Euro 2012 is just over a month away. With league titles in Spain and Germany decided and rapidly drawing to a conclusion in England, Italy and France, European football is slowly transitioning from the weekly cycle of league matches and to a near-daily cycle of international football.

Covering an international tournament is no small feat – whether you’re an editor working with a team of writers to provide comprehensive coverage of each minute of action or you’re a single blogger planning to follow a single team throughout the tournament, there is a lot of ground to cover. Whether it’s live blogging through all 31 matches or poring over the latest Euro 2012 odds to offer betting tips, for most bloggers it’s impossible to cover every single inch of the Euros.

Based on our experience in blogging major tournaments on Soccerlens (Euro 2008 and the 2006 and 2010 World Cups), here are four key steps to providing tournament coverage that makes an impact, and at the end, a handful of blogging ‘angles’ to get you started:

Understand Your Strengths

Before you start planning, you need to understand what you’re good at in football writing / analysis. Maybe you’re brilliant with audio / video recording / being in front of the camera. If so, uou can make video analysis a key feature of your coverage.

Maybe you’re proficient at Photoshop – you could produce an eye-catching photo gallery for the tournament – a Euro 2012 montage that will tell the story in pictures.

Maybe you’re a Football Manager addict (show of hands? All of us? Good, good) – you can look at youth players / obscure transfer targets showcased at the Euros.

For example, if I was blogging the Euros @ Soccerlens, I could focus on any of the following:

• Tactical analysis – before and after matches as well as looking at related issues surrounding the tournament.
• Transfers – scouting players, potential targets for major teams and how they would fit into their new (prospective) sides.
• Targeting Search Traffic – looking at key items that fans regularly search for around major tournaments and providing that information on the site. This is a wide net, again you can narrow your focus here to concentrate on the type of topics you can provide real value in.

You may be the world’s biggest Denmark fan. You may run a football boots or shirts site. Always play to your strengths – it helps you produce something that’s better than average, something that stands out from the crowd.

Add Value To The Conversation

The big teams – Spain, Germany, Netherlands – will be on the radar for most Euro 2012 watchers. So are the big topics – potential transfers, match details and previews, stats, fixtures, etc. In such a climate, you need to focus on your strengths but you also need to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Differentiation happens when you take a regular news story that’s covered on 20 different sites and find a unique news hook that appeals to widest possible audience, while keeping in context with the story. This allows you to a) add value to the global conversation around the story and b) target more readers than the original story actually caters to.

Example:

Rooney’s return from suspension to England’s final group game only affects English fans (and Ukraine fans, of course). But you can also analyse this from a historical football perspective, looking at players who have made a winning contribution in a tournament limited by suspension or injury. You can look at this from United’s perspective, and look at Rooney’s international tournament record (dating back to Euro 2004). You can even revisit the topic of Rooney’s place in England squad, tactical adjustments required with and without him, and compare it to other contemporary teams (club or international) in how they cater for their star players.

There are more angles / stories around Rooney’s return, but the key point is – if you’re just going to repeat what everyone else is saying, no one’s going to listen.

Add value to the global conversation around important news stories by offering shareable knowledge and fresh insights. Cater to the football fan – help them find out what they’re looking for, help them see football in a new light, and they’ll not only thank you for it but keep coming back for more.

Get The Word Out

The best way to get your work read is to promote it. Everyone has a different comfort level when it comes to promoting their work – from the ‘I only write for myself’ school to the ‘I post my article to 50 social bookmarking sites, personally message my 3,000 friends on facebook and text all of my friends’.

Assuming that you want your work read by as many people as possible, here are some ideas / strategies to help you get there.

• Daily news / link roundups: Whether it’s in the form of a newsletter, a link roundup post or an ‘Also Read’ section at the end of an article, the main purpose is to highlight interesting content that other people have posted. The advantage – you can always request a link back to one of your key articles in the future. As long as what you’re writing is relevant to that site’s audience and isn’t something they’ve already done before, you’ll get the link.

  The same approach applies to Twitter as well.

• Twitter and Twitter lists: A major tournament is an excellent way to boost your Twitter followers – you will find more and more people turning to Twitter to follow in-play news and updates, as well as team-specific news that they’re unlikely to get elsewhere. You can tap into that by sharing your coverage via Twitter. One of the best ways of gaining a large number of followers during major tournaments like this is your presence on topical Twitter lists. For one of our client sites, we saw 4000 new twitter followers in the first week of the 2010 World Cup, simply because that twitter account was on someone’s 2010 World Cup news list.

  Who’s recommending you as a resource for Euro 2012?

  Bonus Link: More Twitter Tips.

• Other Platforms: Fancy Pinterest? Use it to create storyboards around the tournament and target a different type of audience than your typical football fan. Avid photo-sharer? Put up your image galleries on Flickr and link to your site (make sure you use those photos elsewhere, including Facebook and your own site). Reddit fan? Contribute to the community during the tournament providing news and updates.

  Facebook is getting more and more visual, so it’s an excellent platform to share photos, videos and generally build your readership during a major tournament (ads if you have the budget).

