Talent is not always enough to land young or even older athletes their dream role. Most of the time, people that want to either become a sports star or take another path with their sporting career have to market themselves. Being individuals who aren’t trained, qualified, or educated in the field of advertising, this can prove to be an incredibly difficult task.

Fortunately, if you’re, so far, struggling to market yourself in the world of sport, advice on that very matter can be found below.

Record a quality recruitment video

Recording a recruitment video is one of the best things you can do in your bid to market yourself as a quality athlete… but only if the video is, itself, quality. A good video will showcase your skills much better than a written portfolio or a set of photos will, as a video will show what you are capable of.

To ensure your recruitment video helps and doesn’t hinder you in your quest to land your dream sporting role, you have to make sure that it is powerful and impactful. In this instance, if you are a young athlete looking to showcase your skills to a university coach, primarily you should work alongside ASM Scholarships. They will help you to create a video that will be sure to make a lasting impression on whoever watches it.

Take social media seriously 

If you’re serious about becoming a top athlete, you have to be serious about your social media. No longer can you post freely to Facebook, and no longer can you tweet whatever comes to your head. You have to seriously consider every move you make online, as one slip up could cost you dearly. The aim of this particular game is to market yourself as an athlete who can be trusted to promote their team and brand in the most positive way possible, not as an athlete who says or does foolish things on social media. 

The content that you upload to social media should:

• Never come across as derogatory to any individual or group of people

• Never make you seem ungrateful or bigheaded

• Never make you appear to be unreliable or hard to relate to

• Only ever promote yourself and your brand

• Always seek to influence others to do good

Make yourself stand out

In your quest to land your dream role in sport, you will face a plethora of competition. Hundreds, possibly even thousands, of other hopefuls will contest you in your bid to find success in the sport. This just means that you have to go that extra mile when it comes to making yourself stand out.

A simple yet effective way to do this is to create your signature move. After every goal you score, a basket that you dunk, a pitch that you catch, touchdown that you make, you should perform a unique movement or dance move. This will help the general public to identify you, and it will drum up interest in your brand.

To market yourself as an athlete, you need to put the advice laid out above into practice — in order to find long-term success, you should continue to do so throughout the duration of your career.