I have come across some sports personalities who were not performing for their respective teams, so whenever I visited YouTube videos talking about them and left comments that highlighted their recent statistics that showcased their performances, I would come across many people who used to fight my analogies. At first experiencing this phenomenon, I thought to myself because of the media hype these underperforming sports personalities have; they have their own fanclub. However, little did I know there was a dark secret that created this frenzy around these sports stars.
Now, just last year on a blogging platform, I wrote something about a certain blogger who had over 50k followers and tagged him in the title. That article was about something I did not agree with what the blogger was talking about. Within 24 hours, that article got removed, and I got temporarily banned from that blogging platform. Now the thing is, I think that blogger sent his keyboard warriors to specifically flag my article because I received an email from the blogging platform that my article was citing "Harrasment.”.
Both these incidents made me realize that in this age of the internet, social media has become a very powerful tool and specifically, if you are a sports personality, you do not just need a fanbase that defends you across the internet but you need to invest heavily in something called “Cyber Keyword Warriors” Here is what these keyword warriors will do to improve your online presence on social media and also boost your sports career, so it is not just about performance on the field of play but it is about building an online reputation as well; so lets start shall we:
- They will counter negative publicity and online hate all across the internet, so lets say they find a comment on a facebook post, YouTube video or instagram post that negatively affects their brand They will fight on behalf of that sports personality who hired their services.
- They will boost your engagement ratio on your social media posts with likes, comments and also share it across various social media, acting just like fanboys but on a more dedicated level.
- They will help you get sponsorship opportunities because brands will notice these positive engagements on social media posts so they will notice a positive signal, hence immediately wanting these sports personalities to become their brand influencers.
- They will fight for keeping your public image even if the sports personalities are involved in controversies of any kind These keyword warriors will make sure that the reputation of these specific sports personalities is not tarnished and somehow even unrank articles, social media posts, and videos that are bringing negative publicity to the sports personality in all the search engines.
- They will make sure your online presence is competing with other sports personalities in the industry, meaning they will go onto other sports personalities who are direct competitors and write on their social media posts as well. This creates a scenario where the sports personalities showcase a huge fanbase.
Now in my country, Pakistan, the most popular sports is cricket. Now there are a lot of players that are underperforming in the team right now. But these sports stars have bought the services of these “Cyber keyword warriors” which give them the following benefits:
- They make sure they get selected for their national team consistently.
- They get sponsorship deals on television and also brand deals on social media.
- They get called for interviews and TV shows even after retiring.
- After retirement, these players get roles in government positions like the PCB (Pakistan Cricket Board), hence getting paid thousands of dollars in monthly salary.
This is certainly not an ethical practice whatsoever and seems more like a sophisticated political campaign really where people on the internet keep rooting for you no matter how bad your sports performance is on the playing field, and I hope more people have awareness about this so they can not be fooled by these types of sports personalities really.
What do you think about all of this? Do you think these “Cyber Keyword Warriors” are doing an ethical act, or is it a modern demand to survive for these sports personalities? Please let me know in the comments below.
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This article was originally published on Medium
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