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Tag Archives | Personal Branding

Will Michael Vick’s Road to Redemption Ever End?

54 for 89 (60% completions). 6 passing touchdowns. 1 rushing touchdown. 0 interceptions. And a QB rating of 110.2. Those are Michael Vick’s numbers three weeks into the 2010 NFL season. Vick started the season as backup to Kevin Kolb. But after a Week 1 Kolb concussion and a dominant Week 2 performance by Vick in his place, head coach Andy Reid made the decision to give Vick the chance he’d been waiting several years for, to be a starting quarterback in the National Football League once again.

But this post is not about Michael Vick the football player, it is about Michael Vick the person.

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What We Can Learn About Branding from Stephen Strasburg’s Injury

Did we just witness the entirety of Stephen Strasburg’s professional baseball career in the span of mere months? I doubt it, given that the success rate of Tommy John’s surgery is over 90%, but it is a possibility.

Strasburg is one of the most hyped players in professional sports in recent memory and he was living up to the buzz in his first season. Not only was he delivering on the mound, with 98-100 MPH fastballs and dirty curveballs, but he was generating more television viewers, ballpark visitors, and straight cash for the game of baseball, a sport which is still struggling somewhat from the Steroids Era.

Many have called Strasburg’s injury a “sad day for baseball.” And it is. But let’s forget about the game for a moment and think about the individual. What a potentially awful day for Stephen Strasburg.

Considering that significant injuries happen all the time in sports (St. Louis Rams’ wide receiver Donny Avery tore his ACL last week, for example, and is out for the season), and that we live in a time where personal branding has become so important, is it foolish for any professional athlete, Stephen Strasburg or not, to not be focusing on building their brand off the field? [More…]

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Reputation Management: Athletes Facing Controversy

(This is a guest article by Wesley Mallette) Athletes in trouble. We see it every day in the news and find ourselves wondering aloud, “Wow. Did they really just say/do that?” The vast majority of athletes will face a crisis of some proportion during their career or post-career. How they handle it is everything, and…

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How Athletes Can Build Their Personal Brand

It’s no surprise professional athletes are using social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and even Ustream everyday.  Being an ex pro athlete myself (even on a smaller scale than the NFL) I loved connecting with my fans before and after games. I had my regular group of fans that would come down by the field…

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LeBron is Missing a Massive Opportunity

Let me start by saying that LeBron James is doing just fine for himself. LeBron can pretty much do whatever he wants (e.g. get dunked on at his own camp and confiscate the video, walk off the court without shaking hands after losing the Eastern conference finals, back out of the Slam Dunk Competition) and…

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Super Bowl Commercials Play Role in Branding

A few days ago a reporter called and asked how I would advise a professional athlete if he wanted to endorse a hot-button topic in a forum as big as a Super Bowl audience. My answer was not textbook public relations. (I will reveal the outlet and topic upon its publication). The reasons that athletes…

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It’s a Numbers Game – Sports Vanity Toll Free Numbers

We all know there are numerous ways to brand your sports business.  From a professionally designed and well optimized website, to having consistent social networking usernames across a variety of social media platforms, you are well on your way to promoting your brand. With a passion for domain names over the years, I have been…

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For Iverson and the Sixers, the Answer is Social Media

For the record, I am a Sixers fan, and I love Allen Iverson. The Background Three years ago, yesterday, Allen Iverson asked for a trade from the Philadelphia 76ers. “As hard as it is to admit,” he said, “a change may be the best thing for everyone.” Eleven days later, Iverson was traded to the…

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Athlete Branding & Owning a Domain Name

Why an athlete should care about their domain name and personal brand. As long as domain names have been around, professional athlete domain names have been valued property by domain speculators (domainers), cyber squatters, and sports fans.  If you do a whois search for most professional athletes, no matter what the sport, chances are that…

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Where To Find Sports Domain Names

The domain name industry has come a long way in the last 20 years.  In the early 1990s, an individual needed to write in and request a domain name and there was a limit of five names.  A few years later, Network Solutions came on the scene and you could register a domain name, but…

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Keep it Personal or Get Down to Business?

 There are not enough hours in the day to successfully manage a plethora of social media profiles.  The bottom line is that you need to make money.  Social networking sites will help you build a strong network of contacts, but you still must devote a large portion of your business day to selling and perfecting the actual…

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Life-Streaming 101: The Starbury TV Experiment

Stephon Marbury should’ve refrained from life-streaming. Starbury TV, as far as I’m concerned, was an epic failure.  Why? David Neiman of Athlete Interactive put it so poignantly that I’ll just share what he had to say and let you judge for yourself: “We want athletes to awe us, and that’s precisely what they do when they’re doing what…

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