Fiona Birch, Founder of Pro Athletes Online
By Cheval John
December 27th, 2017
Today’s episode of What’s The Word? features Fiona Birch.
Fiona is the founder of Pro Athletes Online, a company which helps athletes to be aware of how they present themselves on social media the right way.
She has spoken at conferences including Social Media Marketing World 2016 and is set to speak there again next year.
Fiona has also given presentations for brands and business schools including Air Zealand.
The show was recorded on Blue Jeans Network and simulcast to Facebook Live
In this episode, you will hear:
-why she decided to found Pro Athletes Online
-why college athletes should take control of their brand
-the importance of social media
-the one hero she would spend one day with past or present
Snippet on Vallano Media TV
Full Episode on BlogTalkRadio
Website: www.proathleteonline.com
Twitter: @fi_birch
Quotes from Fiona Birch on:
FAILURE AND SUCCESS
We grow up with every cliche your can imagine.
One of my father’s cliche was “The world is your oyester.”
The other one was, “It’s easy to be the same as everybody else.”
One of the things that I ask people is “Are you scared of failure or are you scared of success because I think a lot of people assume that they are scared of messing up.
For me, I would say, “I’m probably more afraid of success than I am of failure.”
I’m very good at picking myself up the ground and just doing it again.
Sometimes when it’s all about to happen and you feel it and know it’s about to go crazy.
It’s all about really being honest about what it is that freaking you out at any point in time.
You have to go into the next unknown phase.
Sometimes we get so comfortable and it’s been a struggle and getting knocked back and hitting your head against the wall.
ATHLETES USING SOCIAL MEDIA
When it comes to social media and somebody is building a brand for themselves, “it’s do not do this, do not do that, do not be an idiot.”
If you are not building your brand, then the only two people who are building your brand are the media and the trolls.
They will come after you.
They are not looking for a good story at all.
So that’s one thing we face a lot with athletes is the agenda of other people.
LAS VEGAS KNIGHTS STANDING OUT ON SOCIAL MEDIA
What they have actually created is what I think is an amazing feat for branding.
What summed up from a brand point of view is who is going to take VEGAS seriously.
They never had a pro team before.
They were very honest of what they were.
They are a city of entertainment.
They are a city of secrets.
They are a city that sort of everybody visits and have fun.
They got a great sense of humor.
There is actually a sense of community in Vegas when you live there.
For the rest of us, the perception is not they had to create this community.
The person that runs the golden knights social media account is hilarious.
He kind of looked at what the Kings did.
The National Hockey League (NHL) was pretty robotic in how they handle digital media to say it lightly.
So the Kings are the first to sort of went out there.
But Vegas went a bit further.