Athletes and Social Media Branding

This blog is going to be an extension of a paper I wrote earlier about linking professional players and social media.
Earlier this week, I had the privilege of participating in a Q&A session with Koby Altman, who is the Director of Pro Personnel for the Cleveland Cavaliers.  One of the questions that was asked during the session was his take on social media and how it affects the players and vice versa.  While he mainly said that they can't stop social media and athletes from mixing as long as it's not harmful, he made a key point in noting how top level players have levered social media to be a branding and marketing tool for their name.  LeBron James was cited as a key example in his answer, as he noted that LeBron is the most followed player on Twitter, and has used Twitter as a marketing platform for his business ventures.  In this vein, other players of similar clout would be Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, Kevin Love, and Jeremy Lin, to cite a few examples.  What all these players have in common is the massive popularity behind them, whether it's due to the style of play or their uniqueness.  However, all these players have the ability to turn their social media profile into a brand unto itself, as a perfect of way of self-promoting while allowing an even more intimate experience for their fans, who may have a chance of getting to personally interact with their favorite athletes.  At the same time, these guys need to be aware that since social media is more instantaneous, so is the brand they have built for themselves, and thus they need to be extra careful on how or what they post for the world to see.  Fortunately, most of these players likely have a good marketing team to help them coordinate their social media campaigns so they won't need to worry to much about a snafu occurring with their social media planning.
At the end, as long as these guys plan well and play well, they can see their social media brands rise as fast as a tech stock on Wall St.  At the same time, they can see it fall as fast as Enron stock after their fraud came to light, so they need to make sure that their social media activities can withstand the pitfalls and controversies that can easily arise from this.