Getting recruited for college is probably the single most challenging aspect a student athlete is forced to deal with. The reason recruiting is so hard is because there are what seems like millions of strategies that student athletes and parents are constantly battling over.
Instead of trying to apply every single strategy to get your name into the hands of college coaches, why not just focus on a few.
Parents and student athletes should work together to develop a college recruiting plan, a good strategy or some kind of blueprint to reach coaches. Here are a few strategies that I think will work:
1. Write letters to college coaches.
2. Send emails to college coaches.
3. Send DVD’s to college coaches.
4. Write a blog post then send the link to college coaches.
5. Type a letter to college coaches.
6. Give college coaches a call.
7. Send a YouTube link to a college coach.
8. Go on unofficial visits and meet college coaches.
I like using this website, U.S. Universities By State because it’s easy to find a college program I’m looking for without really having to search around for individual college programs.
When it comes to your college recruiting strategies you cannot contact one college coach and just forget about it. You need to have a follow-up strategy to network with college programs.
It’s not being a pain in the butt if you e-mail a college coach each week with valuable information that can help that coach make a decision on whether or not to recruit you.
1. Send an updated YouTube link.
2. Send a handwritten letter with any updated information.
3. Send an e-mail that has any useful and updated information that you have.
Following-up is not bugging anyone:
What’s your follow-up strategy?
Staying in constant contact with college coaches who don’t know you is not a problem for coaches. Your job is trying to get them to know who you are.
The follow-up information you send them must be relevant and useful. Be careful on sending out many DVDs because it can become extremely expensive.
Oftentimes, millions of parents are thinking the DVD is the best way to go but college programs are being bombarded with DVDs daily, sometimes pushing DVDs to the side because there are just too many to look at.
Send a link of your YouTube video with all your game action. This should peak a college coach’s interest by getting them to want to see more and know more about you, the student athlete.
Here’s what many others say about having a recruiting video; Click now to see more.
Twitter and the network you can create
Twitter is a powerful tool because it’s fast and easy to use and college coaches are on it all day long. Student athletes and parents can actually build a Twitter following of college coaches. You can create a Twitter list by building an exclusive list of only college coaches.
On Twitter, you can actually create up to 1,000 lists with up to 5,000 members, but for the purpose of college recruiting you may want to create a list for division one coaches, division two coaches, and so on.
You can also make your Twitter list public or private. For the purposes of recruiting, I would make the list private because you don’t want everyone to know your business.
Facebook is okay also, but what I have found is that many college coaches are really not on Facebook like they are one Twitter.
Procrastination: How deadly it can be
For thousands of reasons, many student athletes and their parents sometimes take a slow motion approach to the college recruiting process. Think about this for a moment: the college recruiting process has only so many days in it. Each day that passes without any action being taken towards recruiting, is a day lost that can never be made up.
Final thoughts
Think about the type of college recruiting strategy you want to implement. It could be something as simple as e-mailing your video link to 50 college coaches. Always make sure you have a follow-up strategy, don’t just e-mail 50 college coaches and then forget about them.
Think of more than one strategy to get your name into the hands of as many college coaches as possible and be consistent with your strategy. I don’t think you have to come up with 50 different college recruiting strategies to reach college coaches, that would only confuse you and you probably will end up doing nothing.
Here’s a list of resources I think you’ll be interested in:
Basketball Classroom: This is a great program that helps basketball coaches learn new strategies and techniques to be a great basketball coach.
Point Guard Academy: The point guard is a coach on the basketball floor and this is a great program for those up and coming point guards to learn more and to get better.
Mental Toughness Training: This is a great program to help athletes build confidence and overcome failures as they compete athletically every day.
Talk To The Recruiter: Talk to a college recruiting expert and learn college recruiting strategies on how to go from high school athlete to college athlete.
How To Be A College Recruiter: Learn what it takes to be a college recruiter, to run your own recruiting service, how to get business and grow your business.
Leave me a voicemail
A lot of my ideas for blog post come from emails I receive from my readers. I thought I would give you an opportunity to leave me a voicemail with your comments or suggestions. It’s easy to leave me a voicemail on my Speakpipe Page.
Finally:
I’m in the process of writing two new eBooks on the college recruiting process. The first one will talk about how recruiting has changed over the last 20 years. My second eBook is something I’ve been very passionate about for all of my adult life, it’s about how to be a college recruiter.
There are so many recruiting services that do a great job while others have a hard time getting business. I was a fulltime college recruiter from 1989 until 2005 and I would generally sign up one student athlete every day. The strategies I’ve learned from being a college recruiter are what I want to pass on to those individuals who are looking to get in the business or who are looking to improve on their existing business.
Please feel free to leave a comment in the comments section and please share on Facebook and Twitter.
