My Top 5 Athletes Using Social Media

Social media has become one of the biggest parts of people's every day lives more and more every year. Everyone is on social media, and now athletes are beginning to break into the social media world to promote themselves, and their sponsorships. Similar to Tom Brady (see previous article for more details) athletes are utilizing social media now more than ever to build their personal brands, promote themselves, their teams and their sponsors. This post will examine the top ten athletes based off my own research who are utilizing social media the best to promote their personal brands, or the brands that represent them. The athletes listed are in no particular order.

LeBron James, Los Angeles Lakers
LeBron has taken his social media game to the next level in the last few years. With 41.5 million followers on Twitter and 36.8 million on Instagram (izea.com) he has very diverse platforms. King James uses his social media outlets to promote himself and his team, celebrate other athletes who are excelling at their sport, share videos and pictures about his kids and their personal successes, or post about social justice issues going around in the world today. LeBron, unlike other athletes, has been vocal on topics such as racial injustice on social media, which sets him apart from other athletes who refrain from addressing controversial topics on social media.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Retired WWE and NFL athlete
While The Rock is a retired athlete turned movie star, he maintains a strong athletic presence on social media, with his 58 million followers on Instagram and 13.1 million on Twitter (sporteology.net). The Rock has an interesting Instagram profile in which the majority of his social media content is posted. As a retired athlete and current actor, his posts range anywhere from his workouts which serve as motivational posts for those needing an extra push in their exercise, to him promoting his movies and TV shows, to his posts with his kids and fans hyping them up. The Rock maintains a motivational and influential platform for all of his followers to benefit from.

Simone Biles, United States Gymnast
Simone Biles bursted into pop culture and the sports realm after her five olympic medal performance at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games (izea.com). Although her following is not as large as the two athletes mentioned previously (3.3 million on Instagram) she is incredibly influential and utilizes her Nike sponsorship to promote women in sports. She has several posts with young girls and women athletes promoting and celebrating women in sports using the hashtag #NikeWomen. Simone also is incredibly transparent with her personal life, balancing content between sponsorship posts with Nike, and personal life updates. This balance provides a unique platform that engages all audiences across the country.

Serena Williams, Tennis
Serena Williams has become the face of tennis in the past few years, thanks to her success on the court and her recent pregnancy while playing. Serena has 10.9 million followers on both Instagram and Twitter, and like Simone Biles, is a Nike sponsor and utilizes that on her platforms. Serena is big into using the Nike campaign, "If they think your dreams are crazy, show them what crazy dreams can do" (Nike.com) and showcasing women athletes excelling in their respective sport. Serena has become one of the biggest influencers in the gender equality in sports and uses her social media to promote that. She is incredibly successful on and off the court, and even gives a glimpse into her life as a mom on her accounts, which her fans find incredibly engaging.

Cristiano Ronaldo, Juventus
Regarded as one of the most famous soccer players of all time, Ronaldo has an incredibly large following thanks to the reach of soccer around the globe. The Juventus forward has 125 million followers on Instagram and 77.3 million on Twitter (izea.com). Ronaldo's social media is a classic sports social media influencer account. He posts pictures and videos of him and his team practicing and performing in games, but posts about every single one of his sponsors, big and small. Ronaldo engages all fans of all different races and nationalities thanks to his reach due to the large audience of soccer, and his wide variety of endorsements ranging from Adidas, to his own personal underwear brand, @c7underwear.

How Tom Brady Built His Brand Through Blogging and Social Media

Tom Brady is the Quarterback for the New England Patriots, and a successful one indeed. Winning six super bowl rings throughout his illustrious 19 season career, he has defied father time by playing well into his 40's. Brady has been successful both on, and off the field however, with his own personal brand, TB12. Brady attributes the majority of his success in his "old age" to his rigorous diet and exercise plan that keeps him in shape. In September of 2013, he launched the TB12 Sports Therapy Center in Foxborough, Massachusetts, the home of the New England Patriots (Digiday.com). The launch of the fitness center became the launch of his brand, one of the first personal brands amongst athletes that has taken the sports marketing world, specifically influencer marketing by storm. 

So first, what is TB12? According to Digiday.com, it is "a sprawling brand that is everything from lots of reps with fitness bands to a diet featuring avocado ice cream - all premised on the fitness gospel that underpins Brady's legendary run in the NFL" (Digiday.com). Brady has a goal to help other athletes, ranging from football to skiing, maintain a healthy body and prolong their career as long as possible, just as he has. And the brand has grown far from just a fitness center. "As they try to scale, TB12 has expanded beyond the one center by selling other products. 'The TB12 Method' book was released in September 2017. A few months later, they launched the TB12 Method mobile app. TB12 also has an online store for workout equipment like TB12 resistance bands, supplements like TB12 electrolytes and apparel like TB12 hats and, through a partnership with Under Armour, recovery pajamas that help  you heal muscles while you snooze" (Digiday.com). 

