#VolTwitter and the future of...well, anything and everything

Today was fascinating.

I check Twitter a few times each day and am probably more active during football season because it makes it easy to check scores and stay in the know. Today, I spent the majority of my afternoon watching and refreshing my feed as Vol Nation banded together over the potential hire for our next head coach. And their actions have changed the course of the direction of that coaching search and our future as a program.

Here's the disclaimer: This post is not about UT football, the potential head coach, or who said or did what withing UT's administration or our major funding sources. I am focusing here on communications and how Vol fans just proved that social media is a powerful force and we shouldn't forget that anytime soon.

I'm so old that there were only about 6 classes focused on PR when I was in college. In fact, my degree is a Bachelor in Communications with a Concentration in Public Relations. The majority of my classes were journalism based. To turn in assignments, we saved our work on a disk and then passed it to the person next to us. And those were the fat monitor desktops that took about 10 minutes to load and be ready for us and they were the newest technology at the time.

So, when I think of all the changes over the years in communications and how people provide feedback and opinions and news, I look at today's events as something that should be discussed in classes, among organizational staff and leaders, and PR professionals for months to come. I didn't learn in a time of instant news. I had to physically call people or meet them in-person to get information for class stories (or watch Judge Judy but that's a whole other story).

Seemingly #VolTwitter shut down efforts to hire the next head coach in the span of a few hours. I'm basing that on what I find to be good sports sources and things can always change.

Not only did the people of Twitter provide contact information for the current AD and encourage people to call/text/email him but they created a call to action for people to go to campus and protest. They posted pictures of the rock and then live shots from said protest and then as it moved from the stadium to the athletics building.

The whole thing started roughly midday with some information on the next hire and the movement took on a life of its own.

That's powerful.

We've seen many movements on social media over the years but I don't remember one that hit so close to home for me. Anyone who knows me will know that I love TN Football. I always have so this story is a big deal to me for many reasons. It's important as a Vol fan but it is also important as someone who still very much works in PR/Communications not just for my jobs but for my community service as well.

Folks were - and still are - tweeting and re-tweeting their disgust for the potential hire. National media personalities were arguing with Vol fans over the situation. Articles that were posted a year ago were easily found and posted on various outlets so that fans could understand the unrest. I read posts where someone was for this hire change their mind and realize that it wasn't just about football to the fan base.

To me, Twitter effectively put enough pressure on this coach and on the administration to stop the deal. Last time I checked, this person's name was mentioned in more than 55,000 tweets. He only has 8,569 followers when I checked this evening. He doesn't seem to be active on Twitter but Vol fans made sure that his name was mentioned over and over again to our AD voicing that he was not the right person for the job here.

Vol fans stopped the deal cold. Again, that's powerful.

If people on social media are passionate enough to create multiple calls to action and stop a big deal, they have changed the landscape for future coaching searches and so much more.

This isn't just a tale of a head coach search gone wrong, this is a tale that as a person or business owner, we have to understand the power of social media. We need to have communications knowledge or a team on staff or at least someone readily available to advise us when we are being mentioned on social media and how to handle it.

Today, we saw fans band together to stop the hiring of a head coach. Let that sink in. Vol fans stopped a deal between UT and the next head coach. Maybe I'm wrong but the perception from the day is that there was too much pressure on the candidate and the AD to move forward. Tomorrow may tell us a different story.

There's so much to this situation. Beyond the social media efforts, there are so many communications topics that could be addressed but tonight, I want you to think about the power of social media. I want you to think about the power of a tweet, a re-tweet, and the fact that anyone can pull old articles or share contact information.

Love it or hate it, social media is a powerful outlet and I believe it will only get stronger after today.

For now, I'm shutting it down and prepping for the week ahead. See you on the roads!