OT: Started a new blog. Advice needed
So I'm a recent Michigan grad and I decided to start a sports blog. It seemed like the only thing to do with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I've been a huge fan of this blog for a long time and was tired of reading a lot of terrible, boring writing regarding the sports I love.
For now I am planning on writing about all sports but my first two pieces are about college football. I linked my first story below and would appreciate any feedback you have.
http://thesportscourtblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/another-great-season…
January 11th, 2013 at 10:34 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 10:34 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 10:35 PM ^
The site is now in my rotation.
January 11th, 2013 at 10:36 PM ^
Don't talk about fight club.
January 11th, 2013 at 10:37 PM ^
Trolling other boards with pointless threads just for clicks is a shitty thing to do.
Put it in your signature. Tweet about it. Write good content and try to get established bloggers to link it.
Creating a thread on another blog to hype it? Not so much.
January 11th, 2013 at 10:39 PM ^
This seems
a little
harsh.
January 11th, 2013 at 10:51 PM ^
with both of you...somehow.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:46 PM ^
My temp-to-hire contract was summarily disolved today after less than a month because I allegedly wasn't "picking it up fast enough" (less than a month, at the holidays, where my boss training me missed a week with illness. Fast enough my ass). Therefore, nobody should ask me anything.
January 12th, 2013 at 8:04 AM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 10:57 PM ^
swimmingly for me.
January 11th, 2013 at 10:58 PM ^
putting a link on the board when first starting out or with some truly awesome content to your free blog is fine, especially during off topic season. If it becomes a regular thing where someone links to every new piece of writing they do, then I'll probably start taking down posts or look to figure out a new rule depending on the who/what.
I do agree his OP is pretty unclear about whether the "terrible, boring writing" comes from this site or not. If so, probably a bad way to get MGoBlog users to start reading.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:13 PM ^
He has a new blog, he's excited about it, and he announced it to his "second family:" mgoblog. The account has been here for 11 days shy of two years, so I have a hard time seeing this as any egregious violation of mgoprotocol.
I hope it goes well for him.
January 12th, 2013 at 12:20 AM ^
Why don't you spend more time on your blog Tater?
January 12th, 2013 at 11:09 AM ^
I kid.
In all seriousness, the more pressing question in my opinion is why does he not respond to people who respond to his posts? It's a rather bizarre behavior to exhibit on what is supposed to be an interactive forum.
January 11th, 2013 at 10:37 PM ^
" tired of reading a lot of terrible, boring writing regarding the sports I love."
January 11th, 2013 at 10:41 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 10:55 PM ^
I love this blog. It's everything else I was tired of. Mainly ESPN and bleacher report. Thanks for the benefit of the doubt. Figured I would get some advice wasn't looking for clicks since this is a Michigan blog and that's not what I planned on doing. But sorry guess this was a bad idea.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:30 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 10:42 PM ^
just saying -
January 11th, 2013 at 11:06 PM ^
Thanks I have a job
January 12th, 2013 at 8:26 AM ^
My advice: Make sure you understand your company's social media policies.
Obviously you don't want to use work time or your work email for your blog, but more and more companies are putting in place rules about what their employees can do as far as referencing their job, mentioning their job on blogs/boards/facebook/twitter.
I don't think you're doing anything wrong; I'm just suggesting you proactively understand it as you consider your new hobby.
January 11th, 2013 at 10:45 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 10:47 PM ^
Do not let me join.
January 11th, 2013 at 10:52 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 11:03 PM ^
Subpar visuals? There are no visuals!
Nevertheless, gotta start somewhere.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:11 PM ^
No I was looking for some pointers. I appreciate your honestly and I'd much rather be told I suck now than continue to keep writing crap. I will work on the Kate Upton visuals as it seems to be everyones biggest request. Figured I'd leave that up to Magnus though. Thanks for the response to my post though.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:34 PM ^
January 12th, 2013 at 1:51 AM ^
Make your cover slogan: "Yes is the answer, what is the question?"
With this picture:
And I'll subscribe.
January 12th, 2013 at 10:27 AM ^
January 12th, 2013 at 7:16 AM ^
I'm glad you recognized where my expertise lies.
