‘Money, Money, Money’: A guide on how to get the best out of your Blog.

A blog is not a personal diary. Yes, you can write anything you want in them and yes, the majority of blogs are created for personal pleasure, but ultimately you want people to read them.

With 100 million active blogs across the world, how on earth do you ensure that your blog gets read? What can you offer readers that other blog creators can’t? And, how do you take a blog operated for personal pleasure to a blog operated for money.

At this moment in time, ‘The Competitive Edge’ is in its infancy and I haven’t quite got the marketing of the blog up and running yet. This ‘How-to’ study will help me and my readers in gaining an understanding on how to market your blog, ensuring high readership numbers.

Ok, before you look at marketing your blog, make sure the content is excellent, the grammar and spelling must be immaculate. Get the key names and words correct. No one wants to read a sporting analysis on ‘dai beecham’ or ‘Manchester town’, because no one will take it serious

The content must be updated regularly, this is so crucial. How professional is your blog going to look if you open up the page and the last post is from 10 months ago? People will think that the blog creator has given up and the user is probably never going to access the blog again.

Next step is getting your design right. First impressions are so important, it’s a line you hear a lot in life and it applies for your blog as well. I have gone for a simple white and light blue background with black text. I believe it’s simple, easy to read and looks a lot more professional. Below is the design of my old blog. The small white text on the black background with the lack of images and navigation was a poor design. Every day I am learning.

Good navigation around the website ensures users will experience the full potential of the blog. I have gone for tabs across the top of the page, categorising my posts into different sports. I also have added a ‘Home’ tab so users can return to the home screen and a ‘Mission Statement’ tab to easily display the intention of ‘The Competitive Edge’.

So now to actively marketing your blog and where to better start than by looking at the search engines. Around 50% of all visits to websites come via Google, so how do you ensure that your blog comes up in Google searches, it’s all about key words.

Here is a statement from the Google site:

“Googlebot processes each of the pages it crawls in order to compile a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page. In addition, we process information included in key content tags and attributes, such as Title tags and ALT attributes.” 

This statement shows that blog creators need to make sure that their key words are included in the titles. It may be tempting to use a short, quirky, tabloid-like headline for your posts but it will decrease the chance of your blog being found from a Google search.

A sporting example may be Swansea City beating Manchester United at Old Trafford in the Premier League, costing Manchester United the Premier League title. Instead of using the heading ‘Super Swans’, a heading such as ‘Swansea City deny Manchester United Barclaycard Premier League title with a surprise win at Old Trafford’ would be a lot more suitable.

As well as the headings, Alt text and labels are important in marketing your blog. Alt text is the description that that pops up when you hover your cursor over a picture. The alt text is the only way a search engine knows what the image contains as it cannot ‘read’ an image by itself.

Labels are something I have already applied to my blog as it has helped me categorise my posts, improving the navigation of my website. The Labels I have used are ‘Football’, ‘Golf’, ‘Running’ and ‘General Sport’. As I am studying this marketing element, I have realised I need to be more specific in my labelling. For example, my piece on Rory McIlroy becoming golfs number one after winning Florida’s Honda Classic should not be just labelled ‘Golf’ but ‘Rory McIlroy’, ‘Number one’ and ‘Florida’s Honda Classic’.

Another way you can market your blog is Social Media Optimising. Get on Twitter, get on Facebook and sell, sell, sell your blog. Facebook and Twitter referrals account for around 8% of traffic to websites on average.

Blogger allows you to add gadgets to link to different social media websites such as Facebook and twitter. As you can see, I have my twitter feed on the left hand side of my blog. I find that by linking the two, I have created a media platform where I can express my sporting opinions in shorter form (Twitter) or in detailed posts (Blog). Using Twitter I can gain more readers for my blog and with my blog, I can gain more followers for my twitter account.

Social Media is developing all the time so make sure you are up to date with all the latest technology.

So now the technical work is done, what else can YOU now do to market your blog and get those readers? 