  Google+ is a great platform for having conversations with fellow fans – you can use it as an extension of your site to kickstart discussions and again, attract a slightly different sort of audience than you’re used to on blogs and twitter.

• Search Traffic – Facebook may be the king of social but Google is still the king of search. And when it comes to browsing behavior, searching for something online is a key part of how we consume information and / or use the Internet. If your site / articles aren’t showing up in search results, you’re not getting anywhere.

  This topic deserves a full article on it’s own, but to help you get started, here is a beginner’s guide to SEO, as well as guides to on-page optimization and link building.

Build A Timeless Resource

We’re used to reading 300 word news stories that no one will read ever again. That has extremely limited value to you and greatly reduces the shareability of that news story as well.

On the other hand, if you build a definitive guide to a topic – something that readers and journalists can refer back to and cite as an authoritative resource – then you’ve got something that will be linked to and get traffic over a long period of time.

Examples:

• Complete coverage of one team’s Euro 2012 journey.
• Complete coverage of one aspect of the tournament such goals / video highlights.
• A tournament summary of key stats (infographic or just articles.

Make an impact with your writing – make it count.

Ten Ideas For Euro 2012:

Here’s a list of suggestions / topics / ideas / angles you can take for your Euro 2012 coverage:

• On The Ground – Fan Diary. This hasn’t been done properly yet. Daily video blog featuring fans doing absolutely crazy things, stadium scenes, match scenes, interviews, etc. Key focus – video.
• The best of Euro 2012. Highlights. Photos. Stats. Infographics come into play here. Key focus – visuals.
• Team focus. Example – England’s journey through Euro 2012, including detailed squad profiles, complete stats, match reports and previews, quotes, news, photos, etc. If you have more writers at your disposal you can cover multiple teams.
• Euro 2012 PhotoBlog. Not just photos though – add captions and stories around each photo / album. Works best if you’re at the tournament (otherwise you’re just copying someone else’s photos).
• Euro 2012 Scout. Find and profile young and upcoming talents. As a resource this has limited time value, but is of great use in attracting readers during the transfer season post Euro 2012.
• Euro 2012 – Live Blogging. Every single match, minute by minute coverage. Exhausting but if you can link this to more than just one platform (i.e. provide mobile updates, twitter updates and website updates all through a single update), you’ll be able to build a very active following during the tournament.
• Euro 2012 Match Stats. Detailed coverage of the matches only. Lineups, stats, preorts, etc. No fluff, just match / player stats. A record book for the Euros.
• Euro 2012 Betting Guide. A specialised topic but one that will again have a Europe-wide interest and readership, if you can tap into it properly.
• Euro 2012 Gear. Another specialised topic and one that gets a lot more attention in the build-up to the tournament and little attention afterwards. I would use this topic to build an audience that can targeted with similar content after the tournament (football gear in general).
• Euro 2012 Travel. Works better for general travel sites than football sites, but there’s a wealth of information you can share here, from stadium details to host cities to actual travel tips and guides based on local advice. And when the tournament is over, your guide(s) will still be relevant from a football tourism point of view. Arguably not as popular a topic when you’re talking about Poland / Ukraine than Germany, but useful nevertheless.

That’s our guide for blogging the Euros or any major football event. If you have any questions or additional tips to offer, do share them in the comments below.

• Start your blog.
• At some point, put up ads (your own products, affiliate items, an ad network such as Google AdSense, text link ads or direct banner sales).
• Watch and wonder why the ads aren’t making you any money.

If you’re looking to make money off your football blog, knowing where to place your ads (and which placements work best for each type of ad) is crucial. Instead of hiding the ads away in a corner, you need to look at maximising user engagement of ads (while ensuring that quality of a reader’s experience of the site is not affected).

A higher engagement rate is much more valuable to advertisers than pure traffic – more engagement means a higher chance of an eventual sale happening, so whether you’re an affiliate, selling your own products or working with an ad network, more clicks on the ads will generally mean more money for you (but please ensure that you’re not artificially inflating the number of clicks as that will get you banned from any ad network).

Even if you’re not interested in ads, you can still use the advice in this article to understand how to promote yourself / your own content by knowing which areas of your website / article / webpage will engage the most users.

General Ad Placement Tips

Follow The Website Heatmap

A website heatmap measures those areas of your website that receive the most attention from your readers. In short: top points of engagement on your site = best places for ads.

If you’re interested in doing your own research into your site’s heatmap, I strongly recommend using the free 30-day trial period at CrazyEgg to test your site (just remember to cancel before the 30 days if you don’t want to pay for the full service) and get valuable insights into how your readers use your website.

Reduce the number of ads

CPM-based ads generally encourage bloggers to stuff as many ad units as possible on the site, but that means lower engagement rates per ad unit, and eventually, your ad revenue per ad unit drops considerably.

By limiting the number of ads and also focusing them on high visibility areas, you can get a high engagement rate and subsequently higher CPMs as well.

Full Ad Integration

Build the site with ad spaces integrated. If you don’t want to promote something now, put your own banners there, to encourage writers, to promote a piece of content you’ve written or to encourage readers to engage with you in social media.