January 11th, 2013 at 10:53 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 11:01 PM ^
Well......my wife started a health and fitness blog last March. The first six months or so were very slow but in the past couple of months her traffic has really taken off. Here's what we did to drive traffic to her site:
1. I put a link in my signature here on the blog (since removed)
2. Bought a few key words through Google (still active - small budget)
3. She started tweeting and started following everybody (this was a big traffic driver)
4. Posted a ton of content on Youtube that linked back to her site (Google loves video on organic searches)
5 Updated her site daily and sometimes twice a day (Google loves fresh content and rewards it high placement on searches)
Her site is very amateur and non-commercial. She only does it cause she likes helping people get in shape and she likes doing it. I hope this helps.
By the way....I liked what you wrote.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:22 PM ^
Thanks that actually helped a lot.
So far I have just been posting my links to Facebook and Twitter and have actually had a lot of traffic that way. Just started it Tuesday and am getting around 500 hits per day which i was told was good. The problem is I know most of those people so they don't give me honest responses. That is why I decided to post it here. I know the crowd here isn't shy with their kind words so I wanted to get some real advice.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:26 PM ^
I don't know anything about this, but it seems like you should work on the quality before you start looking for hits. You don't want people never coming back.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:17 PM ^
complaining about shitty writing, your site didn't come across as super readable. 2 sentence paragraphs. It feels more like reading a book report with the lack of graphics or maybe some bullet points. MGrowOld has some good advice IMO if you want to start there though. Good luck.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:18 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 11:20 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 11:26 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 11:29 PM ^
probably form the best piece of advice on the thread, IMO. For example, look around threads here and see where the long posts come from. Magnus has shown to be interested in/good at scouting and posts a lot about it with good feedback (or at least a lot of feedback :) ). WolvinLA2, Ken725, a few others I'm missing are all up on the latest recruiting news and I look for their stuff if I want to read about that. Same for CenterIce and JeepinBen for hockey x's and o's; GordieBell and a few others for the same in basketball, ect.
Find a niche, no matter how small (the only stuff I'll get into real technical specifics about is hockey officiating, which doesn't come up very often), and write the hell out of one or two specific subjects. No need to try and make a new ESPN or even MGoBlog; just do what you know.
My $.02
January 11th, 2013 at 11:24 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 11:32 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 11:28 PM ^
As someone who writes a small-time blog of my own with a small (and utterly miniscule compared to this one) but fairly loyal (I like to think) following, here's what I've learned in the last five years of this:
- Specialize. "Sports" is not a very good subject for a blog. If I want to learn about "sports" I will go to ESPN or something that does that genre much better. Frankly, with things like Grantland around there is no need and no audience for a "sports" blog. With things like EDSBS around there's no need for a "college football" blog either. If the main thing you are selling is your opinion, when there is already a sea of opinions on that subject, nobody is buying. Opinions on a specific team, that is something that's much more likely to catch someone's eye.
- Be prolific. Write often. The more you update, the more eyes you'll catch, and increase your chances of at least a few of them liking something they see. At a very minimum, post on a regular schedule and stick to it; people don't like to be kept guessing when to expect your content. I am sometimes bad at this and can always see the results in my traffic. And by the way, you'll have days when you have no idea what to write.
- Don't be wordy. I liked the article you linked, for the most part, but it took too long to get to the point. At first I thought you were recapping your impressions of the title game, and my first impression, honestly, was "boooooooooorrrrrrrrriinnnnnnnggggg." You buried the lead. Once you got to the point, it was much better. Lord knows I have this problem sometimes too. Hell, just look at this post.
- Don't regurgitate. Don't get your opinions from somewhere else. For example, when I write a preview of a UVA game, I refuse to read anyone else's preview first. Sometimes I do see an opinion that I like and then it becomes mine too, but by nature, bloggers are extremely opinionated people and know how to communicate those opinions in a readable style. If you keep finding your opinions are similar to what you read elsewhere, it's not going to work. Perfect example: that first post again. The first few paragraphs were your opinion, but they were also mostly conventional wisdom. Boring. The rest of it was your opinion and not easily findable elsewhere. Better.
Think of it like trying to break into standup comedy. You're going to have to work on a schtick and stand out in a crowd, and it really, really helps if you can find a few things that you can consistently do well and that you can always rely on for material. (No, "my top 25 this week" ain't it.) I highly recommend you find a way to narrow your focus or else make your writing so riveting and interesting that the writing itself is the point; Brian is so damn successful because he's managed to do both. Good luck.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:38 PM ^
I've always wished there existed a blog that was completely fact-based/analytical in terms of content. Graphs, stats, historical records, trends, in-depth looks at formations, etc. Mgoblog does that pretty well, but it would be interesting to see a blog devoted entirely to that.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:32 PM ^
January 11th, 2013 at 11:51 PM ^
January 12th, 2013 at 12:04 AM ^
Here are my perspective coming from someone who has over almost 20 year in the IT industry and developed numerous web sites:
-
Get a quality domain name. There's nothing that smacks more of amateurism than having a Blogspot of Wordpress sub-domain. If you need some ideas let me know. I have one I think would be perfect.
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Surround yourself with people that have strength in areas your are weak in. For example, you might be a good writer and enjoy interviewing athletes, but may be weak in web development and graphic design. Find people willing to help you where you have weakness. No one can do it all.
-
Study your competition and find weaknesses in their sites and develop a plan to provide content that exploits their weaknesses. Trust me, most of these sports blogs lack refinement and are just the same stuff repackaged. There is a huge opportunity for someone if they are willing to put forth the effort and willing to embrace collaboration.
- Kate Upton GIFs might be cute, but they ain't gonna do you anything unless you have a buttoned down site with rock solid technology. If your site crashes when major news breaks, you have just pissed off a large number of your viewers and screams to your audience "We are amateurs!".
Anyhoo, just my $.002.
January 12th, 2013 at 12:15 AM ^
Seriously, thanks for starting this thread.
I've got a little experience writing blogs but I'm always looking for advice too. I can't really add much to what's already been said. Narrow your focus, do something to stand out, use the social media... it all sounds good to me.
I started reading the post you linked but got bored and skimmed through the rest, probably missing your main point. If I were writing the article I might have started with "the top 10 reasons a committee wouldn't have chosen ND to play in the championship game" (maybe a little humor?) or made up a nice graphic with the matchups for your proposed system. Something short but attention grabbing.
One of the blogs that I write has become a sort of service. I sort through a couple hundred (small niche) blogs and pick out the top posts of the month for this small niche and just link to them. Sort of like a human edited news feed. I just recently posted a list ranking the top 10 blogs of this niche for the past year which gave me a sizable spike in traffic. I've also got ideas for infographics and research projects and hopefully a few other posts that will make me stand out in this niche.
I don't know if you could apply any of these ideas to your blog... Does anyone else have interesting ideas for creating content?
January 12th, 2013 at 1:21 AM ^
when i wrote a couple michigan articles for realfootball365 years ago I started my posts with 'high expectations and imminent doom in ann arbor'... my writing wasn't great but the most common positive feedback was that people liked that intro...
take it for what its worth....
And don't be lame and try to overwrite, or hang on here all day like some people to the point where you have 25000 posts about nothing... have a point.
ps. this was spot on lol:
January 12th, 2013 at 1:25 AM ^
Since I have the best looking, least updated blog in the Michigan blogosphere I figured I would give my imput.
-Someone stated above that having a wordpress or blogspot is a negeitive. It isn't. It would be foolish to go spend money on a domain when you are new and have zero traffic. I remember when Mgoblog was a blogspot site. It was still just as good. There are some very successful blogs on wordpress and blogspt.
-I see you have wordpress. Switch over to blogspot. Its easier for people who don't code HTML well or know it. Its way easier for people who are new to blogging. I had a plan to switch to wordpress since I know how to code but stuck with blogspot since I know it inside and out.
-Like others have said. Just find your nitch. I am a terrible writer and don't post a lot because of it. But for some odd reason people enjoy my MS Paint. So that is what I do when I do post. I dont get a ton of traffic these days but when I post a picture the old readers all come back for a day or two. You must think outside the box.
-Stick with it. You will go months without comments. Its easy to get away from it. I know. Like others have said post a lot.
-Learn how to format and HTML your site. If its ugly people will leave as soon as they show up.
-View my blog on what not to do for content
-View my blog on what to do HTML and design wise
Good luck
January 12th, 2013 at 1:55 AM ^