Digital Activism: How can professional athletes make an impact on the world?

As a person that is constantly watching sports left and right and hopefully planning to work in the sports industry. I understand that these famous athletes come from all different types of backgrounds and have an empowering work ethic and figure. These athletes are constantly in media wherever they go and I believe if they use to this to their advantage they can truly make an impact for the better. There are some athletes that have done this already in the past, when the Black Lives Matter protests were happening during 2020 the entire Milwaukee Bucks team protested and elected to not play the game to help spread awareness of the current events.

How does Digital Activism affect Athletes for Hope?

Online or digital activism is the use of technology, such as social media, email and/or websites, as a form of activism. It enables users to spread awareness and information about political and/or social change.

The main methods that Athletes for Hope use for digital activism include:

A/B Testing: Is another great strategy that AFH have used when creating their website. When looking at the specific tab for the events they have planned for the future. They use different colors for the different categories of customers for the events. They use a bright yellow color with with white text on the button to capture the eye of the consumers that want to buy tickets to the events, then they use a blue color with white text for the other button for the consumers that want to sponsor the event.

I believed the reason why this method is successful for AFH is because it very visually pleasing to the eye as well as matching the color to the brand image. I'm assuming that AFH tested all sorts of different colors, layouts, fonts, sizes, and anything else you could possibly think of when creating this website to be as effective as possible.

Content Marketing: Which is defined as a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. They do this through hosting a series of interviews with athletes of all levels that focuses on their own mental health, why athlete mental health is important, and ways we can come together to end its stigma in sports. the use of podcasts and YouTube videos.

In early 2021 they also had multiple Instagram Lives where they hosted many women in sports to spread awareness of Women’s History Month. These conversations were so incredible that we decided to turn them into podcasts!

I believe this form of action digital activism has worked so well for AFH due to the fact that there is hundreds of thousands of people that classify themselves as athletes, and since this target market is very large they able to share their content content across many forms of social media where there will be constantly be viewers.

The skills that I have learned in digital marketing that I would use to help improve the cause is:

Email marketing can help with spreading the awareness of AFH to a further note and really spread the message of what pro athletes can do for their community. The use of email within your marketing efforts to promote a business’s products and services, as well as incentivize customer loyalty. Email marketing is a form of marketing that can make the customers on your email list aware of new products, discounts, and other services. It can also be a softer sell to educate your audience on the value of your brand or keep them engaged between purchases.

The other skill that I've learned that I believe AFH can help improve their overall brand is improving the amount of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is the method of growing your organization by building meaningful, lasting relationships with consumers, prospects, and customers. It’s about valuing and empowering these people to reach their goals at?any?stage in their journey with you. I believe using athletes from all types of sports as well as from all different backgrounds will greatly empower the people that are getting impacted by AFH, which will hopefully bring people together to make the world a better place.

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