Use the ad spaces for whatever you want, but always build the site from the start with those spaces in mind so that you can answer the user experience / ad engagement questions at the right time (when you’re designing the site) as opposed to shoehorning ads into a design at a later date which will cost you more (and most likely require a redesign).

Ad Placement Examples

What the advertising agencies tell you is different from what leading (successful) websites practice. Contrast Google’s standard advice for sites (1, 2) and blogs (1, 2) with how major sites like the Engadget, TechCrunch and New York Times place their ads.

Image Credit: The site screenshots above are taken from this article.

There are similarities but the stark difference is that while Google highly recommends ads to be placed inside the content area, most (if not all) major news portals leverage that ‘inside the content’ area for site-related ads – that is, promoting other sections of the site, or using images, or promoting social media options.

They’re making a rational choice to value user retention – i.e. encouraging the reader to stay for longer on the website – over click rates. This is sensible – increased time spent on the site is part of the basket of metrics used to measure the overall worth of a site’s audience, and by focusing on increasing that value, these sites can charge higher prices for their ads.

Having said that, there are other common elements that are very useful to note:

Ads Above The Fold

Use this website by Google to better understand what ‘above the fold’ means for your site.

You’ll see all major sites aim for 1-2 ads placed above the fold – usually a 728×90 leaderboard right above or below the site navigation and a 300×250 either at the top of the right (or left) column or right below social media options / site search / site navigation.

Rarely you will also see sites making use of a reader’s wider screen and placing a 160×600 ad on the left side of the site (only when you’re placing the 300×250 on the right). On one hand it places three ad units above the fold, but on the other hand it probably means too many ads on the site in the same space and might not be a great idea to follow.

Example: Skyscraper on the left.

Leaderboard – 728×90 – Placement

An common practice with 728×90 ads is to place them right at the top of the site, before any other site navigation / logos. The other option is to integrate it within the navigation, usually by putting it below the site navigation (or between two sections of it).

Whatever you choose, make sure you’re able to test both versions on your site to evaluate which one works better. Personally I think placing the ad below the main navigation is a better way of integration – it keeps the ads prominent and visible while giving a higher priority to the site’s navigation – which is more important than ads in any case.

Example: Leaderboard integration with site navigation

MPU – 300×250 or 336×280 – Placement

While you will generally see this ad at the top of the right column (easily separating it from the rest of the site’s content), a more integrated way to present this ad is to place it second on the sidebar, below your most important section – whether it’s promoting content, or social media navigation, or your newsletter, or an internal ad for writers – push your content first and the ads second, and you’ll be able to integrate the ads more naturally into the site design.

Again, test both options to see what works best in terms of clicks and engagement for you.

Example: MPU integration with sidebar content

Ads At End Of The Article

A great place to place ads – within reason – is right after an article ends. It’s also a great place to promote other areas of your site, so use this spot as you wish, but you should be aware that it’s an oft-ignored but prime piece of website real estate.

Many news sites only place ads in this spot if comments (user interaction) is not available for that article, which makes perfect sense – if user interaction was available, that would be a more preferable outcome than getting a video played or an ad clicked.

Again, use this according to your site’s needs.

Example: End of Article Ad.

Homepage v Article Pages

If you have a different layout for your homepage as opposed to your article pages, make sure that you use different ad placements as well. In all likelihood the header part of your site will stay the same, with only the main content area changing shape. In this case, you can integrate your ads on the front page in a different way that suits your overall balance between content and ads.

Example: Homepage Ads

Non-Standard Ads

A great way to manage space on your site as well as promote internal content is to use non-standard ad sizes stick them around your content area / ads. Whether it’s a 180×90 ad that fills up space next to a leaderboard or a 300×100 ad that sits in the sidebar, you should leverage your design’s uniqueness to create site-specific ad units and promote your own stuff.

Example: Non-Standard Ads

Ad Types / Number of Ad Units per page

The best performing ad units are the 300×250 and 728×90, and many US-based advertisers will only consider those two along with the 160×600 wide skyscraper. My recommendation is to stick to 3 ‘standard’ ad units per page plus any non-standard site ads that you’d like to use. Remember, you’re not to make more money simply by pasting more ads on the site – it’s a short-term strategy and the subsequent poor performance dissuades advertisers from working with you. Placement and engagement matter far more.

Plus, fewer ads mean your readers will be more open to seeing the ads in the first place (instead of completely ignoring your site).

Ad Placements – On Your Site

The optimal ad placement on websites, while based on the above ideas, is often unique to each site. If you want to maximise your site’s revenues, make sure you follow the advice and examples above and adapt them to your own site design.

Football Media’s Guide To Making Money From Football Blogging, released on 16th March 2011, is the only ‘how-to’ guide specifically targeting football bloggers.

Inside, you’ll learn:

• 11 different monetization tactics.
• Insights and examples on how to use each tactic for your football business.
• The truth about text link ads and search rankings.
• Why you need to rethink your approach to football blogging.
• How to get paid to write on your blog.
• Get the maximum out of banner ads.

And plenty more. Plus it’s completely free, so all you need to do is to get registered below and we’ll send the report to you via email.

