The Best Soccer Player Has The Worst Instagram Strategy

I would know, because I wrote 10,000 words on it.

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It sometimes shocks me when the greatest at anything has the…strangest Instagram strategy.

I think about Julia Roberts’ blurry photos (Hunter Harris knows what I’m talking about). I think about Britney Spears dancing. And I also think about how the greatest soccer player of all time still thinks it’s a good idea to post e-comm shots in-feed to promote his new cologne.

As I wrote about recently, Lionel Messi is the GOAT. I don’t really think it’s a conversation at this point.

Messi holds the record for most goals in La Liga, Supercopa de España, and the UEFA Super Cup. He is also the player with the most official recorded assists in soccer history. I could keep going with his accolades, but you get the point.

And yet….this man can’t seem to come up with an Instagram strategy that doesn’t include posting multiple sponsored posts for different brands back to back, e-comm shots, and photos of iPhone mockups???

This isn’t a new “strategy” for Messi.

How do I know this? I analyzed every single post he shared in a year period, and the findings I’m about to share with you were...interesting, to say the least.

Some Context

I became aware of his…online work (if you can call it that)…in 2022 when I started working on my master’s thesis at Oxford.

I analyzed 5,680 pieces of content from the top 30 most followed celebrities on Instagram to understand how these public figures use the platform to curate unique digital personas and perform impression management.

If you aren’t familiar, impression management comes from Irving Goffman’s seminal sociological work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

In it, Goffman explains how individuals present a version of themselves that is “idealized” rather than authentic to who they truly are. Individuals participate in “performances,” where they adjust their behavior to the observer.

Goffman defines these performances as “...all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants.”

According to Goffman, this process is called “impression management.” Goffman argues that impression management must occur in a “bounded” setting. These settings include the “front region” and the “back region”. The “front region” is where individuals display their “idealized” version of themselves.

I won’t dive too much into the “back region,” but that’s essentially where the facade fades and there is no longer a need to put on a front for the audience.

Obviously, Instagram is that “front region” and these “performances” show up as Reels, static posts, Instagram Stories, comments, you get the idea.

Research Findings

For my research, I developed a coding scheme to categorize the different types of in-feed posts these celebrities shared.

I could’ve come up with probably dozens of codes, but I ended up choosing the following: Paid Partnership, Work, Homemaking, Features Children, Parenting, Parenting and Features Children, Family, Fitness, Relationship, Skincare, Health + Wellness, Fashion, Makeup, Timely, Lifestyle, Charity Work, Friends.

On average, celebrities posted content that had to do with work the most frequently and shared posts with the occurrence of homemaking the least frequently.

Male celebrities, on average, shared more feed posts with the occurrence of work, parenting, fitness, charity, and paid partnership than female celebrities. Female celebrities, on average, shared more feed posts with the occurrence of work, family, and lifestyle.

Interestingly, male celebrities were also much more chronically online than female celebrities, posting 69% (nice) of all feed posts.

When I did this research, I came to the conclusion that the financial incentives for posting about work on Instagram for these celebrities and public figures were gendered.

Men in the sample were more likely to share feed posts with the occurrence of work and paid partnership. To me, this indicated that male celebrities and public figures had more contracts with brands and companies than women in the sample. Was this necessarily true? Not sure, but maybe that research can be done when I get my PhD (jk that won’t be happening lol).

In contrast, women were more likely to share feed posts with the occurrence of work and makeup and work and skincare. It didn’t mean that these female celebrities were talking about random skincare or makeup products. It was all very strategic. Most of the time, these female celebrities in the sample used their public Instagram accounts to promote their own skincare or makeup lines (Ex. Selena Gomez and Rare Beauty) rather than work with outside companies on #spon con deals.

It’s not to say that they didn’t share outside #spon con deals, but it definitely was less frequent.

Back To Messi

At the time when I did this research, Messi was the second-most followed person in the world (behind Cristiano Ronaldo).

Out of all of the posts he shared on Instagram in a year period, 48% included the occurrence of paid partnership (aka some good old fashioned #spon con). In fact, of the top ten celebrities and public figures who included paid partnership in a feed post, 80% were professional athletes.