Now that college and high school athletes can profit from their name, image, and likeness – building a personal brand has become more important than ever.
We have seen time and time again that the larger your personal brand, the bigger the NIL deals will be.
Another observation is that Tik Tok and Instagram are the most important platforms for athletes to build their brand.
It’s pretty simple when broken down:
- Build a large following
- Engage them and turn them to super-fans
- Sign sponsorship deals and do promoted posts
- Build those deals into your existing storylines
- Have a link in bio re-directing to all your platforms
- Hire a team to help
- Go do bigger deals
- Repeat
For example, Jon Seaton is a walk-on offensive lineman at Elon but has a following of over 1.7 million on Tik Tok. Jon will make a couple $100,000 this year.
Other athletes have already becoming millionaires from NIL deals.
So now you’re wondering, how can I get a piece of this pie.
Here’s how you can get started in less than 11 days, with only 17 minutes of work a day.
Day 1:
Go read all of my NIL posts. Educate yourself and write down what you’ve learned.
Study what’s worked and what hasn’t for athletes.
This will save you a bunch of time later on and get your mind spinning on the possibilities in front of you.
Day 2:
Set up and optimize all of your social media platforms
I’m talking about:
- Tik tok
- YouTube
- AIR
You might already have some of these created but now it’s time to juice them up.
This is an exciting and daunting task.
Whether you have 10,000 followers or 75 you realize this is un-chartered territory.
You will be judged. But that’s what growing an audience takes.
Would you rather stop making content because your bum friends say your videos are dumb.
Or…
Would you rather have thousands of fans, meet like minded individuals, and sign NIL deals for thousands of dollars?
Pretty easy to answer.
Day 3:
Create your content and brand strategy.
What will you be posting about?
Who is your ideal follower?
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
- Hobbies
This is when you should define your niche.
Plan out some content. You will want to bucket in to categories, with sub-categories underneath them.
For example, I put out content on NIL. And within NIL, the sub-categories are how to make money, new stories, companies involved, law changes, and case studies.
I’m a visual learner so writing everything out on whiteboard helps me brainstorm and decide my content strategy.
I bought this one from Amazon and it works great.
You will also want to decide what platforms you will be posting on.
Knowing your ideal viewer helps determine this. No matter what your main platforms are, you will want to repurpose the content and post it to other places.
Here’s a successful strategy most of the top content creators use:
- Full Length Filmed Podcast
- Medium Length Clips to YouTube
- Short Clips to Twitter and Instagram
- Highlights to Tik Tok and AIR
I would consider starting downstream with just Tik Toks you can repurpose for IG and Twitter.
After you get better you can create longer form content.
Day 4:
Now’s when the fun begins. It’s time to start creating!
Start by making a few different pieces before you post anything.
Who cares what people think. Don’t worry about being an imposter. Know It will take some time but you’re moving in the right direction.
Day 5-10:
Start posting.
Some content will hit, some won’t.
Make sure to double down on what’s working and learn from what didn’t.
This is where you’ll either quit or gain momentum to keep going.
You just started. You’re not going to have millions of views and followers. It takes time.
Know you’ll get there eventually because no one else is like you. You have a unique story to tell.
Day 11
The Tik Tok algorithm takes about 7-10 days to start promoting content and working for you. They reward consistency and the nicheness of content.
It took AIR 8 days to get 10,000 followers on Tik Tok and only 3 days to get to 18,700 followers. At this point you are well on your way and the confidence will be building.
YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and AIR work in similar ways.
Staying disciplined is hard especially when you’re not reaping the initial benefits.
Believe they will come and keep going.
Focus on posting one high quality piece of content a day.
Day 12+
Have fun growing your audience.
If you’re doing it just for money you won’t last long.
Build real connections with your audience and showcase your true authenticity.
The beautiful thing about this process is you’ll see continuous improvements and daily progression.
People will call you an overnight success, yet they’ll have no clue how committed you were for a long period of time.
Now go make it happen!
