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Five Steps for New Pro Athletes to Establish Their Personal Brand

March 2, 2012 By

Professional athletes may have one of the easiest times in their personal branding, but they need to take advantage of it, if they want to leverage their name, their skills, and the draw that comes from being on a pro team.

However, unless sportscasters on ESPN are talking about you going first or second in the draft, you’ve got an uphill battle to fight.

I was recently working with a young pro athlete who is still in the early stages of his career, and is starting to build his personal brand in the community. That’s smart. This is the right time to do it, and he’s starting at just the right time. But like most young athletes, you don’t have your own publicist or agent who can take care of these things for you. Or you have a team publicist who can lend you a hand, but you’ll end up doing most of this yourself.

These are the first five steps any new professional athlete, regardless of sport, team, or league, should take to grow their own personal brand.

1. Get a photo of you in action.

Whether it’s you on the court, the field, the track, or wherever — practicing or playing — get a photo of you “at the office.” You already want to be known for your particular sport, so make sure you make it part of your personal brand by making it your avatar on all your social networks. If you’re playing on a team, ask your team publicist for one. If you don’t have one, hire a professional photographer to help you out.

Make sure you get a good shot that lets people know it’s you — your uniform number, your face, or if you’re a race car driver, your car. (And frankly, if you can get a shot with you and your team’s marquis player in it — assuming that’s not already you — that’s even better.)

Speedy Dan Clarke

Speedy Dan Clarke

2. Be active on Twitter

Dan Clarke (@SpeedyDanClarke is an open wheel (IndyCar) and NASCAR truck racer in Indianapolis. He is constantly using Twitter to talk with fans who are following him (and who he’s following back), and to promote the different events where he’ll be driving. Whether it’s a race, a test, or even a course he’s trying out, Dan keeps his fans abreast of what he’s up to. The upside of this is that if he can continue to build his network of fans, he’s more likely to win sponsors so he has a ride this year, because he can show them his legions of loyal fans. Just like a book publisher who is interested in self-published authors who have already sold a lot of books, a sponsor would be interested in an athlete who can bring a lot of fans along with him or her.

3. Set up a Facebook PAGE

Not a profile. A profile is your personal page. That’s how you’re going to talk to family and friends. But you’ll want to keep your fans a healthy distance away, so set your Facebook profile to a pseudonym (e.g. use your first name and your mom’s maiden name) so only your friends can find you.

Your Facebook page is like a public profile, where you can interact with fans, but they can’t see the stuff you’re talking about with family. Be sure to communicate with your fans on a regular basis, so they can feel like you’re involved with them, but they’re not personally involved.

4. Establish a Wikipedia page.

As an athlete, you’re more likely to get a Wikipedia page accepted by the editors of Wikipedia than non-athletes will. Ask your team publicist to help you start it. Be sure they understand the rules of Wikipedia before you start the page: completely objective language. The copy needs to be written like a real encyclopedia. That means “really boring.” In other words, they can’t sound like the player profiles in the program.

5. Start a blog

A lot of people roll their eyes at this, because they hate writing, but a blog may be one of the most important personal branding tools you have. You need a blog as a place for people to find more information about you. Remember, you’re in this not only so you can become famous, but so sponsors can find you. So people who want to pay you a few thousand dollars to speak to their group can find you. So fans who want to learn more can find you.

Your best bet — hire a social media consultant for help on this — is to do the following:

  1. Buy your name as a domain name from GoDaddy or Domains.com. If you can’t get your name, get your name and your uniform number: DallasClark44.com, for example.
  2. Set up a free blog at WordPress.com. Better yet, get your social media person to set up a WordPress blog on an external server. (If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, just tell your social media person, “Erik says I need a self-hosted WordPress blog.” If they don’t know what that is, they’re not the ones to help you. Find someone who knows how to create WordPress blogs.
  3. Point your domain at your WordPress blog. Put this domain on your card (see #6) and on any information you share with people. Remember, you want to drive traffic here — Twitter, your Facebook page, and any other networks are all used to drive traffic here.
  4. Pick up the book Corporate Blogging For Dummies, and start writing about things in your professional life: training, practice, games/matches. Be sure to include photos and videos.

6. Create a Player Card

Some teams do this for their players who make a lot of public appearances. They create player cards that look like Topps baseball cards, which they sign and hand out to kids whenever they appear in public. If you’re not in one of those leagues, consider creating your own player card. Hire a graphic designer, hand them a few baseball cards, and ask them to recreate that. Put your social media properties on the back with your stats and very short bio.

While your card is not going to be a collector’s item that is as eagerly sought as a Johnny Bench rookie card, it’s going to be something that helps people remember who you are, and even how to get ahold of you later.

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    Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : Five Steps for New Professional Athletes to Establish Their Personal Brand  •  Keywords : personal branding, social media, reputation management, professional athletes  • 
    Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Personal Branding, Reputation Management, Social Media, Speaking Tagged With: , , ,

    It’s Called “Personal Branding.” Get Over It.

    January 4, 2012 By

    Being a personal branding book author and speaker, I get a little protective of the term. I always want to roll my eyes at people who claim “I’m not a brand, I’m a person,” or at people like Olivier Blanchard, who call people with personal brands fake, saying the personal brand is an artifice.

    Personal branding is really just the fancy 21st century word for “reputation.” It’s how people perceive you.

    Do you do what you say you do? More importantly, do other people say you do what you do? Are you a kind and helpful person? Do other people say so? Then your personal brand — your reputation, if you must — is that you’re kind and helpful. Do people think you’re an arrogant jerk? Then your personal brand is that you’re an arrogant jerk.

    We call it personal branding for two reasons:

    A brand is an emotional response on the part of the people who see it.

    It’s much more than just a company’s logo and a tagline. It’s how you feel when you see that logo and tagline.

    Think of your feelings toward McDonald’s, the Chicago Cubs, and even BP Oil. Love them or hate them, that is what you feel, and that’s how you react when you see symbols of that corporate brand. You won’t eat at that place, you’ll remain a fan for life, or you refuse to buy gas from that company. That’s your emotional response.

    Basically, what other people feel, and how they react, when they hear your name and see your face is your personal brand. Does your face make people happy? Or does the mere mention of your name make people make gagging noises? That’s their emotional response, which makes it your personal brand. (Again, we can still call it your reputation.)

    A brand is what people say it is.

    The control of marketing has been seized from the professionals by real people. It’s no longer in the hands of the trained marketers to say whether a product or company is good. We now trust the say-so of people, often friends, but sometimes strangers.

    Think about the last time you bought a piece of electronic equipment or a book, or even visited a new restaurant. Did you check the reviews or ask friends what they thought of it? Or were you persuaded by the marketing copy, the photos, and the search engine placement?

    Like most of us who are plugged into this Web 2.0 world, you took the unsolicited and unmoderated recommendations of friends (and even strangers) over the hard work of the trained professionals. And that equipment, book, or restaurant was as good or as bad as your friends said it was.

    In other words, the marketing message of a particular company or product has been seized by the people who will react to it, share it, spread it, buy into it, boycott it, or denigrate it.

    People control the brand now. The marketers may be able to control the information, but people control the reputation.

    How does this affect your personal brand?

    This is true of people and their perceptions of us: right or wrong, we have become the sum of what people think of us. Their “reviews” of us come in the form of responses to our tweets, comments on our blog posts, even things they say about us when we’re not around.

    In many cases, the thing we’re selling is us. We’re selling ourselves when we apply for a job. Or when we’re pitching a project. Or getting a speaking gig. Or selling a book. People are buying us, and if they don’t like who we are, based on our reputation, we won’t get the “sale.”

    A personal brand is not an act, it’s not a character, it’s not a fake you. It’s the real you that wants to be seen and respected by other people. It’s the person you want to be, not the person you want people to think you are. That’s fakery — acting like a jerk to people in private while trying to be sunshine and light in public.

    Being true to your personal brand means that you’ll act the same way in public as you do when no one is looking, or at least no one with a decent Klout score. If you’re kind (or a jerk) in public, you’ll be kind (or a jerk) in private. That’s the real personal brand.

    It comes down to this. I don’t care what you call it: call it a personal brand, call it your reputation, call it your image. But whatever you call it, be true to it. Don’t fake it, and don’t try to pass as something you’re not.

    Just know that most of the people around you are going to call it “personal branding,” whether you like the term or not. Fighting this battle is about as fruitless as people not wanting to call blogging “blogging” anymore, or think that “social media” just needs to be called “media.” It’s all just tilting at windmills while everyone else is actually doing the thing, regardless of what people call it.

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      Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Copyright Year : 2012  •  Headline : It's Called Personal Branding. Get Over It.  •  Keywords : personal branding, social media, reputation management  •  Publisher : Professional Blog Service  • 
      Filed Under: Klout, LinkedIn, Personal Branding, Reputation Management, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

      Paid Consulting or Free Advice? A Moral Conundrum

      November 16, 2010 By
      Hamburger with fries

      A story.

      Pablo Picasso is sitting in a restaurant, when a woman approaches him, gushes over him and his work, and asks him to sketch something on a piece of paper for her.

      Picasso takes the paper, and does a quick-but-beautiful sketch. He hands it back to her and says, “that will be $10,000.”

      The woman is taken aback. “But it only took you a few minutes to do that. Isn’t $10,000 a lot for just a few minutes work?”

      “it may have taken me just a few minutes to draw, but it took me a lifetime to learn,” said Picasso.

      I frequently think of Picasso whenever I’m asked to provide free advice and knowledge.

      “Can we meet for coffee?” someone will ask me at a networking event. “I want to pick your brain about blogging.” Like my brain is on display, with a lot of other brains.

      “Mmmmmmm—that one!”

      I’m usually happy to share as much information as I can. I try to be friendly and willing to teach people, as an homage to the people who shared so much information with me when I was first starting out.

      This bothers people. Most notably my business partner, Paul, my wife, and any professional consultants.

      “You need to charge for your time. You’re giving away information. Information that’s taken you months and years to amass. Even if it takes you an hour to teach them, it took you years to learn it.”

      Hamburger with fries

      Will work for food. For now.

      “Cool!” I think. “My time is worth money. I have years of knowledge and experience that people think is valuable.” And I feel really good, and I promise that, this time, I’ll embrace my inner consultant, and say I’m more than happy to teach them everything I know for a pre-determined hourly rate. Like Picasso did.

      But then someone asks me again, and I’m afraid of looking like a money-grubbing a-hole, so I compromise.

      “Tell you what. I’m supposed to charge $100 an hour for this kind of information,” I say, rolling my eyes as if to say “they” told me to ask for money. “But if you buy my lunch, I’ll be happy to tell you what I can.”

      The other person readily agrees, we meet, and I share whatever I can to help them out. Of course, when I get back to the office or come home that night, I feel like Jack did after he told his mom he traded the cow for some magic beans.

      I know I’m supposed to make money from my work. I’m a professional who is hired by companies to actually use my knowledge and skill to help them be successful. I’ve raised the bar (and my rates) even higher in the last year by co-writing two books and working on a third. (At the very least, I think, I should be getting dessert with lunch, but apparently that’s still not good enough and now I have to watch my cholesterol.)

      I don’t know why it’s so hard for me. Pablo Picasso scribbled on a piece of paper between courses, and charged a woman $10,000 for something that took him decades to master. I’m sharing many years of blogging and writing wisdom in 60 minutes, and I should be able to look someone in the eye and ask for $100 an hour without stammering out an apology.

      I’ve talked with other friends who face the same conundrum. Some are happy to charge, while some are not. I don’t know who to believe. Even the experts aren’t sure.

      On one hand, Seth Godin says if I want to be a Linchpin (affiliate link), I need to participate in the Gift Economy, and give this stuff away for free, because then I’m valuable to a lot of other people, and the benefits (and money) will shower upon me. Chris Anderson says that if I give knowledge away for Free (affiliate link), I’ll show my value to others, and the benefits and money will shower upon me some more.

      On the other hand, there are hundreds and thousands of professional consultants who make their living getting paid to share their knowledge and experience, which took years to amass. Why should they get paid obscene amounts of money to share their knowledge, when I’m settling for a damn hamburger? (To be fair, it’s a really good hamburger, and I order bacon on it, which usually costs extra. Because I’m worth it.)

