Social Media Branding for Athletes

07 Mar Social Media Branding for Athletes

From watching a three-year-old be dubbed “The Next Tiger Woods”, touting over millions of views and several thousand subscribers, to viewing daily uploads from your everyday teen looking for some notoriety; there is plenty of space to make a name for yourself using social media. You might not have that crazy hole in one, last minute buzzer beater, or a LaMelo Ball-like highlight reel, but keeping a few of these suggestions in mind will help grow your engagement immensely. Doing so means branching out on the top three social media platforms, focusing on producing quality content and being consistent, and last relying on those closest to you to help facilitate your content knowing so you can better know your audience and appeal to them. Your choices of platforms, the level of content produced, as well as your audience, are all important factors in social media branding.

Social Media Platforms

For starters, let’s look at the social platforms. Think quickly about the first place you visit to view athletic content. Is it YouTube? Facebook? Instagram? The real question is “does it matter?” How will you utilize any one of these mediums to brand yourself? YouTube, a site that currently has over 1.3 billion users, receives over 30 million of visitors per day, is your number one source for exposure. There needs no reiteration of how popular YouTube has grown in its past 13 years of existence. YouTube should be used to broadcast your visual content as well as your creative edge. From highlights, to well thought, scripted, depictions of your image. YouTube is the most popular video streaming platform users browse through for relevant material. Your personal YouTube account is for broadcasting yourself relevant to the material. Your growth and popularity are based on your content so it’s crucial to keep users engaged and willing to subscribe.

Facebook, one of the first major platforms, is an extremely quick and valuable way to increase social media presence. You’re capable of branding yourself from your own personal page, a fan page, or as a business page. The latter two require a personal page to begin and have their own benefits, but the main purpose is to push your already created content. With Facebook, you can leverage your content to your friends and family whom, we’ll come back to, are vital for circulation of your content.

Instagram, the fastest growing medium, might just be the easiest, and most exciting, social media platform to manage your brand. With Instagram, you have the luxury of posting photos, videos that can be reached by a larger audience by simply attaching hashtags. With hashtags, you can draw users to your posts. With a limit of just thirty hashtags, you want to stick with tags that will engage you would like to interact with. Keep in mind not to waste your hashtags on generic searches that will most likely lunge your photo amongst millions of others. Your goal in branding yourself is by sticking to your niche. With Instagram’s new algorithm, the growth isn’t as flourishing as it was a couple of months ago. The biggest game-changer for quick growth on Instagram is how active you’re willing to be. It’s easier said than done, but the growth will be evident.

Content

A quote from Henry Ford puts it simply, “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.” If you’re banking on your abilities to bring in the viewers, followers, and subscribers, what you display is going to be critical in receiving continuous support. Stick to these two rules; Good Content and Consistency. Cliché, but take time organizing and perfecting your content. Social media can be volatile. Users are very visually receptive and if your skills aren’t up to par with the standard, you can always get away with having good content. This is exceptionally important with Instagram. There are three types on Instagram; those with great content and low skill, those with poor content and great skill, and those who happen to have both. Search around and you will find that many can get away with any of the three methods but what usually drives their page is consistency. Your audience wants to see more of your content. Whether you’re posting pictures on videos on YouTube, or taking advantage of both on Instagram and Facebook, stay active. Do your best to produce content that will retain users.

Audience

As the subject of your own brand, it’s your responsibility to find the appropriate audience to draw in. To make the best use of your time, start with those closest to you. Friends and family are often the best source of feedback and will let you know whether your content is worth sharing. At the very least you will have a few willing to like, follow, subscribe, and even share your content. Next, seek out your target audience. The correlation between your content and your audience is important if you’re looking for adequate engagement. Reddit, a discussion website, can be used to find out what your target audience is looking to see, as well a source you can use to publish your content on for others to see and comment. As you continue to push your content, remember that Instagram can be used as a way to create filler content. Users love to feel motivated, and because creating daily content can be difficult, use those blank periods as a moment to post some thoughts of yours or quotes. Always seek to create engagement.

Conclusion

Bottom line, have a direction. You should know, prior to creating any social media pages, whether your content will drive forward a productive social media page. It doesn’t take long to get buried on social media, and that can often drive users to the edge, but if you’re able to produce good content and stay consistent you will see positive results. Remember, you are your brand. Do everything you can to propel your image forward and don’t look back!

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