How to Tell Your Story on Social Media
Social media can be a powerful platform to showcase different aspects of your lifestyle, sport, personal hobbies and fun events in your life. All of these things combine to give your audience a perception of you as a brand.
When athletes begin to narrow their focus of what they are posting/sharing with an audience, this is where we begin to see an actual brand form.
The Key: The key here is to decide what your main themes are and then start making posts related to those specific themes. Does this mean you can never make an off-brand post or just mix it up when you feel like it? Of course not.
Here are a few examples of athletes/people who have narrowed down their main brand themes and make a post around one of these themes every few days.
Victoria Garrick, Founder of The Hidden Opponent, former D1 volleyball player. Themes: Mental health, Body-Image, relationship with fiance, former life as an athlete and mindset change, vulnerability.
Here is a an example of Victoria telling the story about life as an athlete “then versus now” and what she’s learned. Here’s another one around her theme of body image (tied into a sponsor post for Fabletics).
Note: Victoria has really leaned into the use of IG Reels to make short videos that often breakdown how the media portrays body image. These get re-shared like crazy and have helped her build a large following. It didn’t happen over night and is really just the result of consistent posting within her main themes. She also shares more vulnerability in her captions and tells stories about each photo - this helps get high engagement per post.
Trae Young, Atlanta Hawks Point Guard. Themes: Training, Bball lifestyle, Game photos.
Note: Trae’s keys to success are: 1. Uses high quality images as much as possible; 2. Posts something quick every 1-4 days.
His captions are super short, usually just one sentence, catchphrase or even just some emojis. When you post consistently, you have more flexibility on your caption length.
Sara Blakely, CEO & Founder of SPANX. Themes: Sharing stories on how she founded SPANX by herself, Family/kids, BTS look at running the SPANX company, cups with inspirational quotes (female empowerment focused).
Here is a specific post made by Sara, around the theme of “how I founded SPANX, the early days”
Note: Sara is a master storyteller and has learned how to speak to her audience by sharing her personal story. She uses longer form posts and captions, which is her preference. Not everyone needs to do this but if you feel you are telling a good story - people will stop and read. Here is another example where she talks “BTS on building her company”
