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Networking is crucial to professionals in teaching and coaching. COVID-19 has forced everyone to adapt and adjust in many areas personally and professionally. These effects have also transcended to networking communication. Before the pandemic, many people utilized virtual networking avenues frequently due to time, distance, and comfortability. Now, virtual networking has become the primary type of almost all communication.
What often happens in the real world transcends the sports world. This is also true regarding social media. With today’s technology advances, it is essential for sports coaches to utilize social media platforms in teaching their athletes.
Mullin, Hardy, and Sutton (2014) noted that Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Foursquare, Tumblr, and Pinterest are the most popular social media platforms. Additional popular social media platforms include Snapchat, YouTube, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn. Social media enables us to watch and share videos and photos, read and write blogs, post on social networking sites, and have online conversations (Newman, Peck, Harris, & Willhide, 2013). In today’s world, new media is defined as digital & social media. Social media encompasses all of the interactions between people online and all the ways they participate in and share information, knowledge, and opinions while using web-based applications to communicate (Newman, Peck, Harris, & Willhide, 2013). In regard to sport, Coakley (2017) noted four characteristics of new media or digital and social media:
