‘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. 

The iPad 3 in the Sporting World.

This week, gadget lovers across the UK braced the long queues to be one of the first to get their hands on the new iPad 3. The latest in a line of apple tablet devices, the iPad 3 offers a much higher resolution screen than previous iPads. The device is fitted with a quad-core Apple A6 system-on-a-chip.

The Camera on this version has been massively upgraded and connectivity has significantly improved. The number of pixels has been multiplied by four in comparison to last year’s model, so an improved processor is essential. This has made the device slightly thicker and heavier than the iPad 2 but the numbers are so small (50g heavier and 0.6mm thicker) you would have to be seriously fussy for that to be a problem.

The overall design of the device is near identical to the iPad 2. The iPad 3 has a home button on the front so you can easily wake the screen. There's the rocker switch on the right edge to either mute the sound or lock the orientation. The choice is up to you which is something Apple do not often offer. The two sockets on offer are the headphones input and obviously the 30-pin connector. There is still no sockets for USB sticks or camera's SD memory cards as of yet.
You can pick up one of these third generation iPad's at PC World for between £399 and £659, depending on the model. They are available in 16G, 32G and 64G. 

Now you be wondering why the release of an Apple iPad has such focus in a sports blog. Well, the answer for that comes by looking at the apps on offer for this gadget. Firstly, Golfshot: Golf GPS.

Priced at astonishingly high £20.99, Golfshot aids golfers in distances, club selection, accuracy and so much more. Golfshot contains data from 38,000 courses and offers pre-mapped aerial images of the course. Using GPS it can tell you how far away the pin may be and taking into account the weather and more specifically the wind direction, it can recommend clubs and shot selection. The newest version of this app can offer swing tracking where your swings are analysed showing club distances and accuracy. Golfshot is the number 1 Golf GPS app worldwide.

As impressive and technologically advanced as this is, I find the whole concept frankly ridiculous. I understand it can exceedingly improve your game but If I walked out onto the tee and someone has their iPad out, judging the distance to the flag and working out the precise wind direction, I’d be putting my clubs straight back into the boot of my car and going home. Is this how the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Seve Ballesteros learnt the game?

I can picture the scene now, a golfer who has more money than sense, driving around the course in his top of the range buggy, equipped with his sparkling new clubs, closely analysing his iPad about his next shot, only to miss-hit his overpriced golf ball straight into a bush the other side of the fairway. The phrase ‘All the gear, No idea’ comes’ comes to mind.

The next app I have looked at is one that I recommend football lovers download straight away when purchasing an iPad. This is the Sky Sports Football Score Centre. Greeted with a lovely image of the dashing Jeff Stelling on launching the app, Sky Sports score centre allows you to check football scores, results and fixtures from anywhere in the world. It’s the ideal app for a Saturday afternoon on the go.

Sky Sports score centre offers a vidiprinter so you can view all the goals come in as they happen in its simplest form. By then clicking on a certain game you can see the goal scorer and the time of the goal without taking you away from the vidiprinter page.

The layout of the app is very user friendly. To launch the vidiprinter you just click on the small yellow arrow in the bottom left hand corner, the same arrow will close it. If the vidiprinter is not open and a goal has been scored the arrow will spin around to catch the user's attention.

There are clear icons which take you around the app where you can view more detailed events from different fixtures such as team line-ups, live text commentary and player profiles. You can also set different preferences. By selecting your favourite teams you can ensure results, live scores and fixtures involving those teams will be highlighted on the home screen.

What’s great about this app is that it’s all about the facts and the scores. There is no messing around with controversial opinions and debatable topics. You use it to check the scores and to check statistics. It is a very convenient app which I use often. You can be at one game and needing to know the score from another and Sky Sports Football Score Centre can provide that completely fuss free. It is always perfectly up to date. 

Another absolute 'must have app' for football lovers is ESPN goals. A personal favourite, ESPN goals is all about the premier league and all about the goals. If a goal is scored in the Barclay's premier league, ESPN goals allows iPad and iPhone users to see it straight away. A simple app it may be but much like the Sky Sports centre, it does the job. If you want to watch extended highlights and in depth analysis of the weekend's games then you will need to tune into Match of the Day or Football First but if you just want a quick, easy round up of all the goals from the Premier League, then this app is perfect. ESPN goal is free to download and does not require subscription to the ESPN television channel. One criticism I do have is that you have to endure a lot of adverts before watching the content. It can get awfully frustrating. 

Now whilst the apps I have discussed thus far are useful in a sports enthusiasts lives, this last app is just out and out a bit of fun. If you are going to purchase this iPad 3 or if you own a previous version of the device, you are more than likely going to get some sort of childlike game on there to play in your 'chill out' time. Keeping to the sporting theme, my suggestion is of course Stick Cricket. 

Now if you haven't played Stick Cricket, where have you been? My school days were wasted playing this game. If it wasn't for stick cricket perhaps I'd be writing for the Guardian instead of writing this blog. The fact it is now available for iPad and iPhone makes me worry about the rest of my degree. The game simply involves three buttons: forward, left and right. When the bowler sends his delivery at you, the batsman, you have to make your decision. Do you hit it forward, left or right? That is it. 

Doesn't sound much? Try it out here: http://www.sticksports.com/games/stick-cricket/