posts, try to remember: They won’t know any better, unless someone teaches them. And you can’t start soon enough.