If you enjoyed reading the report, feel free to share this article on Twitter or Facebook by using the social media links below.

And there are the downsides – although you can’t begrudge football fans their God-given right to have a whinge – the biggest of them being the announcement yesterday from Uefa on the 2011 Champions League ticket prices.

If you haven’t heard – the tickets prices are £300, £225 and £150 (depending on which category you choose), plus a £26 administration fee for each two-ticket booking. Compare this to UEFA women’s Champions League final at Fulham’s Craven Cottage on May 26 – where tickets cost just £5, or the ticket prices from Rome two years ago, where the lowest category ticket was £80 – and you can understand why the football fans are moaning in unison.

But here’s the question for you – why are football fans so annoyed with players and football clubs (and football associations) trying to maximise their income? It’s part of a wider social phenomenon, where those who earn substantially more than us get chided for wanted to improve.

Is it because it’s at our expense (partially through higher ticket prices, merchandising, matchday hospitality, Sky, etc)? In that case I refer you to this excellent article in the Guardian that neatly explains why that is.

Is it because you think people who have more than you should not grow, and should be satisfied with what they have? How do you think they are successful in the first place? By working hard (mostly) and taking advantage of the opportunities that came their way (always). Not everyone will get the same opportunities (too many variables involved), but it’s what you do with what you get that determines everything. Coupled with the above article’s point on everything being a factor of demand and supply, we reach a point where we want more from the game, but we’re angry at the costs.

We can’t have it both ways. Unfortunately there’s a price to be paid for success, or as TSF says, for our lofty ambitions. And whether it’s buying the Madrid-Barcelona tickets through TixDaq because you desperately want to see Mourinho get his revenge, or whether it’s buying the new Wilshere Arsenal shirt, because he’s the next Xavi, consider this (and I’ll let TSF finish this article):

Ask yourself what really makes you happy? Because those of you who want the very best talent that enables your team to compete and win trophies will know that somebody has to pay for it, and those same people will also understand that if it all ends in tears, it isn’t necessarily the players that need shooting because, for the most part, we’re just playing our role in somebody else’s grand design. Those who don’t understand that argument, take your card out of the machine and take the kids to the park. Either way, the real power still belongs to you.

I’ve been working online for over 6 years now, and in that we’ve managed 100s of websites and worked with dozens of webhosts, from your cheap-as-dirt shared hosting variety to VPS providers to cloud hosting to top-of-the-line dedicated servers.

There are three things that I absolutely insist on (always) when working on any webhosting service:

1. Quality customer support

They’re the experts, so they should be able to solve any / all of your problems promptly. They should also be familiar with the most common web technologies – and be able to give you feedback on how to optimise your website to make it run faster. Lastly, they should be proactive, fixing potential issues before they happen.

2. Zero downtime

Technically zero downtime isn’t always possible, but you want a webhost that will adapt to your site’s needs, increasing available CPU capacity and bandwidth when needed. If you get a sudden burst of traffic because your article is popular on NewsNow, got tweeted by a 100 people or got linked to by a popular blog, your webhost should be able to keep the site up and running through the traffic spike. The same goes for increased traffic throughout a month (for example during the summer when transfer stories and new kits generate a lot of pageviews). In a nutshell, your website should never be down because of your host’s inability to cater for extra demand.

There may be technical flaws or delays, or if you start getting 200k pageviews a day and you absolutely need to upgrade your hosting setup, then a slowdown or timeout is understandable. In 99% of the cases though, it’s avoidable and shouldn’t happen.

3. Value for money

Way back in 2007, with Soccerlens on the rise and having serious problems with it’s webhost, we spoke to several web hosting companies about our requirements. They have only increased since then, but here’s a look at it back in January 2007:

• 500k unique visitors / month
• 1m page views / month
• WordPress setup with 50+ plugins

Recommendations ranged from a $50 / month VPS (which we didn’t have the technical expertise to manage) to a $400 / month dedicated server. We had maxed out 2 different shared hosting providers at that time, but on the recommendation of a close friend and the unbeatable tagline ‘the only shared hosting that is Digg-proof’, we opted to go with TigerTech.

You can read my TigerTech review for more details, but the bottom line is, since that day we haven’t looked back. As the site has grown, we’ve been lucky enough to have near-zero downtime, critical money-saving customer support, and while rival sites with similar traffic / usage patterns are hosted on expensive servers, we’re coasting along without paying an arm and a leg for quality support.

At $6.95 / month, with zero setup fees, free domain, unlimited bandwidth, flexible CPU cycle allocation (so your site is never down) and world class customer support, you shouldn’t be mucking about with the likes of MediaTemple, BlueHost, DreamHost, GoDaddy and the rest.

So, if you’re frustrated with your current webhost, or on the lookout for a new one, check out TigerTech (aff link).

Four years ago, Soccerlens was born out of a desire to share our opinions on football with a wider audience. The market for ‘general’ football sites may seem saturated now but for football fans around the world, there are still plenty of opportunities to share their thoughts and be heard by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of fellow football fans.

How do you do it? Here are some pointers to get you started.

