Why every professional athlete should have their own websites, A view from Kenya

It is encouraging to see many professional athletes beginning to create social media sites to interact with their fans and websites to put up their biographies, their achievements and the projects they are working on, among other information. In the near future, it seems it will be so easy for anyone to learn more about any athlete that wins any major competition by simply combining their names into a URL address and seeing all the information they will need to know about them and all their sponsors in one place as well.

Below are some of the reasons why every professional athlete should be having their own website by now.

1. It helps the athlete put up all the information about them in one single place.

Professional athletes have social media sites: Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram, etc. But, a perfect platform that with include all these in one place and any other information that the athletes would wish their fans to know about them is a personal website.

Some of my favorite athlete websites are Usain Bolt's www.usainbolt.com and Mo Farah's www.mofarah.com and Vivian Cheruiyot's www.viviancheruiyot.com .

2. The athlete should benefit from their hard work and no one else should capitalize on their name and sweat.

The last time I checked, the sites that use the names of some of Kenya's greatest athletes; for example Eliud Kipchoge and Asbel Kiprop, have completely nothing to do with the runners, and nothing even to do with running. Some domain names are parked for sale while others are online shops for some products not even related to running.

While it is hard to tell who the unknown people benefiting from the athletes' sweat directing traffic to their sites are, the simplest thing to do for the athletes and their agents is to establish their own websites in their names. Pace Sports Management is doing a good work on this so far with their athletes.

3. It helps the press, media, fans and race organizers to find information about the athletes more easily.

Instead of looking up for information of an athlete from the search engines, the best place would be on their websites where you will get everything about them, including stories out of their performances such as the projects and charities they support and their training.

4. It helps bolster the status of an elite athlete.

Just like one company that has a nice website can compare with another that doesn't have one, is the same case with professional athletes. A fan who watches an athlete run well at a particular event may get interested in knowing more about him/her later. If these new fans look up the athlete and find that they have a website where they can read more about them, get links to their social media sites and check more past achievements, they will be more likely regard them more for what they are as persons.

5. An athlete is able to advertise their sponsors on their websites.

The only sponsor I knew sponsored Usain Bolt was Puma, but looking at his website, I saw many other sponsors and even got surprised that Kinder Joy, a brand of chocolates that my daughter likes so much and gets them once in a while, is also one of Bolt's sponsors.

6. The athlete has a platform to correct wrong reporting and set things straight on his own website.

In these times where digital media is full of alarming reports to drive traffic to their websites, it is good for athletes to have their own sites where they can release press information if need be and correct any wrong information being circulated.