College Sports Information Directors of America

CoSIDA New Media/Technology Committee Chair Chris Syme wrote this blog piece on "surviving student-athletes on social media" - with the need for college athletics to engage in social media education and monitoring for student-athletes. CoSIDA conducted its own social media education survey this past fall, and 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.

Read online: Surviving student-athletes on social media (Part One), by Chris Syme, via cksyme.org

In addition to viewing Syme's website, you can follow her on Twitter (@cksyme).

According to the latest social media user statistics from Pew Internet, the 18-29 age group is the largest on Twitter. Some studies suggest that over 80 percent of student-athletes have a public Twitter account and use it regularly. Couple that with the fact that just over 56 percent of schools actually train student-athletes how to use the real-time channel, and you may have a recipe for trouble.

The first step in surviving student-athletes on social media is to be proactive. The ostrich “head in the sand” approach may appear to work until you have a crisis on your hands. It may come in the form of a picture that surfaces online of a high school recruit attending a party thrown by team players. In the emotion of having a good time, the group decides to post a picture online forgetting they have a bong sitting on the table (see how this actually happened). Oops.

Athletic department administrators often default to the “we hope it will go away soon” school of thought while a social media crisis spins out of control. Teresa Valerio Parrot, principal of TVP Communications in Denver, specializes in crisis management for higher education. She says a proactive and flexible crisis plan is a must for all athletic departments.

Parrot said in her experience universities with a proactive social media crisis plan weather their internal and external storms much better for many reasons:

• A social media monitoring system that operates 24/7 to give you a heads-up on negative events and help you track sentiment and volume.
• A triage response system for handling the high volume of negative sentiment.
• A specific piece in your crisis plan for responding to viral events.

The first step to surviving student athletes on social media is to be proactive. Next step: Be a community.

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