Aliyah Boston recalls her parents prodding her to be more active on social media, to extend her brand as her basketball prowess began to draw national attention.

She said she would be more active — and then post just one photo in two months, which is no way for an athlete influencer to earn big money in the era of name, image and likeness compensation.

Eventually, the South Carolina superstar saw the light — and the green.

“With the NIL, my mom and my dad were like: this is the time for social media to continue to brand yourself,” Boston said. “That’s when I really started to post more.”

The NIL age has opened a vast new world of earning potential for athletes. Social media platforms, once solely windows into smaller worlds, are now heavily trafficked gateways to wider audiences and revenue streams. Social media also turbocharged March Madness, an event that already had communal elements — think bracket and office pool — before the internet even existed.

Taking advantage of this chaotic social media explosion to cash in requires a bit of savvy, discernment and engagement — lots of engagement.

“Some things you think will go viral and it goes nowhere,” said Jeffrey Weiner, senior vice president of sports marketing firm GSE Worldwide. “Some things you think are silly and no one’s going to care about and it goes viral. You never know. You shouldn’t worry about the ‘like’ numbers and things like that. Just post, post, post.”

Finding the right fit is key when it comes to NIL deals.

If an athlete hawks something they don’t believe in, it will show in their posts. No one is going to buy a product or solicit a business if the person promoting it appears to be going through the motions or comes off as a used car salesman — unless that’s the schtick they’re going for.

“I don’t want my page to turn into full of advertisements and me shoving things down people’s throats,” said Nebraska pole vaulter Jess Gardner, who has partnered with about 15 different brands and has more than 300,000 combined followers on TikTok and Instagram.

“That’s not why people are coming to my page,” she said. “I make fun and lighthearted content, and so I can do that if I’m working with brands I actually love. That’s where I want to take the NIL route.”

Personality sells.

The tendency when promoting a product is to switch personalities, like a TV anchorperson shifting to an on-air persona. Many of the most successful influencers find a balance, staying true to their identity while still promoting the product.

Authenticity with a dash of amusement is the best bet.

“End of the day it’s a video distribution platform and it allows athletes to showcase their personality however they see fit,” said Julian Valentin, head of customer success for NIL platform Opendorse. “I always say with student athletes to only do what you’re comfortable with.”

That’s the way Shaylee Gonzales approaches it.

The Texas guard has 206,000 TikTok followers on, 93,000 more on Instagram. Her posts are a mix of basketball, fashion, personal life and products she has deals with.

“The more you are yourself, the more people will like to follow you and feel like they know you,” she said. “I love posting things that I enjoy doing or hobbies I like to do.”

Find the right balance of business and whimsiness and social media opens the the NIL revenue stream.

Miami twin basketball players Haley and Hanna Cavinder are social media sensations who have cashed in on their online fame. Hanna Cavinder noted that the twins carefully choose what they post online.

“Everybody thinks they know you, but they only know the things you want to show them,” she said. “Obviously, I love connecting with my audience and my fans and being organic. They love the twin thing, so we love sharing that. But honestly, I live a more private life than people think.”

“You pick and choose what you want people to see,” she added. “And that’s just kind of how I go about it. Now, social media is more of my business, not more of my life.”

With more than 4.4 million followers on their shared TikTok account alone, they have become millionaires through NIL deals.

Those deals will likely increase during March Madness, especially after the Hurricanes upset No. 1 seed Indiana in the NCAA Tournament.

“I think what I love the most is it’s setting me up so much for the future,” Haley Cavinder said. “And name, image and likeness, all athletes, especially female athletes, if you use it the right way and to your advantage and you remain consistent, it’ll help you in the future.”

That’s what got Boston’s attention — well, after her parents noticed first.

The All-American has promoted Buick, Crocs, Orange Theory, Under Armour and Six Star Nutrition, among other brands. She will likely be one of the WNBA’s top draft picks and could have a lucrative overseas career as well, but has already set a firm financial foundation.

“I have people in my corner who help me be able to work with brands, agencies,” she said. “It’s been smooth.”

And lucrative.

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AP National Writer Eddie Pells, AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds and AP Sports Writer Eric Olson contributed.

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AP March Madness coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness and bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25

Instagram’s launching two new ad options, with Reminder Ads, that enable users to opt into alerts ahead of an event, and ads in search results, helping to better connect with users in a discovery mindset.

First off, on Reminder Ads – as you can see in the below example screens, Reminder Ads will enable users to opt into alerts about specific events in the app.

As per Instagram:

“Reminder ads, rolling out to all advertisers as an option in feed, help advertisers build awareness, anticipation, and consideration for upcoming moments.”

Once a user opts-in via the ad CTA, they’ll then receive three subsequent notifications of that event, with the first coming a day before, then another 15 minutes ahead of the start time, with a final alert as it begins. Which will ensure that you don’t miss out – and while three reminders may seem a little much, if you’re really keen (or forgetful), it could be of benefit.

