Social media is a great way of connecting with people around the world. Friends, family and new connections open to the user with one click of an app. But did you know that social media could be used to get a pro basketball contract?
I have been floating around a Facebook group and noticed a lot of basketball players posting on groups in hope that a team will like what they see and contact them. What a concept! I think this is great. I’ve even seen some teams post position availability.
Have I raised your interest? Before you go blindly posting on these groups you need to get your checklist in order. Checklist? I hear you say. Yes damn it! A checklist of things you need to do before you start doing your own recruiting.
Checklist
- Have you got a basketball resume created?
- Do you have game tape?
- Do you have some money saved? Enough to get you a ticket and accommodation for a couple of weeks.
Let’s look at each of the points in this checklist so that you get a better understanding of what is going on.
Have you got a basketball resume created?
Super important! You need a basketball resume. If you were a follower of this blog you’d know I bang on about this all too often. Still I meet people that are clueless to the importance of a basketball resume. Mustn’t be a follower of No Borders Basketball blog.
To summarise my rants about the importance of a basketball resume I will employ a scenario. So close your eyes and picture this. Maybe close your eyes after you read the rest of the paragraph. You wouldn’t know what to do if you closed your eyes already.
Picture a basketball player using social media to talk to a coach over messenger. Then it comes to the point in the conversation where the coach asks for his details such as stats and so on. This player isn’t a follower of No Borders Basketball so they don’t have a basketball resume prepared. The player tells the coach he’ll send the details through and that’s the end of the conversation.
A person that is a keen reader of this blog in a similar situation could immediately send their basketball resume and keep talking. Maybe get into more details about potentially trying out for the team.
What people don’t understand, professional basketball coaches are busy. I talk to them on social media all the time. I get mostly one-word replies. So tell me, what are the chances you’ll talk to that coach again? You drastically reduce your chances of getting an audience with them. Drastically! You want to be in a position where you are organised enough to give the most basic details to get another chance to talk to that member of the coaching staff.
Do you have game tape?
Game tape is a great way of allowing recruiters and coaches to gauge your talents and find you an appropriate team.
Video these days are the most powerful forms of connecting. After all YouTube is the second largest search engine. That’s why I dedicated a whole chapter to it in my book Building a Basketball Profile.
If you haven’t had a chance to read the book the general summary of getting videos on YouTube is to make sure that you are titling and adding content to the video so that it can easily be searchable and seen. No point uploading the video without it being indexed is it?
To have your videos be searchable lets focus on one main component. Content.
Your video title
Title needs to have your name, position you play and if you’re playing on a high level team such as a rep side, add the team’s name to the video title.
For example:
VIDEO TITLE: Basketball profile: Manoj Ramanathan Point Guard Melbourne Tigers
Your video description
Description is something you need to put as much information as possible into. If a coach likes what they see, he or she will look at your description to learn more about you. It’s vital that special effort is placed on writing a good description. Things to include in a description:
- Full name
- Date of birth and age
- Height in feet and centimeters
- Weight in kilograms and pounds
- Position(s) you play
- Use the short paragraph about yourself that you would have completed for your basketball resume.
- Add a link to your basketball resume (resume saved either in Dropbox or Google Drive).
For more information on how to upload videos to YouTube, visit YouTube’s help section (http://bit.ly/1qZLCZj).
Facebook groups
Joining various Facebook groups is a great way to connect with various basketball contacts around the world. I do have a small list of groups that I troll around in and time to time chime in with some advice to budding basketball players.
The best one I have seen thus far is Basketball Openings. I have seen coaches and agents post about openings on various teams around the world. Now, the money offered is pretty bad and is nothing you can live off but at least it’ll get a foot in the door. Hence the third point on the checklist. Get some savings so that you can afford flights and a couple weeks accommodation.
If you are looking to go pro I strongly suggest you join this group and groups like this and connect with various people.
Being seen on Facebook groups
Apart from the obvious and posting some highlight tape on these groups my advice is to be very active. Make comments on other people posts and reach out to fellow basketball players posting their videos in the group.
Being engaged will get you some form of rep from people within the group so next time you post up a highlight film you’d more likely get some positive comments. Making your video be seen to more and more people in the group. Not getting lost in the huge volumes of content getting posted daily in the group.
Remember, it is peoples comments on your posts that you need, not likes. Comments will ensure that your video is popping up on people’s timelines who are following the group. This way you are more likely to be seen by a coach.
Facebook Groups for Pro Basketball Contracts
Basketball Openings
Pro Basketball Jobs
Semi-Pro Basketball Tryouts
Pro Basketball Teams and Job Offers for Players
Final thought about social media
Please don’t think that social media will land you a contract very easily. It is a tool that can help. As in the opening of this article I suggest before you start looking into social media for your recruiting you ensure you tick off everything on the checklist.
Only then I recommend you start positing on social media. But please don’t be a spammer. Engage with others too. It is social media and a community so don’t be so shy to connect with people.
Additional to recruiting, social media is a great way to build your player profile. Find out how you can use social media to build a brand and market yourself.
Happy hunting!