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Be ready for your (NIL) moment

It pays to be prepared

The greatest time of the year in college basketball (aka March Madness) is quickly approaching.

Along with exciting games, upsets, big plays, heartbreaks, and everything in between, there is truly nothing like it in sports.

So if you’re an athlete competing in the women’s or men’s tournament (or any game in any sport throughout the year), and you have a big game in front of a big audience (a la Jack Gohlke in last year’s tourney), how can you capitalize on your moment?

Steps to take

• Update social media profiles

  • Ensure you have an updated profile pic (preferably a headshot), first and last name, school, email address for you or your agent, etc.

    • After his breakout game vs. Kentucky, Jack Gohlke had two of his friends set up an email address specifically to sort through the influx of deals he received.

  • Ensure your usernames are as close to your actual name as possible.

    • If an athlete has a big game, and their Instagram username is ‘purpleelephant32448’ they probably aren’t going to land many deals.

• Clear identity

  • Your accounts should give a glimpse of who you are as an athlete and person.

  • Remove any questionable content or content that does not align with your brand. Also, remove posts that contain music with explicit language.

• Content

  • Ensure your posts are a mix of athlete and lifestyle content.

    • A good unofficial ratio is 2:1. (For every two sports posts, there should be one lifestyle/non-sports post.)

  • Post content around brands that you love

    • Even though these might not be sponsored/collaboration content, creating posts for products and services that you love could potentially turn into a paid partnership at a later date.

Thank You for reading today’s newsletter

^{I discuss insights and news related to NIL and personal branding for athletes every Wednesday at 12p ET/9a PT.}

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