From Instagram to TikTok, a variety of clubs and sports at RM utilize social media platforms to connect with the student body more effectively and promote their activities. At least, this has been the intention behind the majority of social media accounts affiliated with RM extracurriculars.
In the 2021-2022 school year, Instagram accounts began popping up on RM student’s timelines such as ‘@rmshlumped’, where RM students could send the account photos of other students sleeping in class, to which the account would post the photo for anyone on the internet to see. Students began to get frustrated and the hype around the account dwindled overtime. Now, the account currently sits as an RM student body relic.
Although social media accounts like ‘@rmshlumped’ are intended to be found funny by the student body, accounts for clubs and sports serve a different and more important purpose. The use of social media accounts create an easy and effective way for clubs and sports to grow their respective organizations.
One reason sports teams utilize social media accounts is to communicate information about their games. Almost every team at RM has an Instagram account, and most of them have their season schedule posted and even pinned to the top of their pages so as many people as possible can know when and where their games are. This is a more efficient way for teams to spread information about their games than solely relying on people to check RM’s athletics website since Instagram is an app that most people have and frequently check.
For example, our girls varsity volleyball team played in the state quarter-finals on Nov. 10 and the student section was packed. This is likely a direct effect of the amount of social media posts that were being shared informing people of the match, its details and encouraging people to come.
“I think social media really helps to get more people to come to the games and helps to spread the word out about the games…where they are and like all the information about it,” sophomore and girls varsity volleyball player Ellie Mitchell said.
Outside of communicating basic information about sports games, social media also plays a major role in the organization of game themes. Game themes are such an important and fun part of the games. They would not be executed or organized nearly as well without the use of social media.
“Especially like it helps me know what theme the game will be and they organize it really well,” sophomore Meadow Pollack said.
SGA always utilizes their Instagram account to easily communicate the themes for the upcoming season, allowing students to know exactly when each theme will take place. They also make ‘hype videos’ correlating with each theme which also encourages students and gets them excited to attend sports events.
Social media also plays a key role when it comes to increasing participation within the sports teams as well. Many teams post information about tryouts, clinics and off-season workouts so students know how to get involved in a sport if they would like to. A great example of this would be when our girls varsity field hockey team posted that they were in search of goalies back in August, and ended up having three new goalies join them for the season.
Social media has not only helped sports teams, but clubs as well. A lot of students actually find out about clubs through their social media accounts. It is difficult to see every club at the club fair and some clubs aren’t even at the club fair.
“Regardless of how many posters you put up, you can’t put up enough posters for everyone to see around the school,” sophomore and Climate Club leader Anoushka Sankar said. “As a member of Climate Club, I’m going to say that’s not sustainable.”
Outside of the club fair, there aren’t many easily accessible ways for students to discover clubs and social media accounts do a great job of picking up the extra slack, working as another mechanism to get a club’s name out there.
Most clubs with social media accounts have a link somewhere on their profile where people can easily sign up to join their club.
“We also created a link tree which is in our bio in instagram where people can really easily find how to sign up for our email, and really easily find how to sign up for projects we are doing,” Sankar said.
Similarly to sports, social media accounts are a very easy way for clubs to share information about meetings, projects, events and more. While most clubs have an email list, where they email said information to their members, social media is just another way that members and others can find out how to participate.
“Since becoming more active, a lot more people come to our meetings, a lot more people have found out about our projects and we’ve had a lot more participation in general,” Sankar said.
According to a recent article on teen social media usage by the AP-NORC, 76 percent of teens in America use Instagram (the platform that most clubs and sports teams use). It is safe to say that students check social media a decent amount. Because of this, it is an extremely good idea for clubs and sports teams to use social media as a tool to increase participation, and it has proven to work very well thus far.
