Hashtag Files.
Michelle Waterson, UFC strawweight
Twitter handle: @KarateHottieMMA
Instagram: @KarateHottieMMA
Twitter followers: 85,400
Instagram followers: 891,000
If you’re in the business of building and promoting stars in the fight game, then maybe Michelle Waterson is the perfect litmus test for your skills. Or rather, maybe she offers the best way to find out whether or not you have any idea what you’re doing at all.
Because if you can’t make Waterson into a thing, this person who has all the ingredients everyone claims to want sitting right there at the surface, then you don’t stand much chance at building a profile for all the other fighters on the roster.
This much becomes apparent as you look through Waterson’s Instagram. If you’re looking for a personality to build around, she checks a lot of boxes for a lot of different audiences.
The male fans who want all female fighters to fit into conventional beauty standards? Yep, she’s got that. The moms who want an inspiring role model? She’s definitely got that. The people who just want a warm, genuine figure to root for, someone who seems simultaneously special yet approachable? Yeah, Waterson gives you that too.
What’s more, she knows it. And social media is where she works it for all it’s worth in a day-to-day marketing hustle that’s exhausting just to think about.
Ahead of her bout against Karolina Kowalkiewicz on the main card of UFC on ESPN 2, there’s some indication that the power brokers in this sport have recognized Waterson’s promotional potential. ESPN has gone all-in on telling her personal story ahead of this fight. The UFC is putting her on yet another high profile platform to spotlight her skills.
And Waterson? She’s doing her part. Just ask any of the seemingly endless #brands she shouts out on Instagram on any given day.
A fun game to play with Waterson’s feed is to look at all the pictures and try to guess what each one is an ad for before you click on it. This is harder than it might seem at first. Some are obvious (the post where she’s biting down on one of those teeth-whitening gadgets is, not surprisingly, an ad for a teeth-whitening gadget). But others are trickier.
What looks at first like Waterson making dinner is actually an ad for some sort of meat delivery service, for instance. And what appears to be just another picture of her flexing in her underwear turns out to be a plug for some kind of ice bath thing.
I started out trying to keep a running list in my mind of all the brands Waterson apparently represents, but the number quickly grew out of control. Ads for peanut butter and saunas and mouthguards and rashguards ripple endlessly through her timeline.
A lot of this is sheer quid pro quo, of course – give Waterson some money and/or stuff and she’ll tell nearly 900,000 people on Instagram how great your product is – but endorsements also seem to come built into her personality.
For example, even in posts where Waterson isn’t selling us on a thing, she often ends up selling us on a person. These are less likely to be paid posts. It’s more like she genuinely likes her trainer or her teammates or friends in one field or another and her natural impulse is to spread their gospel.
When it comes to the advertising, there are times when it’s all a bit much. The idea with a famous athlete’s social media is that it’s a window into their real lives. For the price of a follow, you’re invited to come along as an observer.
This is an illusion, of course – we all curate and manage our feeds so as to create a certain image and impression, which is almost never the whole truth – but it’s an illusion we can maintain as long as it doesn’t require us to suspend too much disbelief.
But Waterson’s Instagram (her Facebook is mostly Instagram reposts and her Twitter has been sporadically dormant, awakening only recently to promote some show on Amazon Prime) sometimes struggles to get the balance just right.
There’s an awful lot of advertising and sponsor-flogging going on here, and some of it sneaks up on you. You see these posts and almost can’t help but wonder, am I just following one big commercial here?
Maybe this is just a natural salesperson at work. There’s even some evidence that it runs in the family. Remember that story about Waterson’s daughter selling 1,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies to UFC President Dana White? When you see this kid’s charisma on camera, you get a sense that the man had no choice. Who could say no to her?
In the background of all this social media hustling is Waterson’s husband, former pro boxer Joshua Gomez.
Sometimes he’s the one credited with the glamorous photos of Waterson. Other times he’s the one who goes back into these posts later and litters them with hashtags that might help them find traction among the appropriate audiences – #momchamp #womenempowerment #inspiration #empoweringwomen #women #girlpower #love #womeninbusiness #femaleempowerment #womenentrepreneurs #empowerment #strongwomen #successfulwomen #girlboss #bosslady #womenleaders #inspire #inspiringwomen
This, too, makes sense. I remember back in 2014 when I wrote a story on Waterson, who was then the Invicta FC atomweight champ, and I spoke to Gomez about his decision to retire from boxing and get a job as a financial advisor so the family would have a steady income while Waterson pursued MMA.
“It just made sense,” Gomez told me then, “because Michelle is a hundred times better fighter than I ever was.”
She’s also probably a more marketable commodity – a mom with pro fighter skills and Instagram model looks who can charm the public in interviews – and a better bet financially. All it takes is the right spotlight, the right push, and the right person to get those hashtags in there while she’s promoting #brands.
That right there is the hustle in action, embracing the social media grind. Whatever you think of it, you have to admit that Waterson’s out here doing it about as well as anyone. And she might not even be the best salesperson in her own family.
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