Sally Fitzgibbons sees the good and the bad of social media but won’t be pushed off by trolls

Sally Fitzgibbons has a healthy side hustle leveraging her massive social media reach – but the champion surfer had to navigate a steep social media learning curve.

The Sally Fitzgibbons social media philosophy in a nutshell: If the post you made on your worst day could be seen from “outer space”, viewed by everyone in the world and you’d still be happy to post it, go for your life.

Professional surfer Fitzgibbons has been “spreading the stoke” on various social media platforms for almost 20 years.

What started as a way to keep in touch with family and friends as she made her way to some of the most idyllic locations around the world to compete on the World Surf League tour, has garnered a massive audience and a slew of commercial partners ready to hitch their brands to Fitzgibbons’ healthy lifestyle and endless positivity.

Harvey Norman, Accor Live Limitless (flick on your TV in a Novotel hotel and you’ll find Fitzgibbons ready to take you through a workout), Boost Mobile, Breitling and Almond Breeze are just a few of the brands that the three-time world championship runner-up works with and promotes heavily through her social media channels.

Go back to Fitzgibbons’ first Instagram pics – it’s a long scroll through more than 4200 posts over 10 years – and it’s much the same as it is now. Plenty of pics of tour life, family, footy, sponsor promotion and coastline scenery to die for.

Champion surfer Sally Fitzgibbon uses social media to her own advantage

The presentation these days is slicker, a heavily curated and produced effort that reflects the fact that with 560,000 followers on Instagram, 673,000 on Facebook and 367,900 on Twitter, her social media accounts are as much a business venture as a tour diary.

But it still oozes Fitzgibbons’ enthusiasm, boundless energy and authenticity.

Her reach has industry insiders believing Fitzgibbons can make from $5000-$20,000 per post to her followers, giving her another significant income stream.

At 32, Fitzgibbons has not grown up a digital native.

And in the early days of social media, there was no guide on how to use platforms to promote yourself, let alone to grow a brand or avoid the pitfalls that can come with online trolls.

“It was just a wild ride,” Fitzgibbons said of her social media journey.

“I qualified for the tour and they’re like, ‘There’s this thing called Instagram’ – well, Facebook came first, or maybe MySpace … I’m showing my age – and it’s this platform and you post a picture.”

FINDING HER PLACE

Growing up on the NSW South Coast, Fitzgibbons was always in the water or working out and rarely used her phone during the day.

“It was a very foreign concept. But this was right in the midst of me starting to travel pretty heavily and do a fair few loops around the around the globe and I was like, well, that’s a pretty cool way to show people at home (what I’m doing),” she said.

“I just thought, I’ll try to capture something that brings me a lot of joy in the day.

“I didn’t have a manual. I didn’t have any instructions. I didn’t know what really this led to. I just thought it was like a fleeting moment and these Instagrams and stuff would disappear, but no, it became a global phenomenon.”

Fitzgibbons quickly realised how she could use social media without disappearing into the rabbit hole of endless scrolling and comment reading.

Since “day dot” she has committed just a small portion of her day to a post, almost like a diary entry and stuck to posting things that made her happy.

“I do really try to promote the positive sides of it,” she said.

“I am aware of the negative sides (but) it really is doing what you feel comfortable, I’ve always said that.

“Even on your worst day, you’ve got to be happy to post something that you wouldn’t mind people seeing from outer space.

“If that was OK with you, if every single person in the world saw that, would you be stoked on it? Then OK, you should be sweet to post it.”

THE GOOD AND THE BAD

By staying true to herself, Fitzgibbons built a brand plenty of fans and sponsors want to be associated with – even if she didn’t realise she was doing that.

“It is wild to think that that one moment a day, I built that for 20 years and, from my experience, it is a really healthy way to (connect with people),” she said.

“People these days say you’re building a brand, how did I build my brand? I was just authentic.

“You’ve got to follow your instincts and your heart and something that you wanted to share all along, and I just stay true to that.

“I almost thought of it as a little bit of an avatar, this really happy avatar that I wanted to share. And then it didn’t really seep into the rest of my day or my being because I would do that and then put it down and move on.

“But it’s a double-edged sword because the beauty of that is that you start to reach a lot more people and it becomes a bit of a platform and after 20 years, I’ve just loved the parts of it where I get so many supportive moments and messages or comments.

“You’re starting to affect these people and reach out more and more without having that physical presence right now, but they do feel your spirit in a way.

“But obviously the other side of that drawcard is the fact that kids now spend more and more time on it. Everything can become that addiction and it’s how heavily you go into that.

“It’s a bit of a rabbit hole in terms of overthinking things and overlooking at your physique, your face, this and that. You can start to question a lot of things in your life and that’s what I find is the darker sides of social media.”

Fitzgibbons is not immune from that dark side and has received plenty of negative comments on various platforms.

“It’s always going to be a part of it,” she said. “It’s just how heavily you go into reading or believing a lot of things that are coming back at you.

“I don’t know what is going on in (people’s) worlds or their days to write some of the negative stuff.

“I own a very supportive team. We try to keep a pretty clean account because we want kids to come on and interact and young frothy grom surfers and athletes … to be a part of the journey and almost feel supported in a way from supporting me.

“Those little things and connections are ways for people to aspire to being a professional surfer or athlete or whatever they want to be.

“So I lean heavily on those positive sides. It is challenging but my accounts and the people that follow me are pretty self-regulating and they don’t really tolerate that negative side and usually call the people out for me.”

Originally published as Sally Fitzgibbons sees the good and the bad of social media but won’t be pushed off by trolls