“Swimming” Instagram Highlight (ODU)
“Swimming” Instagram Highlight (UMW)
Through these three Instagram story highlights on my personal Instagram, I have essentially created segments of my media persona. I constantly use Instagram stories as a casual way to share with my followers what my interests and passions. These three highlights show my personal connections to sports and fitness.
The fitness highlight consist of me sharing my workouts and progression through those. I started the highlight as a way to hold myself accountable. I wanted to share my progress and hopefully inspire my friends to work out and eat well. I also used it as an outlet to share my life outside the pool. I had started posting initially in the height of covid when pools were closed and swimming to work out was not an option. I used it as a way to cope with struggling to stay in shape without swimming. Fitness is something that has always been a passion of mine and I chose social media to share that. I would define this persona I created as “fit girl” it shows me as a fitness oriented gym rat who likes to work out and eat right. Which in reality is not me 100% of the time. It’s only a part of who I am 25% of the time.
The sports highlight is the way I share love for sports but mostly my love for the Kansas City Chiefs and my love for U.S Olympic and Paralympic swimming. People always seem surprised when I said I liked football and I was Chiefs fan. The Chiefs have been the team I watched with my family my whole life and sharing that with my friends on social media is special to me. I would define this persona as “sports fan”. I am a sports fan through and through I like watching sports and talking about sports. This highlight is how I share this small percentage of who I am. But again I am not this person 100% of the time. Sports are not my only interest but I have this highlight on my social media not only to share my passion for sports but also to show future employers “Hey I keep up with sports and use social media to do it”,considering sports marketing is my career goal this was important to me. Sports marketing utilizes social media heavily and I firmly believe it is the future of marketing so I wanted to demonstrate that I know how to show my “brand” and knowledge on social media.
My swimming highlight reels. These ones are definitely the ones that show the largest most honest side of who I am. Having competed in swimming for 19 years you may agree swimming has forged who I am. I absolutely loved sharing about mine and my teammates accomplishments. This was my way of bragging but remaining humble. Swimming is also the one thing I would post about on my main page and not just through my story. I actually created two “swimming” highlights one for my ODU swimming experience and the other for my UMW swimming experience. Which are two different experience with a lot of parallels and I wanted to find a way to share these experiences and I feel the highlights help me do that. I would define this persona as “the swimmer”. I will always be a swimmer. This “persona” is the most real representation of who I am in real life. It is typically the first fun fact I share with people. I want people and employers to know this about me because being an athlete has taught me many skills such as time management and leadership. And I know employers in the sports world want former athletes because of those skills as well as having an understanding of the athletes mind. No better person to have marketing towards other athletes than an athletes themselves.
All three of these personas build on my over all online persona. Clearly sports are a part of who I am and how I choose define myself. I found that it is easy to share this part of my personality online because its something that many people can relate to and engage with. It is also not an overly “personal” aspect of who I am. I try to avoid sharing the most personal aspects of myself online for my personal well being and safety. But sports and my love for sports are not the only personas I have created though this one platform. That’s the beauty of social media. You get to be selective on what people see and you get to create multiple different personas that all build on to who you are.
Leave a Reply