Blogging

Fans write blogs about their team or about football in general, where they share their views with audiences of different sizes. Blogging is as central to your efforts today as it was in 2006. The differences are procedural – where you went through promoting your articles via email and through forums, you now use Twitter / Facebook. There are still quality sites that will give you space to air your views, and for the best writers amongst you there are opportunities to make money from this field as well.

But if you’re just getting started and want to cross that first hurdle – i.e. if you want an audience (writing is easy, getting readers who are interested in what you write isn’t), then there are a number of things you can do.

Start your own blog

A popular option and one that almost every writer ends up doing in their first year of blogging. My recommendation – reserve your personal domain, maybe put up a single page on it about yourself, but don’t start posting on your own blog. For starters, you have no audience and it’s a major pain to build an audience. There are easier ways to do it than start from scratch on a brand new blog. Secondly, football is a time-sensitive subject most of the time. What you’re writing about today could be irrelevant tomorrow. Do you want all your hard work to be unread AND irrelevant?

Starting your own blog makes sense if you already have a sizeable audience / readership. Someone like Iain Macintosh or Guillem Balague, these guys can definitely benefit from having a personal website because they already have a fanbase, an audience. If you’re not already well-known / well-read, it’s a bad idea.

Simple rule of thumb – established journalist / ex footballer, setup your own blog and get cracking. Otherwise, try something else on this list.

Write for a popular football blog

It can be the biggest blog about your club, it could be a generic news site, or it could be something intensely topical and niche. There are dozens of popular football sites around, and most of them are looking for free content. If you don’t have a writing portfolio already, this is the quickest way to get started.

The advantages – you can get instant access to sites that have over 1 million readers / month. You will probably also get some invaluable guidance / advice from the editors, depending on which site you’re writing for. It’s excellent experience for learning about how to get readers for your posts, how to write for the web, etc.

The disadvantages – it’s not your own website. The thing you can do to counteract this is to treat your profile page on these sites as a personal profile page, and promote that heavily.

I would also recommend that you stick to 1-2 major sites when starting out in the writing world as opposed to writing one article each for 10 sites. It takes time to build an audience, for the readers to know who you are and to come back for your next article. Plus building a long-term relationship with the site / editor will also help you out in the long run.

If your ultimate goal is to be a football journalist, start with a big football blog and stick to it until you can make the progression to paid work. When Goal.com splurged on Goal UK in the summer of 2009, where did they turn to? Good / great football writers. You’re not going to get to the top without building a brand, and partnering with an existing, visible brand is your best bet to do that.

Are you a football fan interested in sharing your views by writing for the Football Media network? Then read our Football Writers Wanted post and get in touch.

Forums

If you goal is more to mingle with other football fans as opposed to writing articles, forums are the best place to be. You will find quality team-specific forums / communities everywhere (and not necessarily just at the official club sites), but IMO quality generic forums have dwindled, although the likes of Big Soccer and community sites like Footbo are still going strong.

The difference between blog and forum communities is important in context of how you want to experience football online – forums are full of banter, not a lot is taken seriously, you need to speak up or you’ll probably be lost in the crowds, and members are quite loyal to the site. It’s not to say blogs aren’t the same, but as the onus in forums is on the community members to initiate / maintain conversations, it’s more distributed and therefore more varied, and you can find your own pace instead of having to write at a fixed schedule.

There’s usually a moderator or team of moderators who make sure discussion stays on topic, and you’ll want to stay on the forum mods / owners good side by 1) not spamming 2) not starting or getting sucked into flame wars and 3) contributing regularly to the forum with posts and research.

At the end of the day, unless you’re at a very popular forum (and then you have to be quite good at guaging the mood of a community, not easy to do in forums), you’re not likely to get as much of exposure / readership. But then again forums aren’t meant for that, they’re meant for banter and gossip, and letting off steam after the game.

Social Media

Facebook and Twitter have changed the way we consume football news online. Just as blogging made it possible for any football fan to write articles, these social media tools make it ridiculously easy for fans to track, share and debate the latest news and gossip.

Twitter

It’s made it’s name by assisting journalists around the world to break news easily and instantaneously, and it’s no different in football. You can follow the top Real Madrid journalists to get breaking news about who Madrid are signing, updates on ongoing press conferences, links to interviews, information on upcoming matches, etc etc. Madrid is just one example, this applies to football across the spectrum, and of course to unofficial fans and teams and footballing regions around the world.

Football information sharing is made ridiculously simple by Twitter, but it can easily lead to ‘too much information’ and a case of you missing out on what’s really interesting for you if you end up following everyone.

Different users have different points of view on how to use twitter – you’re welcome to your own – but this how Twitter has worked best for me:

1. Pick your top news source for each topic you’re interested in – United, Arsenal, French football, Barcelona, Portuguese football, MLS, etc etc. Follow them, and if you’re using a Twitter desktop client like TweetDeck, you can create a separate filtered list for your primary sources for easier access.

2. Follow writers that you enjoy reading – and look out for recommendations for people who make it a habit to break news online. Daniel Taylor of the Guardian may not be everyone’s cup of tea but he’s quite proficient in getting the news out first on Twitter.