• Get your friends to look at it! Get your family to look at it! Get them to comment on the blog in the hope of sparking a mass debate.
• Send your blog link to all your e-mail contacts, ask for their opinions, if your blog is like mine, find those sports lovers and get their views.
• Get on Sporting forums, get that link in there as much as you can.
• Go to sporting events (or an event in relation to your blogging topic), give out cards, and tell people about what you are writing about.
• Use your blog when you are applying for jobs (providing your content is appropriate). Why not get your possible employer to read it? May help you get the job.
• It’s a good idea to mention other blogs in your post, link them in the content and who knows? They may do the same for you.
• Also frequently visit those blogs and comment on their posts, encourage them to return the favour.

Once you have captured those readers, it’s all about keeping them. Why not introduce a ‘subscribe by Email’ feature to the website. Blogger offers this gadget and it is a very simple feature to embed into your blog. Make sure it’s clear and obvious to the users and that you encourage them as much as you can to subscribe.

Last tip I will give, why not enter competitions for best blogs. Even if you don’t win, your URL may be published.

http://bloggerschoiceawards.com

I think after a bit of work to ‘The Competitive Edge’, I may just enter myself. 

5 Sport blogs with that 'Competitive Edge'.

Before starting my blog, I wanted to look at some existing work in this field. I have found five blogs which particularly interest me and have highlighted their good points as well as their flaws. I will use this analysis as a guide when working through the ‘The Competitive edge’ to ensure a high standard of blogging.

I have looked at three blogs based in the UK and two based in America. Some are specific to a certain sport or topic, some are more varied.

http://escribbler.blogspot.co.uk/

This blog is written by a former professional footballer, which makes the content a lot more appealing. You want to read about someone who has been there and done it a lot more than you would an outsider looking in. There is a range of different features on the blog such as ‘quote of the day’ and ‘training programs for professionals’. There is also a number of different links to other blogs. There is a large amount of content on this blog with some interesting views and opinions present. However, the layout is poor. The first thing that jumps out at you is the adverts, you have to do a lot of scrolling before you get to any of the well written sport content. The template and the colours are also very dull.

http://fantasyepl.blogspot.com/p/epl-coverage.html

Fantasy Premier Blog has a very similar concept to mine. It’s a blog that offers opinion and humour on sport. However, it is specific to only football and especially the Premier League. I particularly enjoy this blog because the content is very entertaining. There is a lot of focus on fantasy premier league which is a game that a lot of my target audience would play. I believe it provides humour and a good, light- hearted discussion point. The blog is pleasing to the eye and the dark writing on the white background makes it easy to read.

http://britishsport.blogspot.com/

This blog offers opinion and analysis on the less publicised stories in British Sport. It does cover a lot of sport but misses the comical and entertainment element. I also find the headlines don’t draw me in like some of the other blogs I have read. The whole design of the blog could be better as well, It doesn’t scream ‘sports blog’ when you first look at it. The posts are very infrequent but when one does come, it is very detailed, well researched and extremely interesting. Creator, Gary Cook, is a very good journalist.

http://www.adamssportsblog.com/

Adams sport Blog is a well worked Sports blog. It differs to mine in that a lot of Adams posts are on American sports and very few of mine will be on that topic. However, he has managed to cover so much. There is something for every sports fan. The blog is laid out fantastically well. He was listed all the Sports and key sporting topics in a column and by clicking on those sports, you can bring up the posts. It is very easy to get around the website and there is a good mix of strong content, light humour and pictures to make this a perfect sports blog.



http://sports-law.blogspot.com/

This is a very professionally made blog. The designer has made very good decisions regarding the template and use of colours. Everything looks like it belongs together. Despite it being a ‘sports law’ blog, there is still an element of humour in this blog. One of the posts looks at the laws of beer pong. There is also a good mixture of images and videos present in this blog. Like Adams Sport Blog, this blog has a strong focus on American sport.