True sports fans like to read about sports almost as much as they enjoy watching the matches and games. If you’re one of those people, but feel like you could contribute more to your favourite sport, then perhaps you should start a sports blog. Read on for some advice for creating a successful sports blog.
Find Your Niche
Before you start writing and before you pick a name and design your blog, you need to find your niche. Think about what you want to write about, and which sport(s) you’re going to cover. You should also decide on who your target audience will be as this may affect your writing style. Choose a sport (or sports) you know well and are passionate about, then decide whether you’ll cover the local, national, or global games. Will you cover current sports, sport history, or will you write about the sport in general?
You should pick a popular sport that has a lot of fans, such as basketball, baseball, hockey, socker, football or cricket. Picking an obscure sport will limit you in terms of an audience, since there is likely to be less people interested in that sport. Instead of trying to focus on every sport out there, stick to one and let that be the focus of your blog.
Create a Name
When creating a name for your blog, it should be short and relevant. If you’re creating a sports blog about basketball and call it something like ‘Netball News’, your readers are going to get pretty confused. Keep the name relevant to what you’ll be discussing on the blog. Once you have a name for your blog, you should create a logo that your readers will be able to quickly recognise and then you can build your brand around it. Pick a short domain name—it should be the same as or a shortened version of your blog’s name. If your readers have to type out a long URL just to get to the homepage, they’re going to lose interest quickly.
Write Engaging Content
Keep your readers up to date with the current games by writing news articles, detailing highlights of the matches. You can also write listicles, such as ‘5 Rules of Baseball You May Not Know’ or ‘3 Easy Steps to the perfect 3-Pointer’ or ‘The Benefits of Using a Ten Point Crossbow’. To keep your readers interested, try to include a few interviews with a players or former player, a coach, a referee, or a sports commentator. The key to a successful sports blog is to provide information on a sport in a new perspective that will engage your readers.
Build Your Audience
Don’t expect for your sports blog to be successful right away. If you build it, they won’t come…unless you get your blog out there. Start by publishing your blog posts consistently. If you only post when you feel like it and don’t build the content on your sports blog, people won’t be interested. You should hire a Toronto SEO firm to get your blog ranking in search engines so that people can find it with a simple search. You can also do some guest posting on other blogs or get some backlinks to your blog. Set yourself up with a social media presence on several different platforms and promote your blog and each article you publish. Take advantage of hashtags and social media groups to get people’s attention. Don’t forget to ask people to like and share your posts. To help you build a following and to keep your sports content in people’s mind, encourage the people who visit your blog to subscribe to your newsletter and SSL feed, so they don’t miss out on any new content.
Monetising Your Blog
You may just like writing about sports for the fun of it, but there are ways you can monetise your blog. You could host ads on the site and sell the ad space. You could also look into affiliate marketing programmes that various companies offer, so you will receive a small cut of a sale when someone uses a link on your blog to buy something you’ve promoted. You can also sell merchandise with your blog’s logo on it or some sports-related illustrations you create. If you’ve built a large following and are looking for another way to monetise your sports blog, you can hide some of the content behind a paywall and ask visitors for a small membership or subscription fee in order to access the exclusive content. You can use the money you make from your blog to pay for your web hosting or use it to hire a Los Angeles moving company to help you move to your new house. The choice is up to you!
Image Credits: Steshka Willems
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