Social Media and Its Influence in Recruiting

Submitted by Gameboy on

Based on all of the happenings over the wild, wild, weekend, I think we can be certain of one thing - Internet and Social Media matters - A LOT!

I don't think we could have even dreamt the kind of haul we had this weekend without Twitter and Facebook. These guys have built friendships (led by Shane) over the past few months - almost all of it through social media. And once things got going, there was a tremendous amount of virtual peer pressure thing happening over the weekend which probably netted us at least 2 or 3 kids who would not have otherwise announced this early.

I also think, without social media, having kids commit this early is not necessarily a good thing. You are giving other schools a year to poach your kids while you have to juggle offers that you send out and make sure that the committed kids stay that way. Having a virtual group of peers to help your kids stay in-line makes that a ton easier.

So my question is. What do you think the coaching staff needs to do in the future to help this movement grow? We all know that Hoke is not a big Internet guy. Will that hurt us in the long run when we do not have an active in-class recruiter like Shane? Who is the most active guy on social media among the coaching staff? Do you think perhaps they should hire someone just to manage that aspect of recruiting?

This is a brave brave new world...

MGoBeer

February 20th, 2012 at 12:41 PM ^

I think the early jumps Hoke has been getting helps. Once you lock in that first guy or group of guys (Shane and Dymonte), hopefully they take the initiative upon themselves. Hoke getting in early helps kickstart that.

Magnum P.I.

February 20th, 2012 at 12:48 PM ^

and journal-article-style title. Looks like it belongs in the Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics.

I don't know what college football program are intentionally doing with social media, but I'd be surprised if they don't have their finger on the pulse to some degree. At a minimum, it would be smart to have a student-employee type who's responsible for setting up a Facebook group for incoming commits and/or recruits. Having a really active social-media presence like Morris has been a blessing for us, and I think that the program could manufacture that to some degree in future classes by putting the infrastructure in place for commits and recruits to easily interact online. Just facilitating a twitter or Facebook account exchange would be helpful. I'm sure they could pay someone $30K a year to develop this idea further. 

DonAZ

February 20th, 2012 at 2:12 PM ^

...having kids commit this early is not necessarily a good thing. You are giving other schools a year to poach your kids while you have to juggle offers that you send out and make sure that the committed kids stay that way.

Not sure I agree with that.  Once a kid commits there's an added burden to get him to uncommit.  Sure, some will ... but many will not.  Thankfully their word means something.

So on the whole, I think I'd rather have the commits on board early and defend them rather than work to un-hook them from some other school they committed to.

Caesar

February 20th, 2012 at 2:41 PM ^

I wanted to post something similar but about the effect of blogs on our recruiting. Maybe this is my fandom taking over analytical parts of my brain, but I wonder if a recruit hears from several Michigan blogging sites (mgo/tremendous/others) about his recruitment is convinced about Michigan as a result.

I really think this is different from message-boards, random fans showing up to the kid's house, &c. It conveys a level of sophistication and organized fan interest that I'm not sure many other schools can match.

 

BeatOSU52

February 20th, 2012 at 2:58 PM ^

Valenti and Foster are trying to argue that this recruiting weekend for Michigan isn't news-worthy:

 

http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10150576259503267&id=3…

 

http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10150572409048267&id=3…

 

Note: I realize I may get negged for this because 1) Some people may not want to promote douches like Valenti and Foster or 2)  This is off-topic somewhat to this thread.    If that's the case, neg away! :)

Rabbit21

February 20th, 2012 at 4:03 PM ^

Valenti has never really cared about recruiting and has always been a result on the field guy.  I've never had a problem with either guy, but I know to turn the radio when he starts talking about UM and even worse when he takes calls about UM, on other Detroit area teams I think he's actually got a pretty good take on things.