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The use of emojis across social media marketing has become increasingly popular over the last several years. They’ve increased the level of creativity brands can explore when producing content, and they support communication online to be more succinct and concise while enhancing the tone-of-voice brands want to express. For that reason, I’ve created a blog post to help fighters, combat sports brands, and fight promotions learn more about how emojis can be used to grow your personal brand.
I know what you’re thinking; what’s the point of growing ‘my brand’? Well, it’s something which can open up opportunities for you. For example, the more active you are on social media, the more you share content, produce it, engage with others, etc. The more visible you become. Then, the more marketable you become due to that activity, it can lead to an income through social media. This is often achieved via sponsorship.
So, let’s explore some case studies where emojis have proven useful for building a personal brand across the fight game.
Ilia ‘El Matador’ Topuria case study
Whether you follow me across Instagram, X or LinkedIn, you’ll know I’ve been VERY vocal about Ilia since his win against Alexander ‘The Great’ Volkanovski. I don’t need to go into detail how incredible his KO was, instead, I’m going to talk about the personal branding aspect of how he promoted himself pre and post fight.
If you scroll through his last few Instagram posts and check out his bio, you’ll see a rose emoji, and this is something that represents his personal brand hugely. The same applies when you visit his X feed as well. As a result, you’ll find it aligns with the colour red on his UFC shorts, on the Spanish flag, included in the colour code of text for his X cover photo, etc. Plus, after his victory speech in the Octagon, the space was soon covered in red petals, an initiative contributing towards his personal brand.
With this leverage, the rose emoji, in particular, became shared and curated by many other brands in the combat sports space, such as tntsportsufc, as seen below.
The further this spreads across social content, the more awareness will be raised of Topuria’s brand via the rose emoji and then that can be repurposed for other purposes, such as:
- community management: his fanbase posts rose emojis across their social feeds for upcoming fights.
- As his leverage continues to rise, it could lead to sponsorship opportunities associated with flower brands, expanding his niche outside of combat sports.
- When a fight fan see’s the colour red, it can be a symbol and represent the brand identity of Ilia Topuria.
Andrew ‘The Gladiator’ Valdina case study
Andrew, ‘The Gladiator’ Valdina, is a pro-MMA fighter who fights for the regional MMA fight promotion Cage Titans, based in Massachusetts, New England. What stands out about how he’s using emojis as a part of his personal branding is including the cross swords emoji to represent his ‘the gladiator’ nickname. This post, in particular, stood out as he created a community-orientated post entitled #GladiatorSZN. This culturally sensitive nickname is a good move to have a tracker to increase brand visibility.
Scrolling through his comments sections across his Instagram feed demonstrates others have invested in his brand by sharing the emoji through endorsements, discussion and more.
Staying consistent with using this tactic for personal branding and other consistent marketing tactics can lead to further sponsorship and online monetisation opportunities. For example, creating merchandise dedicated to the term gladiator with the crossed swords as a logo. Using it as a part of his branded graphics, typography through fight promo etc.
Joe ‘Skeletor’ Giannetti case study
Joe Joe ‘Skeletor’ Giannetti, is another Cage Titans MMA fighter who has done a remarkable job with his personal brand. Similar to Andrew, he’s utilised the skull emoji to represent his brand identity to link with his nickname ‘skeletor’.
Similar to Andrew Valdina, he’s utilised this as a hashtag, ‘skeletorsevilarmy’, which again is effective as a brand awareness tracker to encourage others to use it. Furthermore, he’s utilised this as a part of his merchandise, which is driving his audience to be treated as a community rather than online fans. All of this from a simple emoji.
As always, I decided to keep this blog post short and sweet, I hope you found value from it.
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