Reminders can be set up to three months ahead of time, and once you’ve added a reminder to a post, you can create additional posts with reminders for the same event, without adding new event details. The event time will also be displayed in local time equivalent:

“For example, if you’re in New York City and select 8pm as the event time, the event time will be set as 8pm EST. But someone who’s in Los Angeles will see the event time as 5pm PST.”

It’s another way for brands to better promote their live events, and encourage engagement, which could be used for in-app events, like live streams, or as per the example above, TV shows, movie releases, sporting events, etc.

There’s a range of possibilities, and it could be a handy consideration for your events, depending on your IG audience.

Instagram’s also launching new ads in search results, helping to connect with users based on contextual keywords.

“Ads will show up in the feed that people can scroll when they tap into a post from search results. We plan to launch this placement globally in the coming months.”

That’ll provide another way to get your promotions in front of users as they go looking for specific content, with Instagram also adding ads in Explore last year. This new placement is more specific, with the ads showing up when users tap into a specific post from the Search results, which is the next level of discovery in the app.

Interestingly, Twitter announced the same in January, which it had actually offered as a placement in the past, before depreciating it because it wasn’t highly effective. Though I’m sure Instagram came up with this entirely independently – I’m sure Meta isn’t monitoring other apps and just copying what they do.

Either way, some new considerations for your IG ads, and some new ways to reach audiences in the app, in different mindsets.   

You can learn more about Reminder Ads here, while Search Ads are being rolled out with selected accounts from this week.

The U.S. government’s threat to ban TikTok takes aim at what has become the most popular smartphone app in the country.

Why it matters: TikTok’s scale presents an enormous challenge to lawmakers trying to argue that the app’s national security threat outweighs the wishes of the millions of people and businesses that use the app.

• The TikTok app has been downloaded more times in the U.S. than any other social app since it merged with U.S. lip-syncing app Musical.ly in August 2018, according to data from Apptopia.
• The app is expected to generate more than $11 billion in U.S. ad revenue by 2024, far outpacing rivals like Snapchat, Pinterest and Twitter, per eMarketer.
• TikTok has also captured far more revenue than its competitors from in-app purchases, like coins that fans can use to tip their favorite creators, per Apptopia.

Driving the news: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew plans to highlight the app’s growth in remarks prepared for his first-ever Congressional testimony on Thursday and released Tuesday night by the House committee he will address.

• The company now counts more than 150 million monthly active users in the U.S., up from the 100 million users it first reported in 2020, executives confirmed to Axios.
• Chew will also likely cite TikTok’s role in supporting small businesses — a message that’s also been used by tech rivals like Meta and Google when faced with regulatory pressure.
• On Tuesday, Chew posted a TikTok video touting the app’s reach, asserting that 5 million U.S. businesses, a majority of which are small or medium-sized, use TikTok to reach their customers.

Be smart: Tuesday’s video is part of a broader consumer campaign that the short-video platform is beginning to push amid growing efforts by federal and state governments to limit or ban the app.

• Last week, The Information reported that TikTok sent a message to some creators inviting them to join its top executives in Washington D.C. to support the company on Capitol Hill.
• This week, TikTok is trying to appeal to users directly in the app. “Some politicians have started to talk about banning TikTok,” Chew said in the video posted Tuesday. “Now this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you.”
• He then directed users to leave comments about “what you want your elected representatives to know about what you love about TikTok.”

Between the lines: TikTok has ramped up its marketing efforts in recent weeks, buying prominent ad space alongside many of D.C.’s most prominent political publications.

• While most of TikTok’s consumer messaging is focused on the ban risk facing the app, its Washington campaign has mostly focused on steps the company is taking to protect U.S. user data.

The big picture: Surveys indicate that the public remains mostly divided on whether the government should ban TikTok, but Republicans are much more likely to support a ban than Democrats.

• Lawmakers that oppose the ban argue the government needs to find more convincing proof that TikTok is a national security threat before forcing the app’s Chinese parent ByteDance to sell to a U.S. company or face a ban.
• Lawmakers that support moves against TikTok say the app is a threat to U.S. user data privacy because of Chinese laws that require Chinese companies to share user data with China’s government.

Yes, but: Many lawmakers fall somewhat in the middle, arguing that lawmakers need to provide the public with more clarity about the actual national security risks.

• “If you’re going to pull the plug on one of the largest digital communities in the country, you have to make a very clear case for why you’re doing that,” Rep. Jeff Jackson (D-N.C.), an avid TikTok user, told Bloomberg.

What to watch: TikTok’s U.S. tech rivals have been waiting in the wings, hoping their TikTok clones — like Reels on both Facebook and Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and Snapchat’s Spotlight — could steal some market share from TikTok if it were banned.

• Those services have all launched in the wake of former president Trump’s initial proposal to ban TikTok in 2020, and many have grown pretty sizable.
• Google said last month that YouTube Shorts has crossed 50 billion daily views.
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last month that Reels plays across Facebook and Instagram “have more than doubled over the last year,” and people sharing Reels “has more than doubled on both apps in just the last 6 months.”