3. There are so many Twitter users that fans have to carefully select which users to “follow” (to follow a user is to receive their tweets directly, without searching for them). Fans can also sub-divide the people they follow to create more specific “Twitter lists”. Example: you can follow everyone in the Football Media network via the Football Media network Twitter list.

Facebook

The world’s largest social networking site is an obvious place for football fans to share opinions. Sometimes it’s as simple as someone posting a link to a football news story on their Wall, or maybe a Wall to Wall conversation about football between friends.

On a larger scale, most football media outlets will have a Facebook page, where they make posts and fans can react with comments. Example: Soccerlens on Facebook.

The key to using Facebook is to understand that it’s built on sharing, so the most basic use is to share interesting links from around the Internet with your friends. But what you can also do is use ‘Notes’ to write your thoughts / blogs and share those with your friends.

You can also join groups like the Football Writers group which is geared to providing writing opportunities and advice for football writers. There’s plenty of groups you can find like this, make sure you pick one that is active and actually beneficial for you.

Blogs, news organisations and really popular journalists also use Fan Pages to help aggregate their fans and also share information directly with them. It’s a good way to get updates from your favourite websites although in many cases there’s quite a lot of crossover from Twitter.

LinkedIn

I’ll keep this short – if you want to network online, a LinkedIn profile really helps. And if you want to network online with other football professionals, joining LinkedIn and participating in focused groups that cover your interest areas is really, really important. You’ll find new connections that you can tap into to discuss potential partnerships, and you’ll find new opportunities for you to avail.

Still, this is more for networking than for sharing your thoughts / views, but it’s also a nice way to network with decision makers working at places you might want to work at in the future, and there’s a significant segment of the business population that is more comfortable using LinkedIn than they are using Twitter.

Broadcasting

Last but definitely not the least, podcasts and vodcasts (video blogging) give football fans a unique way to share with and reach out to fellow football fans.

Podcasts

Podcasts are really easy for some people to do because they find it a lot easier to talk instead of writing. We’ve already talked about how to get started with your own podcast, but my advice to beginners is to start things off by finding an existing, popular podcast that they can contribute to, and take things step by step from there. Like starting your own blog, a podcast is tough to get off the ground simply because you’re going to have trouble finding listeners right of the bat.

However in conjunction with your writing, if you can gain experience in the podcast world, learn what works and what doesn’t, and especially learn how to promote podcasts, then it’s an added skill that you can parlay into paid work in the future.

Podcasts usually are better done as an add-on to existing sites – some (like Football Ramble) may be an exception but that’s one hell of an exception.

Vodcasts

Web video shows are not just the future, they’re big now. Only problem is that football hasn’t truly been able to crack this area and figure out how to best entertain the fans. Also there’s a strong affinity towards match-related football clips, giving fans plenty of existing video content to consume, so a video show has serious competition before it even gets off the ground.

If you want to get start in football videos, the best thing might be to build up your profile on a service like YouTube or Vimeo by sharing interesting football clips and practicing your hand at doing short video clips. It’s difficult to come up with interesting ideas right off the bat – not everyone’s Football Nomad. A lot of football fans spent hours and hours browsing through video clips – and if you can start sharing video clips that people are searching for (especially if you monitor the news and keep track of rising trends), you can quickly build up a following of football fans who like your taste in football.

As you can see, there’s more than one way to experience football online, and whether you want to write, read, talk or watch football, there’s something there for everyone. I hope this article has helped in you some way, and if you have any questions use the comments form below and ask away.

Are you a football fan interested in sharing your views by writing for the Football Media network? Then read our Football Writers Wanted post and get in touch.

You can follow Football Media on Twitter or Facebook, and you can also join our Football Writers group for writing tips and football writing opportunities.

Starting the career

So how exactly do you go about translating your passion for the game and encyclopedic knowledge of all things football into a career?

The first step is getting some experience. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been to university, left school at 16 or taken a journalism course, experience is king and the likelihood is you’re going to have to put in the hours at the start for very little or no money.

That means contacting the editors of local newspapers, football websites, magazines and fanzines and offering your services for free. You’ll get plenty of knock-backs but the more people you approach, the better. Persistence is a virtue and if they ask to cover a reserve team game on a cold Tuesday night in January for nothing, bite their hands off.

Not everyone can afford to do six months, unpaid work experience but your chances of getting your first break are going to dramatically improve if you can work for nothing.

Start a blog. You won’t earn anything but a regular blog is a good opportunity to polish your writing style and you never know who might be reading it.

Dealing with Editors

So let’s assume you’ve got your foot in the door. What next?

Never forget editors are always busy. They don’t want to hear about your lifelong love affair with football, they don’t care if your words rival Shakespeare and they definitely aren’t interested in your thoughts on whether Premier League players are overpaid.

Editors just want you to make their life easier.

They want writers who are reliable and hardworking. They want reporters who regularly come up with ideas and interviews, even if they don’t print them. They want to know you’ll produce exactly what they ask for on time, if not before.

In short, you’ve got to be both workmanlike and proactive.

