Although I don’t agree with the censorship, Twitter is still one of the best platforms ever created.
You have the ability to reach nearly anyone in the world and get a glimpse at how they think about things.
This is especially important for anyone involved in sports – no matter what stage of the game you’re at – parent, athlete, coach, or fan.
Twitter spaces furthers my point as top experts can create discussions and answer questions for thousands of people at a $0 cost.
That’s exactly what I’ve been doing on Thursday nights with my discussions around college recruiting, NIL, and the future of sports.
But no free open source platform is perfect, as I will highlight below.
The Good Sides of Twitter
Athletes use to rely on sending physical VHS tapes and going to camps to even have a chance of getting recruited to college.
Then some recruiting services came along and offered recruiting profiles and education to help athletes, but at a high cost.
Over the last few years athletes/parents took it back in their own hands with free platforms such as Twitter to boost their recruiting.
By opening a blue bird app on your phone you can:
- learn all about the recruiting process
- interact with coaches
- post your highlights
- engage/answer questions from anyone
- see what is going on in the sports world
Parents, fans, and coaches are able to stay up to date on all the most recent news.
While this is great, especially from a macro-perspective, there’s a catch at the micro-level.
The Bad Sides Of Twitter
Twitter was built for freedom of information, not for college recruiting.
It just happened to find its way there as there were no other place for coaches, athletes, and parents to interact socially.
The problem is how diluted it got. I’m not kidding when I say college coaches get hundreds of DM’s a day and have thousands of messages they haven’t opened and probably never will.
College coaches use Twitter for 3 main reasons now:
- clout (get verified and have lots of followers)
- interact with fans
- see relevant news and if anyone has posted offers
So unless you’re a top recruit being able to constantly tweet “blessed to receive an offer from…” very few college coaches are going to even notice you, let alone recruit you.
The Ugly Side of Twitter
Anytime you have a free platform with no barrier to entry or verification of identity you’ll encounter some problems.
Scammers, liars, and “get recruited quick” people on your timeline.
This has impacted the sports world, especially college recruiting and NIL where athletes (and their parents) are eager to reach the next level.
I’ve heard of horror stories where recruiting consultants charge $5000.
I’ve seen NFT scams targeting college athletes looking to enter in to NIL deals.
I’ve witnessed fake college coach accounts pretend to recruit players and charge $100’s for fake camps.
The bottom line is twitter is great for staying up to date on information, learning from others, and connecting with others who can help…
…but it’s not good for recruiting, because it wasn’t built for it.
So What’s The Solution?
Don’t play football? Then you need to be emailing coaches, making a great highlight tape, going to camps, playing in travel team events, and working on your game daily.
Play football? Then you need to download and use the AIR app.
AIR took some of Twitter’s most helpful features and optimized them for recruiting.
Like these for example:
- College coaches can filter their messages from athletes into categories such as graduation year, position, and state.
Why’s that important? A college coach looking to fill a certain grad year or position can find those messages and not wasting time sifting through the other ones.
That’s good for the coach and also the athletes.
- Every college coach that signs up for AIR goes through a verification process before they are allowed to use the app.
Why’s that important? On Twitter anyone can sign up and act like a coach, on AIR you have to prove it which helps everyone gain confidence that every coach is legit.
- The ability to see research coaches and their university in one place – plus the option to swipe right and show you’re interested.
Why’s that important? Clicking on any college within AIR provides you with complete information about the school and also shows you a list of all their coach profiles.
This enables you to research everything about a school and the coaches before sending a message to them.
AIR has taken the best recruiting features from several places and designed the best possible FREE app.
Conclusion of Using Twitter for College Recruiting
Twitter is great. I love Twitter and use it more than I’d like to admit.
But for college recruiting it’s not efficient anymore.
AIR is currently solving that problem for football, and plans to be in every sport at some point in 2022.
I’d say it’s important to have a Twitter account and follow people like myself who put out helpful information.
Other than that I would be emailing coaches like crazy, finding camps, working on your game, and thinking of other ways to get seen.
Coaches will go where the players are.
They were using Twitter for college recruiting at first, but stopped once their followers went up and egos came in. Now they use the blue bird to promote themselves.
It’s in your hands to get recruited.
