Building an MMA fighter's brand

A rising MMA fighter had talent but almost no control of what people saw when they searched his name. Page one of Google was mostly earned and social results, such as stat sites and a thin Facebook page. There were no paid results and no owned results, his image search was a mix of other people, and his name was open to a bad news story taking over the page. Few assets existed, and the ones that did were not linked or branded to work together.

• The audit. Searched his name the way a fan or a promoter would, mapped every result into paid, owned, earned and social, and assessed the gaps.
• A branded website. A keyword-branded WordPress site to own his namespace and become the source of truth, with a homepage slider, media gallery, news feed, contact form, social integration, analytics and SEO-optimized pages, in a responsive design for mobile and tablet. I recommended securing his name as a domain before anyone else could. Three homepage designs and a supporting page, with three rounds of revisions.
• A social plan. I benchmarked how other UFC fighters use social, then recommended optimizing Facebook and Twitter, adding branded channels on YouTube, Vimeo, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and keeping one active posting channel (Instagram) that I could feed to the others without his daily involvement.
• An editorial calendar. Daily posting cadence by channel, scaled back once the community was established.
• Measurement. Weekly reporting on his digital namespace: ownership, sentiment, change over time, and the social signals that affect ranking.
• Film. Produced the fighter's brand films.

I started from what a stranger sees: his name in search. The audit showed where he had no control, and each part of the plan filled one gap, then weekly reporting showed what changed.