Unless you’re Ilona Maher, Simone Biles or Tom Daley, Olympic athletes’ social media reach can be limited unless reaching those glorified heights of visibility achieved by the rugby player, gymnast and diver.
So, in a crowded online space, how do emerging athletes grab the attention of fans both in their own sport and beyond?
UK Sport, a government-funded high-performance sports agency, has come up with an idea to promote the profiles of those in the early stages of their careers via an Athlete Creator Club.
Launched in July, the idea is to work with a select number of Olympic and Paralympic athletes to help them create consistent, creative, and authentic content for fans of their sport and beyond.
Creative studio Weirdo have been engaged to help with the pilot programme that will help the athletes experiment with content creation and profile building by telling their own story in their own voice.
Guiding them will be ‘The Playbook’, a how-to guide for using social media effectively and staying safe online, which has also been distributed to the more than 1,000 elite Olympic and Paralympic athletes that UK Sport funds.
The six athletes who have been picked for the initiative are Liam Kirk (ice hockey), Ruth Mwandumba (sport shooting), Phoebe Paterson-Pine (Para archery), Abi Martin (artistic gymnastics), Emily Campbell (weightlifting) and Zac Shaw (Para athletics).
“The Athlete Creator Club will allow me to connect with others and learn new creative techniques, whilst offering a fantastic opportunity to showcase the world of target shooting and to promote diversity within our sport, which is super important to me,” said Mwandumba, who has an additional aspect to her journey.
“As a new mother to twin girls, I also see this as a chance to share my journey and demonstrate that it’s entirely possible to pursue a professional athletic career while embracing motherhood.”