Professional Athlete Websites Provide Career And Personal Media Platforms

The use of the internet can be seen everywhere.

Sports, news, gossip, and shopping are some of the topics that are surfed daily on the world wide web. The development and use of the internet has transformed the media landscape with not only published articles but also with video and other interactive technologies.

As a pro athlete, you can be popular search topic on many different websites and search engines not only because of your game winning catch but also because you just married your high school sweetheart.

The best way to publicize your professional career and your personal life is to develop and maintain your own website.

Professional athlete websites can be a valuable tool for a current or former athlete for many different reasons. Most professional athlete websites are focused solely on the athlete and their career highlights. This can be in the form of articles, photos and now most well designed websites feature videos.

A well designed website should allow fans to interact with the athlete, provide career and personal information and be entertaining. Fans can share their perspective and thoughts about the athlete’s latest game or recent trade.

This interaction can be a blog type forum or it can be a personal video section that can allow for video files to be uploaded directly to the site for the athlete to view. The athlete can then answer the fans either in the blog or by video. This type of direct involvement and updating of content on the website by the athlete will keep the fans interested and continue to drive traffic to the website.

Chad Erickson is President of O9 Productions, an Oregon based website design company specializing in pro athlete websites. He works with many high profile pro athletes including NFL stars Santana Moss and Nate Clements and the NHL’s Darcy Hordichuk.

Erickson believes for a website of a pro athlete to be considered viable and successful each pro athlete needs to be consistently involved in providing new content for the website. “A player can have the best looking website out there, but if they do nothing with it, in terms of blogging or interacting with the fans, then it’s pointless,” said Erickson. “The more interaction the player has with their website and the fans on their website, the more popular that website and player will become, which can open up numerous marketing avenues outside their website.”

Traffic growth is most important for a website of a pro athlete because it not only shows fan interest but it is also vital for promotion of an athletes foundation or charity.

The website of a pro athlete can be an important tool for the athlete to raise awareness for their foundation. It enables the promotion of an upcoming fundraising event or the ability to sell memorabilia on their website to benefit their charity with e-commerce functionality.

Athletes can also use their website to promote any outside business interests they have outside of professional sports. The website can function as a gateway for a successful transition to life after sports.

When looking to launch a new website you should look for a company that can handle all aspects of your website.

The process of launching a website includes:

1 - Developing a name and web address for your website
2 - Completing domain name registration
3 - Designing the website
4 - Initiating and maintaining web hosting
5 - Updating and maintaining the website with content
6 - Marketing and promoting the website
7 - Enabling maximum search engine capabilities
8 - Evaluating potential revenue sources for the website