UWG Sports Get A New App For Social Media Promotion

To better promote University of West Georgia athletes and their teams, UWG and the Gulf South Conference have partnered with a social media influencer software called “INFLCR”.

Jared Boggus, Assistant Sports Information Director, met with three sports teams in the fall to soft launch the program and it will be used for all UWG sports teams beginning the fall 2022 and start of the 2023 season.

This new program not only allows the UWG Athletics to share content, but the athletes to share through their personal accounts. The amount of followers each athlete has combined equals to be more than the UWG Athletics page has, meaning the content all the athletes post is reaching a larger audience.

“The goal of the INFLCR is to assist student-athletes in marketing themselves as a student and an athlete,” said Boggus. This helps the student-athletes create a social media presence and following that could help them both while in college and their professional lives after college.”

“It also creates a symbolic relationship between our department and the student-athletes,” continues Boggus. “Through INFLCR, we provide student-athletes with their photos and other assets they need to market themselves which reaches more people than we can reach through the department’s social media channels.”

When new photos from team events are taken, they are put into the software and it runs facial recognition to tag the specific athlete. This photo can be seen by the athlete through “my media” under “explore more content”. From there they can link it with their Twitter or Instagram.

“The new INFLCR software will be a vital asset as it will allow us to deliver content directly to our student-athletes, so they can better market themselves, which in turn helps us better market their respective teams,” said Boggus. “Improved marketing ultimately puts that team in front of more eyes and more people which in turn increases attendance, revenue and support for those teams.”

Boggus explained the new software to the teams who are currently using it as a trial for next season. New photos are added after each home event, unless a team specifically has hired a photographer to travel with them.

This new program is opening up a new world for the athletes. Currently they rely on a staff member that manages their sports social media page to post content.

Each team manages their social media pages differently but INFLCR gives each athlete the equal opportunity to market themselves and their team. Currently certain teams have hired members to be on their staff to promote their athletes and those who don’t rely on the department staff to post on the main account. This has given the idea that some teams are promoted more than others on purpose but this is not the case since some have hired staff to manage their own promotion.

INFLCR is going to allow better exposure for the athletes and each team will begin to equally be promoted. The goal of the app is so that athletes can “tell their story” and UWG is now giving their athletes this ability by implementing this app through each athletics program.