Bryan Johnston, Georgia Southern: Client Feature


This fall, INFLCR is highlighting our clients across college athletics, and their successes and lessons learned empowering athletes on social the past year. Thanks to these featured clients for not only empowering your athletes, but also being a champion of the INFLCR app and platform!

In this Q&A, we’re featuring Bryan Johnston, Senior Associate AD of Communications at Georgia Southern.


What was your career journey to get to this point in your career as Senior Associate AD of Communications at Georgia Southern? 

Upon graduating from the University of South Carolina in 1999, I spent 16 years working in Virginia Tech’s Athletics Communications Office as the football, wrestling and softball contacts.

In August of 2015, I was fortunate enough to be hired at Georgia Southern to oversee the communications and creative services sides of the athletic department and have really seen a growth in my development as a communication professional since coming to Statesboro.


What are the top 3 pieces of career advice you have? 

From a work standpoint, you have to be able to multitask and pivot. If you can’t do that, you’re in for a rough go of it in this ever-changing landscape we’re in.

Second, as a communications professional, get to know your coaches and student-athletes so you can help tell their stories and build their brands.

Finally, enjoy the ride. We are paid to watch and work college sports and that’s pretty cool when you think about it. It can be a grind and the hours can be long, but the opportunity to be in this environment every day is something I’d never trade away!


How has COVID-19 impacted your current role? 

Coming up with creative content in the spring when there were no games going on was a challenge. We learned quickly that the desire for content didn’t diminish and we had to keep our fan base engaged and interested in Georgia Southern Athletics.


What are some of the changes and how have you adapted to continue executing your responsibilities? 

Thankfully, the Sun Belt is allowing us to play this fall so we are able to have some games to try and get back to a normal schedule but I really feel for the schools and content creators who are still waiting to have their teams return to action.

Granted, in the grand scheme of things, athletics isn’t what’s important in the world, but we hope what we do on the field and on social media brings some normalcy back to Eagle Nation’s daily routines.


Aside from INFLCR, what is one thing that makes your job easier for you?

We couldn’t have the success on social media we’re having without the team we’ve built here. From our communications directors in Chad, Marc and Aaron providing written content to video and graphic guys in Jeremy, AJ and Mo getting us content, it’s a team effort.

And then having a social media director as we have in Megan Leben who brings it all together with a great plan to get all of the information out, and then tracks all of our metrics, it really does take everyone pulling the rope in the same direction to have success. 


If you could change one thing about the content industry, what would that be?

I wish people who request content truly knew how long it takes to produce something of great quality.

It’s not just slapping a logo on a cutout anymore or throwing some video in iMovie. Projects take hours, and sometimes days, to get done right. When people come in at the last minute with requests because they didn’t properly prepare to give us adequate lead time, sometimes it can be frustrating.

But, we get it done because putting out quality content is what we take pride in.


Keep up with Bryan:

Twitter: @JohnstonBryan

LinkedIn: Bryan Johnston

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