Efficiency

The nuts and bolts of the job is filing your copy on deadline. It’s got to be accurate and it’s got to be error free. Writers who file pieces with spelling mistakes or errors are the bane of an editor’s life and if you commit this cardinal sin, you will quickly be sidelined. Read over everything you submit at least three times. Spell checking is not the same as diligently re-reading.

But you’ve also got to be imaginative and the only way you’ll get noticed is by regularly coming up with ideas and quotes. Editors love writers who give them options and never be afraid to pester them. Just turning up and waiting to be told what to cover, what to write or who to interview is not going to forge you a reputation.

Stay ahead of the competition

The most important thing to remember is football journalism is fiercely competitive. It’s an attractive job with plenty of perks and that inevitably means there’s a lot of people out there who aspire to earn a living writing about the beautiful game. It’s a crowded market and you have to stand out.

Get noticed, big time!

So, you’ve now got a year or two under your belt. You’ve paid your dues covering the less-than-glamorous games, you’re not earning a fortune and you’re looking for a transfer.

The question now is, exactly what kind of football journalist do you want to be? Do you aspire to work for one of the national newspapers? Do you fancy the life of a freelancer or do you want to report exclusively on your beloved local team?

Again, it’s all about getting noticed. Simply writing an imploring letter or email to a newspaper or magazine editor is not going to cut it. Editors are swamped by CV’s and if you don’t have a USP, yours is probably heading straight to the filing cabinet. Or the bin.

Sending examples of your best work is essential but what editors really want is content. Send an interview or a feature and even if they don’t find space for it, you will have forged ahead in the queue. It may not land you a job but you’re far more likely to be remembered if you send something they can print.

Specializing is another option. Football is a big beast but if you decide to focus on one particular area of the game, it could be your path to success. Covering the Premier League for example is the glamor gig but turning yourself into a Championship or La Liga expert has worked for many writers.

Socialize

And finally, make as many contacts as possible. The more phone numbers you can amass, the better. Football journalism is as much about who you know as how well you write and a bulging contacts book is what impresses editors.

Get Started Now

If you’re starting out fresh, cut your teeth on Football Media’s 30+ strong publishing network. We’re looking for writers, so go ahead and apply.

Written by Iain Spragg, published author, respected sports writer and co-founder of Sports Media Solutions.

Also See: 8 Tips for aspiring football journalists

Football Media is a collection of 30+ football websites covering all aspects of the beautiful game, from fantasy football to hot WAGs to football politics and your usual assortment of team blogs, forums and intelligent football coverage from around the world. We have sites – and writers – from all over the world, and we’d like you to be a part of this growing family.

If you’re passionate about football, love expressing your views on the game and are looking to start your football journalism career, we might just have a spot for you.

Why should you write for the Football Media Network?

The Football Media network is easily the biggest football-only network of sites – you don’t need to go anywhere else to be published and more importantly, be heard, if you’re interested in writing about football.

Some of our best writers have gone on to enjoy successful careers as columnists and editors in major football publications online and offline (Goal.com, UEFA Magazine, etc). We help you make the connections and share your work with the widest possible audience, and along the way you’ll also learn about the art of football writing and how to stand out from the hordes of football writers around you.

We accept only the best websites and and as a result, only the best writers as well.  So if you’re accepted, you’ll be in the company of some of the brightest young writing talents online. We have a minimum traffic requirement as well. This ensures that no matter which site you end up writing for – whether it’s the popular Chelsea blog or the up and coming Leeds United blog - you’re more than likely to be writing on a fan-favourite site (if you’re accepted). That kind of initial exposure and experience can be priceless in building a career in football.

How To Apply

First, some basic criteria:

• These are NOT paid placements. This is targeted towards young / fresh writers looking to make their mark.
• You need to be able to write well – not just in terms of making articles error-free (language and facts) but also to keep your writing interesting and engaging for the readers.
• We reserve the right to place you to any of our sites depending on your writing ability and the needs of our sites.

To apply, send in the following to writers@footballmedia.com:

1. Your area(s) of expertise and interest.
2. A writing sample, preferably in .doc format or if it’s posted online, just a link will do.
3. How often you’re willing / interested to write.

Please don’t use the contact form for this, email directly to writers@footballmedia.com

At the end of the day, PR agencies are as result-driven as any other business entity, and if they can’t figure out how to work with bloggers, they’re not going to bother unless they’re forced to do it. And this is a real shame, because bloggers have been telling PR agencies (for several years) how to pitch to them.

Which brings us to this point in time, one day before the World Cup kicks off. It’s 6:30 AM (UK time) and I’ve already received 5 pitches for various World Cup related services / products. The last week has seen hundreds of emails come through at Soccerlens and most of them have been ignored.

Football PR people, listen up. I know that the World Cup happens once every four years and everyone has to make the best of it, but that doesn’t give you license to spam bloggers.

In fact, nothing is going to guarantee an instant deletion of your emails more than shilling your product a couple of days from kickoff, when anyone who’s writing about football / would be writing about the World Cup is crazy busy.