      What should I do? Should I embrace my inner capitalist and charge people to give them my knowledge? Or should I continue to believe in puppy dogs and rainbows, and share my knowledge for the good of mankind and the benefit of the planet? What would you do? Leave a comment and let me know. I’ll discuss the answers in a future post.

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        Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : Paid Consulting or Free Advice? A Moral Conundrum  •  Keywords : blogging, networking, one-on-one, personal branding, Reputation Management  • 
        Filed Under: Blogging, Networking, Opinion, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

        5 Ways to Build Your Online Personal Brand Without Being Boring

        July 12, 2010 By

        I was having lunch with a friend last week, and he posed an interesting question: “how do you build your personal brand without evoking a ‘who cares’ attitude?”

        Unfortunately, as people start growing their personal brand via social media, they’re just boring the bejeezus out of the rest of us. Here are five things you should be doing to avoid boring your network, and earning the reputation of “oh jeez, not this yawn-fest.”

        Dude, you

        • Post things as they are happening. Give your content stream a sense of immediacy, to help people feel they are really there. Don’t tweet that you got stuck in traffic two hours after you got home; send a tweet that traffic is bad on a particular road (only if you’re completely stopped, please). Tweet about your experiences at a conference as they happen, not afterward.
        • Blend your personal and your work life. Rather than limiting yourself to being all work or all play, be both. No one truly expects you to only focus on work things, or expects you to only play and spend time with your family. Anyone who gets annoyed that you’re merging the other into your social media stream has unrealistic expectations, and is probably not worth staying connected to. It’s okay to tell your work friends when you have a personal victory you want to tell them about, and it’s okay to tell your social friends when something great happened at work. By blending the two parts of your life, you’re showing you’re a whole person.
        • Don’t focus strictly on one issue. If you decide not to do the work-life blend, at least make sure you’re not talking about the same thing over and over. We like that you’re sharing the joys of your new child, but we don’t want to see every single photo you take, to hear about everything the baby did, or how much you love your new bundle of joy. Similarly, don’t tell us about that one work or industry issue, every single meeting you have about it, or every journal and blog article you read about it. If you tell us about your personal life, tell us more than what your children are doing. If you tell us about work, tell us more than that one big issue you’ve been dealing with for six months.
        • Share, share, share. While it may seem easy to promote yourself and all the cool things you’re doing, if you spend all your time doing that, then you’re just as boring as that date you went on when the other person kept talking about themselves. Instead talk about other people, share what they’re doing, promote their ideas and their blog posts, and retweet the interesting articles they’re reading (retweet this article while you’re at it). Tell us what you think is cool, what you find interesting. The people you’re talking about will take notice and do the same for you.
        • Just accept the fact that you’re always going to bore somebody. I’d love to think that people hang on my every word, and eagerly await every tweet, blog post, and Facebook update, but they don’t. My personal friends don’t care about my work content, and my work friends don’t care what I do with my kids on the weekend.

        Photo credit: Samael Trip (Flickr)

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          Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : 5 Ways to Build Your Online Personal Brand Without Being Boring - Professional Blog Service  •  Keywords : personal branding, Reputation Management, Social Media  • 
          Filed Under: Communication, Facebook, Networking, Reputation Management, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

          NOW I’m an Expert: I Was on FOX59 News Last Night

          May 27, 2010 By

          I had the opportunity and honor of being on Fox59 News at 10 last night, as a social media expert, to talk about how Generation Y is beginning to take their online reputation and privacy more seriously than they have in the past.

          According to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Reputation Management and Social Media, young people have surpassed the Baby Boomers in taking care of their online reputation. They’re hiding their negative photos — the so-called “Spring Break” photos, untagging themselves when they do appear online, and even practicing reverse search engine optimization to push their negative content off Google’s front page.

          I was particularly proud that they used one of my favorite lines, one that I use at all my talks about reputation management: If you don’t want skeletons in your closets, don’t put the bodies in there in the first place.

          Big thanks to Kyle Lacy for referring me to Tisha Lewis. And big thanks to Tisha “actually it’s TEE-sha” Lewis, her intern Andy, and her shooter (cameraman), Adam, for making the trek all the way out to the hinterlands of Fishers, Indiana to do the interview.

          (As soon as the video becomes available, I’ll link to it here.)

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            Filed Under: Facebook, Networking, News, Reputation Management, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,