A Sports Bloggers Social Media Plan
Posted on | September 5, 2008 | 10 Comments
A Sports Bloggers Social Media Plan. This post will be filed under other. This also might be filed under nerdy/geeky. I just wanted to go over my social media plan. I have been sports blogging for a year now, and it is about time I got serious about social media. This plan 100% revolves around me being a sports blogger. If you are a gadget blogger, your plan will be MUCH different. I have made so many mistakes. I have joined all the social media sites. I am neglecting the big ones to concentrate on the little ones. I am spreading myself too thin on the social media ladder. I am a jack of all trades in the social media world, and that is a bad thing. Now I am going to put all of my effort into these 5 social media services.
The Goal of my plan is to get sports fans to come to my blog, I want them to get to know me, my writing style, my sense of humor, and I want them to come back. I am not looking for the next huge front page Digg post. I am looking to build a readership and a following. Here is my new plan.
This is in order of importance. The links are to my profile on these sites.
- Ballhype = It is the number one Sports Blogger Community. PERIOD. I want sports bloggers to come to my site. I want to interact and learn from them.
- Facebook = It is a place that I already have real friends, and I have found a lot of sports bloggers on it. This is a great way for people to get to know me. I am going to interact with my readers and introduce my blog to my friends that like sports.
- Stumbleupon = It is great targeted traffic, and I have met a lot of friends on that site.
- Yardbarker= I have neglected this site, and that was my own fault. There are a ton of great sports fans on this site. If I learn how to use it to its fullest, Yardbarker should help out a lot.
- AIM= A lot of people/bloggers/social media moguls use Instant Messenger, and it is about time I did. I think this is one place I have really been missing the boat. I just joined today.
What am I leaving behind.
- Digg = I could concentrate on Digg, but that would take too much time and would not help with my social media goals. I would hate to spend all day working on Digg just to hope for something to get on the front page, and then the people never come back. Most of the Sports stuff that makes the front page of Digg is usually something from ESPN, Youtube, a news site, or a very well known blog. Little blogs have a very small shot, and the big companies are paying Diggers to help them. If I wanted to do well on Digg, I would have to spend all my time on it, and that would not be worth it when I could reach my goals with the other sites that are more geared toward my goals.
- Reddit = I have had a lot of bad experiences with it.
- Twitter = If I do want to do any “Micro Blogging” I will do it on my Facebook profile. Twitter is very outdated and is only a vehicle for the people that really try hard at it. I am not going to do that when I could put the same effort into Facebook and get 10 times the results. Twitter has too much spam and too many RSS feeds.
- Delicious = It takes too much work to get a following for sports.
- Entrecard = It is a waste of time for a sports blogger unless they would like to spend an hour a day doing it. I think you could spend your time wiser. If you want bloggers to see your site, you should learn more about Ballhype.
- A lot of people use Google Talk, Google Reader, and Google Bookmarks to really drive traffic and stay in touch with an inner circle of their social media buds. I think that is wise, but I do not think it is best for sports bloggers. It is a very Techy crowd.
- I am using Facebook instead of MySpace. This was a tough decision because I have been using MySpace for a long time, and I already have a ton of friends on it. Facebook wins because it is easier to use and is more useful.
I am going to stick to this plan. I only have a limited amount of time each day to devote to social media. I want to use that time wisely. I am sorry if this post bored you. I hope it helped a few people that are as lost as I was 1 year ago. Anyways, add me to all of the services listed above. Thanks, and leave a comment to tell me what you think.
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Comments
10 Responses to “A Sports Bloggers Social Media Plan”
Leave a Reply
September 6th, 2008 @ 6:37 am
Great post, there is not true plan so the key I think is making your own (like this) and sticking to it.
Yardbarker is big and once I set up the auto feeding, I forgot to go back to the site and participate.
I like digg because I have felt the insane wave it gives you from a FP link.
I don’t see a use for facebook and will be setting my sites on reddit next.
good luck dude.
September 6th, 2008 @ 6:45 am
Thanks Cuz. You rock and the comment is very appreciated. I have seen a few bloggers use Facebook to their advantage. They used it to be more personable and reach an audience face to face. I plan on doing the same thing.
September 6th, 2008 @ 7:10 am
[...] The best part about all of this is that you can not make this stuff up. This just went down yesterday 9-5-08. My only question would be, why doesn’t he just have his brother give him a little “coin” to pay people to Digg for him. There are a lot of companies doing that now. That is why I am not on Digg all day. [...]
September 6th, 2008 @ 1:00 pm
Have you tried FanIQ and/or Sport Projections and/or FanBoom?
September 6th, 2008 @ 3:54 pm
Thanks CH. FanIQ is a good source, but I had to draw the line somewhere. Ballhype and Yardbarker are the best of the sports Digg type sites and Ballhype is so much more!
September 6th, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
Good to see you have a plan. Can see your serious about your sport blogging gig. I agree on your choices. Facebook over myspace, SU of course, and AIM/yahoo services. I like Digg but its hard to follow all the networks. Not a blogger just a internet/news junkie.
September 6th, 2008 @ 6:07 pm
Thanks Hillbert. I can not believe I forgot to add you to the Stumbleupon list. I will add you to the next one. How did I forget about Hillbert?
September 8th, 2008 @ 6:11 am
Great post. I haven’t gotten into StumbleUpon as much as I should so I definitely need to focus on that more in the future.
September 8th, 2008 @ 3:22 pm
Yardbarker seems to be better for traffic than Ballhype, though Hype seems to be more focused on bloggers. I neglected YB as well, though, so I can't help there.
As for AIM, how do you use that? You can't spam people?
September 8th, 2008 @ 4:20 pm
I use AIM just to contact people, and stay social.
Also some people need immediate answers, help, or just want to chat etc…
It will be easier to build a friendship than just using emails.
I already have a few social media buds on the service and I have only had it up a few days. I would like to get to the point where family, friends, and blog readers are all contacting me via AIM. It is not a way of getting traffic, it is an easy way to build relationships. That is one of the goals of my social media plan.
My AIM username is NESWsports if anyone wants to add me.