As an athlete, you have an incredible opportunity to share your journey and to create a dedicated following around your athletic career. A lot of MAKEACHAMP athletes are using their athlete fan pages before and after their campaigns to raise more funds, to attract and retain sponsors, and to maintain and grow their community of supporters. 

Using your athlete page before your campaign is a great way to market yourself as an athlete, and create a community of followers who will help you launch your campaign towards success. Continuing to use your athlete fan page after your campaign is done is a great way to leverage exposure from your campaign and solidify your relationships with your supporters.

Here are some of the reasons why all athletes should take the time to share their journey.

People enjoy following athletes because it gives them a behind the scene sneak peak into an inspirational journey that combines commitment, sacrifice and dedication. Sharing your journey immediately creates a "bond" between the athlete and the fan. When a fan sees the result of an athlete they've been following, it makes them feel proud and connected to that victory. It makes them feel that they have been on the journey with you, because they truly understand how hard you worked. When you are sharing videos and pictures of your day-to-day training with your fans, it nurtures and strengthens that bond.

Here is a simple example of sharing a training video featuring Warwick Fulke. Warwick is running a campaign and here is the way he is marketing himself as an athlete.

As you can see it is not difficult to do. All it takes is a small commitment to consistently share various aspects of how you experience your sport.

As an high level athlete, you are living an extraordinary life; you are pushing the limit of your physical and mental capabilities all the time. Not many people can say they are doing the same. Then there is the travel, the competitions, the stress, the successes, and the disappointments. All of this is raw material you can use to create awesome content - content that many will love to see, read and follow. And its not just about words, your MAKEACHAMP fan-page allows you to add videos and pictures in beautiful posts that can be emailed directly to your supporters. Here is an incredible post from a wonderful athlete Marissa Ponich.

Once you have a sufficient amount of people following your journey, you can leverage that fan base to get sponsored and funded. The MAKEACHAMP athlete page is a great place to share your journey with blog/update posts because not only can people can "follow" you by subscribing to receive email notifications, but they can also give you direct contributions. With a bit of effort, you can build up a substantial group of followers by collecting emails and connecting with people on social media. Once you've assembled a follower base, you can launch a crowdfunding campaign with great success and you can reach out to a corporate sponsor for additional support. Getting funded on MAKEACHAMP and getting a sponsor becomes a lot easier once you've spent some time marketing yourself by sharing your athletic journey. You can also get your MAKEACHAMP campaign sponsored to raise even more money.

Too many athletes think that an athlete brand is only for superstars. In our digital age of widespread adoption of social media, that's just not true today. An athlete without a professional contract can also build a brand around themselves. A brand can be defined as positioning yourself and your accomplishments in a manner that packs an emotional punch. Remember, because you're an athlete living an extraordinary life, you can create an emotional impact with every single one of your posts. Those emotions sparked by your content will always be closely associated with you as a brand in the hearts and minds of your followers. The bottom line is that if you are consistently sharing good content, you have the opportunity to build a brand for yourself which can be inspirational, aspirational and really make an impact on your fans.

A lot of amateur sports (and athletes) are struggling financially due to lack of exposure. The problem is a real challenge because without exposure, sponsors are not interested in getting involved. Without sponsorship, the sport doesn't have money to attract and maintain its athletes. However, when an athlete is marketing themselves to find personal sponsors, they are also marketing their sport by association. By marketing their sport through their personal branding efforts, they are also increasing awareness of their sport. That's why using tools like MAKEACHAMP plus all of the available social media channels can have a dramatic impact on a  sports exposure.

For example, Christopher George has done a great job marketing himself and his sport. Sharing his journey, he has a hashtag associated with him:  

If you ask many of the current Olympians why they decided to take their sport to the highest level, the answer is almost always because they were inspired by another great athlete. When you share your story, you can be that athlete that inspires the next generation of high achievers in your sport. It's the widespread availability of and easy access to online social tools that make it possible for any athlete to reach very large audiences and inspire many more young people to pursue their dreams.