Birth of the #AceBoyAthlete: Creating a Community

What’s up!

I hope you’ve enjoyed your week so far, and are ready for another edition of your favorite newsletter out there! With this being the third consecutive post, I’m filtering out what I think I want this newsletter to be about and what to really dig into. With that being said, I hope you’re enjoying it so far and if you haven’t already, join the team and subscribe!

Now, let’s get stuck into it! This one is again going to go back to the beginning *cue ominous music* to when AceBoy Sports Group was first incepted in 2017 in a dorm room in Beverly, Massachusetts.

How the hashtag started

If you haven’t read the last post about Battle on the Blacktop you can find it on the Learning the Venture dashboard, but for those of you who have read it, you’ll know that AceBoy Sports Group started out as a simple Instagram page which shared the accomplishments and highlights of Bermudian athletes playing abroad. I liken the page during this period to House of Highlights (those who aren’t familiar, definitely give them a follow), and like HOH, I wanted to create a hub for Bermuda’s sports content that was modern and fresh.

In the early days of conceptualizing ABSG I knew pretty early on that I wanted to create a community around the company, built up of both athletes and fans of sports in general. At this time I was definitely pre-revenue in the company’s lifecycle, so other than a platform I didn’t really have much to offer athletes other than to be featured on the page. When approaching an athlete to feature on our socials, I introduced myself, told them my vision for the platform, and what I was asking of them. I only asked two things of new athletes when they first featured on the page:

1. To send me any highlights or news they wanted me to share on the page.

2. To tag any sports related post that they share on their personal page with the hashtag #AceBoyAthlete.

On May 23rd, 2017 we made our first ever post on Instagram, and now 5 short years later, the hashtag with over 1K posts was born.

Why a hashtag?

A hashtag was seen as a pretty obvious tool to use in order to link all our social media posts, as is done across larger businesses, sports teams, and politics in general. Utilizing a hashtag was also seen as a more non-intrusive way to personalize and categorize our posts under the ABSG banner. The tag #AceBoyAthlete was used by us on all our posts and stories across our social media channels, and also by the athletes we featured when they posted content on their own pages. By using the hashtag on every post that came from the athlete and ABSG, we were (and still are) creating a link with the athletes and their followers, and vice versa. This was integral in our early days as it helped us to grow our following as a page and start-up, and began associating our content with Bermudian athletes who were playing abroad, whether that be at semi-pro or university level at the time.

By continuously including that hashtag in our posts not only helps increase our visibility, but it is also helping users/would-be followers begin to associate our business and the ABSG brand with the hashtag, further establishing ourselves in the Bermudian sports industry on social media. With #AceBoyAthlete being a unique hashtag, we know that every time it is used it is in relation to AceBoy Sports Group, and with over 1K posts so far that is a great track to be on and continue to add to.

What ABSG gained from the hashtag

While I don’t know the exact amount of followers gained from utilizing the hashtag #AceBoyAthlete in posts, I do know the hashtag has currently been used over 1,000 times on Instagram posts. As of time of writing, there are also currently 11 individual accounts that follow the hashtag on Instagram (yes you can do that, and no I did not know that at first!) which shows a growing following for the tag and the content that it represents. While that account is minuscule to say the least, it shows that there is engagement in the tag itself from followers who have spotted the tag on posts and elected to follow it.

What this represents is a growing interest in what AceBoy Sports Group is doing, and the accounts following the hashtag shows that. We hope to continue to grow the following of the hashtag, and will continue to advertise that action during events going forward. This will allow followers to keep up with our athletes and events other than just following the account page thereby ensuring they see our updates and don’t miss out on content. These actions have helped us to build out a small community, which has the potential to keep expanding with our other projects we have in mind. This hashtag will be used on all of our posts and advertisements, which is not limited to any one pillar within the business scope of operations. This includes athlete management, events, youth development, etc.

How did this build a community?

Now just how did a hashtag contribute to our overarching goal of building a community via social media? Well, between 2017 and 2019 there were 28 athletes who came under the #AceBoyAthlete banner. These athletes were not represented in any way by AceBoy Sports Group, the only relationship we had with these athletes was they would share any content such as highlights or updates from their sporting careers and we would post that content on our social media profiles. They would then tag us in any sports related content and also use our hashtag on these posts. These athletes were from a variety of sports such as football, cricket, rugby, and basketball. But funnily enough, the two athletes who have used the hashtag the most so far (excluding the ABSG main page), is a bodybuilder, AJ Dill, and a personal trainer, Che Beane. Both of these guys were great in the early days of supporting ABSG and still do to this day!

These 28 athletes, including AJ and Che, each had over 800 followers on Instagram when we first began posting and sharing content, thereby exposing ourselves to their followers and vice versa. The use of #AceBoyAthlete solidified our relationship and branded the athletes as being part of a growing community of talented local athletes. Unfortunately there was no way for me to track how our follower count grew in relation to those who saw the hashtag, although it is great to see our hashtag still being used by athletes today. While we no longer share content from athletes we don’t represent, or those who don’t play on our sponsored teams, there are still athletes who post with our hashtag. This just shows evidence of the community we have built so far, and the potential that we have as a brand in the growing Bermudian sports industry, not only as a business.

We also incorporated this hashtag into all the advertisements for Battle on the Blacktop (Editions #1 and #2), and a few spectators and participants actually posted to their personal accounts (mainly stories) with the hashtag included. Prior to the event, we did ask that if any of the participants were going to post about the event, that they used the hashtags #AceBoyAthlete and #BOTB (again, done for both editions of the event). This was done more so to garner intrigue post-mortem, in order to generate more social media followers and direct these new entrants to our growing community. Now, all the team members from The Reapers (this post can be found on our dashboard) use the hashtag in their posts relating to our sponsored basketball team, and their friends they brought to games also used the hashtag when they shared their game experiences over Instagram Stories.

We’ve also seen #AceBoyAthlete go international, with the footballers we represent in the UK using the hashtag in their posts from their club matches. Hopefully in the future we see the international usage of the hashtag grow, as we continue to add to our roster of represented athletes. Consequentially, we can assume that the fans of the clubs these athletes play for will catch onto #AceBoyAthlete and follow the tag on Instagram, or even use it themselves when sharing that athlete’s content.

I hope you all enjoyed this one!

Peace,

Jason