Professional Athletes: Social Media Posts That Harm The Player, Their Team, and The League

The rise of social media has completely transformed our world. The ease and speed with which content can spread across social media platforms mean that a single thoughtless post can come back to haunt you, even years down the road. After all, how often do we hear about online scandals involving college and professional athletes? 

Remember when Josh Allen was expected to be the top pick in the NFL Draft back in 2018? Just hours before the draft, multiple racist tweets were resurfaced from his high school years. Though his career wasn’t totally ruined (he was picked seventh by the Buffalo Bills), the incident shows just how powerfully social media use can shape our reputation–– and future. 

The same thing happened again in 2019 with LSU quarterback Joe Burrow. Clearly, social media history continues to be a source of liability, not only for the athlete but also for the brand they represent. That’s why LifeBrand has created the turnkey solution for reputation management on social media, using our proprietary AI technology.

Many PR nightmares involving inappropriate content from the past could have been avoided with reputation management technology. Whether it’s offensive posts or questionable photos, many of us don’t have a picture-perfect online history. And unfortunately, most of us get hit harder than Allen or Burrow when that content finally comes to light. People who don’t have a celebrity status to fall back on may not be offered that quick forgiveness—and their organization must often bear the consequences.

What is Reputation Management Technology?

If you haven’t heard of this technology, that’s because the software from LifeBrand represents the first of its kind. Other reputation management companies help businesses to monitor and respond to negative reviews or news stories. 

We’re focused on a different kind of problem: social media history. Right now, the only way to get rid of incriminating content is to manually scroll back through years of social media posts. Our patent-pending AI technology takes care of this for you by scanning an account for inappropriate material in mere minutes.

Organizations can license our revolutionary technology to perform scans on potential new hires as well as current employees. What if you hired someone, only to find out that they have a past that ends up creating a scandal for the organization? Your employees can also make use of the software to ensure that their posts are a positive reflection of themselves and the company, all while maintaining their own privacy and first amendment rights. 

Human Resources: Where The Rubber Meets the Road

The world of sports can be seen as a microcosm of society, including all the ills associated with internet use. Younger athletes who are now rising to fame were the first to grow up on social media. One example is Josh Hader, a relief pitcher with the Milwaukee Brewers. Just before making his debut for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in 2018, offensive tweets from his high school days began circulating the internet. 

While the racist and homophobic comments were quickly denounced by the League, the story reveals just how much even professional athletic organizations are grappling to control social media. And the long lifespan of tweets – over six years in Hader’s case – further shows the magnitude of the problem. If even professional leagues aren’t doing their due diligence on athletes, how much more does the average business struggle to meet these threats?

Human resources professionals typically take weeks to recruit and vet a single candidate. 

Yet, all that time can go down the drain if a damaging post resurfaces during the process (or worse, after the candidate has already been hired!) As a result, recruiters are spending more of their time at work checking candidates’ social media. But who has the time to check ten years of posts for every candidate? It doesn’t make sense to expect human resources to perform a job that would be accomplished more efficiently and accurately by artificial intelligence. 

LifeBrand for Your Business Success

Especially in times of economic instability like these, the cost of a misstep in hiring can be astronomical. Attracting negative attention due to a social media scandal could cause permanent damage to your business, making recovery difficult or even impossible.

But even if that worst case scenario never occurs, it’s more than likely that you’re wasting money by paying human resources to do something that a machine should be doing. Our reputation management technology will increase productivity at your business by saving recruiters the time they would have spent scrolling through social media. It also provides you with the confidence that you haven’t missed anything important about a candidate during the screening process. And of course, you can also use the software to identify and remove any content associated with current employees.

LifeBrand is here to save you money while giving you more control over your company’s reputation. We offer the opportunity to license our software at a rate tailored to fit your unique business needs. For more information about pricing solutions, we invite you to get a free instant quote.