Sports has always been a media hotspot. From newspapers and magazines to television and radio, coverage is everywhere. With the growth of social media, however, the sports landscape has changed significantly. Athletes have greater control over their public representation and sports marketing has grown into a full-fledged industry, thick with sponsorships and partnerships, promotional products, and much more.
For those interested in breaking into the sector, a clear understanding of social media is absolutely vital.
Content Areas
Within the social media arena, sports connoisseurs are particularly interested in a few types of content – things like YouTube videos, podcasts, Instagram posts, and, increasingly, TikTok videos. These take varying amounts of effort to produce. A simple, trend-driven TikTok can be assembled in a few minutes, but a fully optimized Instagram post or YouTube video can take much longer, especially if there are brand partnerships involved.
Planning And Process
Just as traditional media takes a lot of time to develop, social media has taken its place as a full-fledged industry, and there are a lot of tools available that can make content planning and development easier. Cloud-based programs like Box.com’s Notes make it easy to keep track of inspiration, no matter when it strikes, and to share those ideas with others. Most sports media professionals also rely on social media planning tools like TweetDeck, which help with scheduling and managing Twitter posts, so that a chunk of content can be prepped at once.
Building A Brand
Another important distinction from the world of sports media is that of brand, specifically, how is an individual athlete’s brand different from that of a team’s brand? Though the process of branding an athlete versus branding a team can be similar, there are some key differences, particularly when it comes to intimacy.
When a team is building a brand, it’s okay to have only a cursory knowledge of each player, to reveal one or two small things about each while emphasizing the team as a whole. Individual athletes, on the other hand, are expected to offer up more personal insights.
One reason these personal revelations are so important to developing individual athlete brands is that these solo personalities are profiting off their image. Fans won’t invest, so to speak, in the same degree of connection to an athlete that they could get watching the game on TV. It’s an entrepreneurial venture, in which the athlete is selling themselves.
Specialized Platforms
As sports media continues to carve out a defined space within the world of social media, we’re seeing new platforms emerge to support that interest, and athletes and their managers should be paying attention. Sites like EssentiallySports exploded onto the scene, quickly developing an international fan base. Meanwhile, social commerce sites like Cameo let users buy greetings from their favorite stars, including athletes. When we talk about sports media, then, we’re talking about content that’s much more complex than the score of the latest game.
Athletes have always been big business, but until recently, their personal value was still strongly tethered to their team or their manager. While there are still elements of that, the savvy athlete has countless opportunities to strike out on their own, even before they reach the pros, and that’s an empowering shift.