CoSIDA New Media/Technology Committee Chair
Chris Syme is writing a four-part series on "surviving
student-athletes on social media" - with the need for college athletics to engage in social media education and monitoring for student-athletes.
This four-part series is in response to the takeaways from the Fall 2012 social media education survey that CoSIDA conducted; nearly 500 CoSIDA members responded. One of the most telling statistics emerging from the study was that just over 56 percent of schools actually train student-athletes on the "how's" and "best practices" of social media.
Here is the Fall 2012 social media education survey summary and the first three articles in this series:
Student-athletes and social media: Recipe for disaster or success? [2012 CoSIDA Membership Survey]
Part 1:
Surviving student-athletes on social media (Part One): Be proactive
Part 2:
Surviving student-athletes on social media: Part 2: Build a communications community
Part 3:
Surviving student-athletes on social media: Part 2: Build a communications community
In addition to viewing Syme's website, you can follow her on Twitter (
@cksyme).
A click of the mouse takes somewhere around .2 seconds after the fingers go from the keyboard to the mouse. That’s how long it takes to tarnish a reputation that may take years to build back. An emotional response to a hater, a picture sent in the heat of the moment—once the send button is clicked, it is public record forever. When almost 100% of student athletes are on social media, keeping track of everyone is impossible. Even with monitoring software, you only find out after the fact.
In parts one through three in this series, we looked at how to implement three of the takeaways from the recent CoSIDA member survey on training student athletes to use social media. Today, we take a look at the last, but most important takeaway from those numbers: be ready. No matter if you have a proactive approach, you have trained your athletes, and developed your campus community, there is still a need to have an effective response strategy in place should you experience what the majority of athletic communicators did last year—a negative event on 
social media.
Be Ready
Do you have a social media plan that includes dealing with negative online events?
According to a membership survey on crisis communications done by CoSIDA in the fall of 2011, just a little over half (56%) of the responding athletic departments had a crisis communications plan. Over half of those with a plan do not have contingencies for using social media within that plan.
Teresa Valerio Parrot heads a leading higher education crisis firm in Denver, Colorado. When it comes to preparation for a crisis event, Parrot sees several common mistakes that institutions make.
“The most common mistakes I see include not developing a plan; not providing talking points to front line communicators like receptionists, fundraisers, or staff; not specifically planning for social media use; not building good relationships with media in advance; and not learning from others’ mistakes,” she said.
Planning is not for “if”, it is for “when”. Three must-have elements for dealing with negative events in any social media plan include:
1. A monitoring dashboard that includes alerts on key phrases and tracks the department brand and personal brands that are of interest to the department’s reputation. See how to set up a simple dashboard here (two parts).
2. A triage response plan that includes the definition of a negative event; when, if, and how it will be dealt with; and a chain of command that illustrates who will answer what. It should also be accompanied by a message template. See this example.
I believe triage should also include a protective element for student athletes that get bullied by fans on social media. When angry fans start spewing hate speech at 18 year-olds because they missed a tackle or a catch, it’s time for the athletic department to step in and advocate. We should not expect our student athletes to fend for themselves against bullies. Departments should be proactive in trying to avoid the kind of events that led Rebecca Marino to quit tennis, or a Kentucky men’s basketball player to shut down his social media accounts because of social media bullying. Make sure that student-athletes know how to report fan bullying to coaches or compliance officers, and know how to block people on their social media accounts.
3. Elements in place for dealing with a viral online event. In the event that your negative event goes viral, you should be prepared. This should include holding messages you can post while you sort the issue out quickly, a template for measuring sentiment and volume, posting policies present on all your social media channels, and an understanding of how to use Facebook filters.
Don’t be afraid to hire outside help in a viral event. Experienced crisis management agencies can track and analyze your event online while you deal with more pressing matters. Many athletic departments have people managing social media, but they are not experienced crisis managers and often have other duties in a crisis.
You can survive student athletes on social media. It takes a proactive mission, a commitment to build a community, a desire to educate first and police second, and most of all, it takes a plan.