A guide on how to implement your athlete brand

Once you have an idea of who you are as an athlete, the next challenge is getting that across. One of the biggest questions we face as athletes in the modern world is what to post to social media.

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, but about the stories you tell.” – Seth Godin, author & Marketing Guru

Social media is one of the main ways your athlete brand is shown. There is also how you carry yourself, interact with people, and perform in person, the video and audio content you put out, as well as interviews, but social media tends to be the biggest struggle, and the key that informs the others.

Knowing what to post and when

The key to a strong athlete brand is authenticity. This means the goal for us when creating an athlete brand strategy is to create something that doesn’t feel like a restriction of what you can talk about, but more a freedom to be yourself.

The reason we define it, is to give us permission to talk about the things we love, rather than as a restriction of dullness we must stick to. It allows us to build deeper relationships with our potential audience and fans.

“Friendship is born at the moment when on person says to another: ‘What> You too? I thought I was the only one.’” – C.S. Lewis

There’s no simple formula of post this at this time and you will succeed. It must be an authentic representation of your own personality, so to get a personalised formula, you have to do a little digging. Once we have that structure outlined, you can let your personality and moods dictate the schedule. Let your situations dictate the story.

“Sports is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and achieving against great odds. Athletes, in times of difficulty, can be important role models.” – Bill Bradley, Hall of Fame NBA Player

It’s not just about your contest wins and how great you are.

Using Content Pillars to Simplify Posting

The easiest way to simplify your athlete brand implementation is with content pillars.

Simple works, and although your personality is a complex, moving, shifting thing, we need to simplify the key traits we show in order to make the job easier. This is where the idea of ‘content pillars’ comes in. A content pillar is a strong theme, simplified into a single word or two which we use as a filter to create content. We use content pillars to define the key traits in your athlete brand that we want to be talking about.

“I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.” – Herbert Bayard Swope, American journalist

From Athlete Brand Ideas to Content Pillars in 5 steps:

Outline your brand with some in-depth questions - read our article on athlete branding and complete the worksheet to help.
Highlight the key ideas which keep popping up throughout your answers. There will be certain themes that become apparent whilst reviewing your personal brand. (e.g. family is important, health is a passion, I’m a Star Wars nerd etc…)
Refine traits into 6 pillars of strong themes. - E.g. Family, Winning, Training, Diet, Pizza, and Folk Music.
Order your pillars into 2 core pillars and 4 support pillars. Use this hierarchy to plan how often you post/talk about each pillar with social media. Focus on the 2 core pillars the most, and then disperse smaller amounts of the remaining 4.
Post in a 4:3 Ration by using your 2 core pillars to post about 4 days a week and the support pillars on the remaining 3 days. You don’t need to stick to a 7 day posting schedule, but aim for the 4:3 ratio.

Top tips:

Think of your content pillars not as a restriction you have to adhere to, but as permission for you to be yourself.
Use a long list of adjectives and select the ones that you feel best apply to you to help find your key themes.
Let your personality come through in your posting. If you’re quiet, you don’t have to say much, if you’re chatty in person, allow that to come through on social media.
Don’t try to be what you think you should be or copy what others are doing. Use the content pillars and be you.

Quick Summary

Follow our Athlete Branding Worksheet to define your personal story
Distill your answers into 6 key themes
Make your 2 favourite themes your core pillars, and the remaining 4 your support pillars.
Speak to your 2 core pillars 4 days a week, and use the 4 support pillars for the remaining 3 days.
Use the pillars to give yourself freedom to be yourself, not restriction to act like someone else.
Post! The more of your story you share the more you will build an audience.

Next Steps for You

Listen to the audio episode of this article on the ‘Make It Happen’ Podcast for Athletes from ESM.

Additional Resources

Watch

‘How Athletes should use social media to build their brands’ - by Gary Vee ( Vaynerchuck) - This 3 minute video shows exactly how athletes can build their brand by ENGAGING with fans. Giving back rather than always pushing.

Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noVToUCCUXk

Read

Content Pillars for Social Media - From Later

If you’re struggling to define your personality into content pillars, this article can help you approach it with a more detached, business focussed mindset. You could use this approach to get going, then inject more personality as your confidence builds.

Check it out here: https://later.com/blog/content-pillars-for-social-media/

Listen

A Social Media Strategy for People Who Feel Uncomfortable on Camera - The Gary See Audio Experience - Yes, another Gary Vee Resource but it’s hard to go past him for actionable advice. This quick podcast gives you some ways to get into making content if you’re shy.

Check it out here: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/a-social-media-strategy-for-people-who-feel/id928159684?i=1000517606002

What to post as an Action Sports Athlete