Every Olympic and Paralympic Games has memorable victories, legacies, and moments of greatness. But what happens every day outside of the 17 days of the Games? My Focus is an Instagram series where @TeamUSA takes fans behind-the-scenes of their favorite athletes and sports. Using original photos, we take fans through a day in the life of an athlete and show the hard work, dedication, and sacrifice that is required on a daily basis to represent Team USA. This series creates a bridge between athletes and fans by going inside their lives and bringing their daily routines closer to our followers. This is a weekly series published on Tuesdays on @TeamUSA Instagram and TeamUSA.org.
With access to America's top Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls at the Olympic Training Center, we were able to leverage those relationships and create engaging, powerful content to show our fans what an "offseason" for an Olympian consists of. By capturing compelling, candid moments, our fans journeyed behind the scenes into the daily grind of an Olympian, both on and off the playing field. From gold medalists to hopefuls, we ran the full gamut of Team USA athletes, introducing our fans to new sports, new stories, and new stars.
As each photo shoot occurs, the social media team is consistently posting behind-the-scenes content, teasing at upcoming segment. Fans are left guessing who from each sport will be profiled and excited to see their favorite Team USA athletes. The unveiling of each installment is three-fold: • Instagram o As an Instagram-focused series, approximately five photos per athlete are selected o The visual content plays beautifully into the platform, who already provides an audience yearning for compelling, powerful photography. o Each posts includes quotes from the athletes, bringing a personal touch to the fans. This helps us create a conversation with the athletes. o To maintain consistency with our fan base, photos are posted on the platform each Tuesday afternoon. • Twitter o As our primary platform for promotion, we tease a photo and quote on our @TeamUSA twitter feeds, driving traffic back to the @TeamUSA Instagram page. • TeamUSA.org o In addition to posting content on social platforms, we also utilize TeamUSA.org as an opportunity to post up to 15 photos in a listicle format. o This helps us prevent over-saturation of content on our social feeds, while creating a permanent archive of the series, tying the content to the athlete's biography page, as well.
My Focus, which is now heading into its eighth installment, has been considered a success for @TeamUSA. The series helps to educate, inform, and inspire our audience about our athletes, from high-profile gold medalists to Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls. My Focus allows us to introduce our fans to athletes, sports, and stories they had not been exposed to. Perhaps one of the most telling success factors for our team has been how the athletes profiled, as well as their teammates, coaches, friends, and fans, have embraced the series. • To date, @TeamUSA has posted 43 Instagram photos in support of the My Focus campaign • These posts have received more than 245K likes on the platform • Eight tweets, one tweet per week, have received 674K impressions and nearly 14K engagements
