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Tips & Tricks From the CoSIDA New Media Committee Archive
by Eric Lindsey – University of Kentucky, Director of Athletics Communications and Public Relations; eric.lindsey@uky.edu
CoSIDA New Media Committee member
The times, they are a-changin’.
College athletics as we know them are in the midst of transformation. Even with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on college athletics, the industry is pushing forward and name, image and likeness rules are on the verge of changing the world in which we work forever.
Wherever the rules may fall, however they may evolve and whatever your opinion is on the NIL movement, the current direction will likely bring forth a change in philosophy, or at the very least, a shift in your approach in branding your athletic department.
As sports information directors and content creators, we have all been tasked in varying degrees over the last decade with leading the charge in social media branding. Whether it’s a historic win, a schedule announcement, a new addition to the roster or just simply a directive from a coach to find a new and creative way to get content to your followers, it’s often been up to us to figure out innovate ways to disseminate information.
If you started reading that last paragraph thinking this article will usher in relief on that front, I hate to break the news to you – those times aren’t going away anytime soon. The importance and value in creating engaging and entertaining information and content on official team and athletic department properties will remain.
The new challenge – or as I see it, the new opportunity – is to recalibrate your approach in branding and reprioritize how your athletic department delivers content. Everything now starts with the student-athletes – and rightfully so.
Whatever your stance is on the NIL topic, the value your athletic department can bring to a student-athlete’s personal branding and marketing is going to be more important than ever before. Prospective and current student-athletes are now going to want to know how
you can help them utilize and market your school, your platform and your assets to add value to
their social media accounts.
The more things you and your creative staff can put in their hands, the more they can utilize and leverage those assets to enhance their brand and presence. Even before the NIL conversation elevated to the level it has now, one could make an argument this should have already been a priority for athletic departments, and some saw the value in it early.
So, how do you do that?
The first step we’ve covered a bit: Recalibrate your thinking. Change your approach. Reshuffle the deck of priorities, so to speak.
Content creation has been the name of the game for some time, but now it’s time rethink your content streams. Your team accounts will always have a place and value and should remain a central component – but they’re not the only part.
In every content project you do – whether it’s a video, information dissemination, photos, an all-encompassing campaign, etc. – take a moment to figure out how your student-athletes play a role in it. They represent your team and its mission. They’re the lifeblood of the department. And really, their story and how they share it is almost always going to be the best story of the department.
Perhaps it’s as simple as putting their needs on your checklist in your creative process. Maybe it’s a team session to find out what content they want to see. Or maybe it’s even a regular team representative at your content meetings.
Which brings us to our next step: Find out what’s most important to your student-athletes.
If we’re being honest, the younger generation is better at the content game than most of us are as a whole. They’ve been exposed to social media at a younger age, they’re more in-tune with the latest technologies and apps, and they’ve got a ton of really great ideas.
So give them a voice. Don’t just assume what they want. A lot of us have already taken steps towards making them a part of the story by putting the tools of creation in their hands, but do they really want to be doing Instagram takeovers and Q and As for your accounts? Or would they rather you use that time to create edits and highlight reels for their own distribution systems? Can you do both? What would they like to get their hands on after the game when they’ve been away from their phones? What resonates with them from a branding perspective?
There isn’t a right or wrong answer, but if they’re going to be a part of the content creation game, give them a stage to tell you what they like and don’t like. You never know what ideas they might have that you haven’t thought of.
Their ideas will remain fluid and will change from year to year, team to team and student-athlete to student-athlete. Flexibility and patience with that approach will be needed. But it starts with a commitment.
If you’ve gotten that far and you’ve created plans for the right content, how do you get it to them in the most effective and efficient manner? That brings us to step No. 3: content distribution.
Companies like INFCLR, Opendorse and Greenfly entered this market in the last several years and have become major assets to schools with the financial resources to invest in such apps. All feature different abilities, strengths and nuances, but the name of the game is the same: empower the student-athletes and make it as easy as possible for the school’s content creators to deliver the content.
This purpose of this section isn’t to endorse one company over the other or tell you what one can do and the other can’t. What I can tell you from experience with working with one of them is that these distribution models make it lot easier – for example – when you can grab 100 photos after a game, punch a couple of buttons and, voila, those pictures are now on a student-athlete’s phone for them to share with the world as they please. Or when there’s a really engaging hype video before a game and everyone wants to share it natively on their own platforms, uploading it once and tagging a few people sure beats texting 15 different people.
Not everyone, especially in uncertain times like these, will have the budget to enlist the help of these companies. Hope is not lost.
While these companies have cornered the market on a distribution model, the idea isn’t unique to them. It’s all about finding a way that works best for you, your resources and budget to deliver the content.
It could be as simple as using older distribution and file sharing systems like Dropbox or WeTransfer or just getting everyone set up on OneDrive. Sure, these aren’t tailored to the college athletics model and there will be some additional training and harder steps of buy-in, but they are capable resources that work for all types of industries.
The biggest key is finding something and sticking with it. From experience, what I’ve found most valuable is a consistent model to point to for all student-athletes. It isn’t sharing video with one student-athlete by phone, sharing pictures with another by email or airdropping content to another. It’s a consistent message of, “Need content? Go to the app. Want all of your photos from that photoshoot we just did? It’s on the app. Looking for a graphic we sent out earlier? It’s on the app. How can I—it’s on the app!”
When there is a clear and consistent content distribution channel, the student-athletes not only adjust to it, they embrace it. It not only makes your life easier – hey, it’s OK to embrace that with all we do! – it builds a stronger, more consistent brand for them. And their brand is your brand.
The last and final step is an easy one: Have fun with the change.
Content creation is nothing new. Years ago, our roles changed and creating content nudged its way into our lives right alongside with writing press releases, setting up interviews and so many other responsibilities. This isn’t new, and most of us have not only embraced the new challenge, we’ve had a lot of fun coming up with new ways to communicate to our fans.
Putting student-athletes first and giving them a more prominent voice in the content game shouldn’t alter what you do best. It just requires a slight change in approach.
Examples from Kentucky Men’s Basketball:
Kentucky works hand-in-hand with student-athletes to find out what content they want to distribute. In this case – even during the COVID-19 pandemic – UK men’s basketball guard Immanuel Quickey wanted to announce his NBA Draft decision via video. Kentucky’s content team worked with him to edit highlights with his message and then deliver that content directly to him for release on his channels.
Listening to what is most important to your student-athletes’ brand is half the battle. Kentucky men’s basketball players voiced to the UK content staff that they wanted pregame pictures to show off their style and fashion, similar to what you now find at NBA games. The pictures were widely used by the players throughout the season and gave fans a slice into their personalities.