Howard University football head coach Gary Harrell recently spoke with students from Charles H. Flowers High School in Price Georges County, Md. But he wasn’t there to recruit them as potential players for the Bison football team.
Instead, Coach Harrell was there to convince the young students about building their own unique brand.
“Everybody has to look at themselves as a brand. And if you’re a brand it’s all about how you market yourself everyday to become better in life,” Harrell said.
The second-year football coach advised students on how to use social media platforms to market themselves to the public.
“It’s all about how you sell yourself in a positive light. It’s all about how you sell yourself with that social media platform,” said Harrell, who also warned students to be mindful of what they say or do on social media networks.
“Whether its Twitter or Facebook, anything you put on there, it’s out there,” he said. “So when you go for a job interview, that information that you put in the social media will be there for the interviewers to see. So be careful.”
Harrell also told students that anything that they may do today will affect them when they’re 25 or 30.
“I’m not perfect, I did make mistakes, but had I not put myself in position to create and take advantage of opportunities, when I went up for the Howard coach position and they researched my name, then it would have hurt me in that process,” Harrell said.
Coach went on to explain the importance of not only networking socially online, but also networking in person any and every where you go.
“You never know if the students you’re sitting right next to now could be your future boss, or a CEO, and could create a job opportunity for you,” Harrell said. “So once again, you’re a brand and you always have to remember that. We have different races, different genders, but in the end we’re all trying to reach the same goal in life and that’s to be successful.”