But one of the major successes through all of this is how Tom and his team have branded the quarterback to become a relatable athlete that people can get behind, and want to buy products from. "His in-house team decided to explore on building his brand through Facebook by sharing Brady's personality through personal photos and funny memes...as an attempt to make the athlete more relatable" (adweek.com). 

The branding efforts have paid off immensely. Prior to Super Bowl 52, Brady was featured in a Facebook watch series called Tom vs. Time. After the series, the TB12 team partnered with Facebook to create two separate TB12 advertising campaigns to bolster product sales, and the results were phenomenal. According to "Facebook for Media," the ads increased sales of TB12 products by 98.8% and increased TB12 app installs by 56.7%. By using the watch series to market himself and the program, Tom Brady was able to garner even more success than the brand had already been experiencing. The viewers of the show increased traffic to tb12sports.com by 64%, and 53% of the revenue created. The TB12 marketing team geniusly  drove Tom's personal social media following and the brands following through the roof. 

All in all, Tom Brady and the TB12 team paved the way for athletes to begin their own personal brands and become social media influencers. Athletes like Derek Jeter, Russell Westbrook and Cristiano Ronaldo (to name a few) have followed in Tom's footsteps, creating their own brands, mainly clothing and apparel lines. Today, athletes are utilizing their endorsements on social media to not only promote themselves, but the products they represent. As TB12 continues to grow and expand, watch out for more and more athletes to begin to develop their brands as Tom has. He has set the groundwork for how an athlete should properly become a social media influencer.

Why Nike is Leading the Sports Social Media Industry

With over 318 different and diverse social media profiles, which include and even more diverse profile of posts utilizing pictures, videos, infographics and advertisements, Nike is the top of the industry in sports social media marketing (unmetric.com). Today's social media landscape and audience is tricky to grasp. The clickbait and instant information society we live in makes it difficult for many companies to truly capture the attention of those consuming their content. Audiences today need jaw dropping headlines and short, to the point posts that contain content that is exactly what they are looking to read. Nike has successfully captured our attention in several ways. One way is taking controversy by the horns and running with it (Forbes.com). Another few are focusing on quality over quantity, utilizing their athlete sponsorships as influencers, and creating engaging content all across the board. In this post I will explain in depth how these strategies have paid off for the sports apparel mega-brand.

Embracing Controversy
Nike has become more popular thanks to several controversial issues they decided to tackle, specifically their backing of Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick is an "exiled" NFL football player who decided to take a knee during the national anthem several times throughout the 2016 season, and is now out of a job. They used Kaepernick to relaunch a Just Do It campaign centered around the quote "Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything" (Nike Twitter, Forbes.com). It was jumpstarted with a two minute advertisement featuring minority, disabled, and gender role influenced athletes excelling at their sport, with Kaepernick in the background offering encouraging words. The world saw this compelling campaign by Nike, and mentions of Nike and engagement with their tweets skyrocketed. The new core demographic Nike has begun to target of young urban consumers ate up the campaign, while some mocked it. It is apparent that Nike targeted a younger audience for their campaign, which Forbes projected would continue to engage with and interact about the most.

Quality over Quantity
Unmetric.com analyzed Nike's main social media accounts on the mainstream platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube) over the course of a year to understand better how the megabrand utilizes social media. When it came to their Facebook, that is where they utilized quality over quantity heavily. On their Facebook throughout the calendar year 2017, Nike posted an average of four times a month. They showed no true schedule, rather only posted when topical. Their posts came during a running of one of their campaigns, or during a large scale sporting event in which they had a stake, whether a sponsor athlete involved or their name on the event somehow. Keeping the posts spread out is an incredible way to ensure your audience is engaged. Social media users don't like to be bombarded, and Nike adopted that. In 2012 the company posted 836 times, and realized this new trend, and in 2015 posted 28 times.

Using Influencers
Nike recognizes that athletes are heroes to today's world. People aspire to be like their favorite athletes, so Nike uses their athletes as inspiration for their content consumers. They have sponsorships throughout all sports, and their sponsorship profile is incredibly diverse. This creates a trustworthy feeling coming from the company, because the more athletes they showcase the more people are going to follow the company on social media. The more people see their favorite athlete (which is increased with a mass amount of sponsorships) the more engaging the posts become. Nike has emplored baseball, basketball, football, and all different sports players of all different races and genders to be spokespeople for them. Not only is Nike posting about these athletes, but these athletes are posting about Nike and Nike campaigns, which drives engagement and interaction.

Nike has set the standard for how to run a social media portfolio. If companies take even one page out of the Nike handbook, they will see a large increase in their social media success