Having said that, we don’t blindly delete emails (not really). It’s just that after having read several dozen pitches PER DAY in the last seven days, I can tell just by the email subject and first line (easy to see without opening the email if you’re using GMail / Google Apps / any decent webmail client) if it’s going to be worth my time. And unless I recognise your brand’s name, you’re just shortchanging yourself by approaching bloggers at a very busy time in their schedule.

So what can PR agencies do? Read on, and take notes.

10 Things Football PR Agencies Should Learn (Again)

Note: You’ll notice that a lot of the tips here ask you to spend time studying sites and being active followers / members, which isn’t always possible (lack of time / rapid change of projects, various other reasons). Although that’s understandable, that’s not always acceptable.

Luckily there’s a way around it. Like any good marketing agency, you must be keeping records, right? Keep adding site profiles to them so that the next person can benefit too.

1. Know who you’re talking to

Personalise, Personalise, Personalise.

At the very least, you should know who you’re emailing. Granted, not every blog has easily identifiable contact persons / information, but it’s very easy to find out on most blogs a) who owns it, b) who to contact for advertising / promotions, c) who’s the main writer / editor (and your best bet for getting a reply).

Even if you have to write to a generic email address / connect through the contact form, at least find out who’s behind the site / who’s the regular writer / blogger and then address them in your initial pitch. If it’s a nickname? Use it (and ask for the real name for future reference). If there’s no name? Ask for one.

The downside of getting this wrong? Even a brand like the BBC won’t get a reply if they can’t figure out who they’re emailing.

2. Profile the site audience

Your pitch will be 100% more effective if you can customise it to suit the needs of the site’s audience. Understand the type of fans / readers who visit the site and model your pitch in a way that would appeal to them.

Pitching WindMill International to a football blog isn’t going to work, even if the said blog is open to showing a little T&A.

Does the site cater to a UK-centric audience or is it more global? Are these fans who go to matches or watch them on the telly? What are the discussions like on the blog – do they discuss club products or is it more news focused?

The absence of specific interests doesn’t mean that pitching those angles won’t work, but it does mean that you have to be more gentle in terms of pushing the idea initially and give more help to the blogger when it comes to providing the initial content on the site.

3. Study style & nature of articles

What type of content do they do? Building on from the previous point, learn what the blog/blogger talks about and cater your pitch to that. Regular readers want more of the same – or at least more in the same tone / topic. It’s not too difficult to understand whether a site is open to more whimsical / funny viral content or more serious breaking news content.

It also pays to study if they’re open to guest bloggers or not, because that will instantly tell you that they’d be open to adding content written by external writers on the site (another way in for your brand, as long as you make the discussion about the fans and not yourself).

4. Find your best ROI opportunity and focus

What’s the best return they can deliver for your brand? Is it in terms of product sales, brand reinforcement to existing consumers, getting access to other bloggers, getting the word out to the maximum # of people, getting people to participate in surveys / polls, getting valuable link equity – each blog will be really good at one or two of these things and it’s up to you to figure out what their strong point is and focus your pitch on that.

If it’s just about getting the word out and meeting a random ‘numbers’ target in terms of how many football fans have potentially seen your ad or how many writeups you’ve acquired, you’re doing it wrong.

5. Offer something valuable first

What should be offered upfront? That’s the question you should know the answer to before you contact the blogger. Apart from the lack of personalisation, the biggest mistake PR companies make (something myself and Chris have spoken out against often) is to assume that they can get ‘publicity’ on blogs for free (because apparently blogs are free and mainstream media isn’t.

It’s a damaging perception for bloggers and it couldn’t be more wrong. Bloggers are regular people too, and in many cases are running their blog as a second business. This is serious stuff for them, and the most effective way to succeed is to find out what they would value most and offer it to them.

Exclusives? Do it, but not just in name, real exclusives. Interviews / player access? Give it up (you’re already paying football players to shill your product, arranging for one-to-one access for bloggers shouldn’t be a big stretch). Free products – that’s standard fare; it’s the bare minimum, not the most you should be doing.

What else can you do? A crate of Carlsberg (to give away to readers, hah!) is not going to get me to shill your brand. Funny enough, if you put the time in to meet the blogger personally for a drink or two, that would give you a much better shot of getting promotion on their site.

One crate vs two pints – you can do the math yourself.

And this neatly ties in with my next point…

6. Build long-term relationships

Your first question shouldn’t be: “what can this blog do for me?” but “how do I engage this blog in a long-term, win-win relationship?”

Doing exclusive events for bloggers where you make initial contact and maybe explain your brand philosophy (along with one or two key news / product promotions) can be a good starting point. Meeting personally with top bloggers for drinks should be standard procedure (as is meeting for drinks with just about any other valuable point of contact).

Know who they are. Know what they want. Get them on your side. It’s sometimes as simple as valuing their efforts and sharing ideas and angles through which your brand and their blog can have synergy. Each blog is going to have multiple brands vying for their attention, but you can get a head start by getting in early, building trust and offering value.

The value of making contact early in your campaigns cannot be overstated. The earlier the bloggers are onboard, the more they’ll talk about your brand, the easier it is to convert them to fans and the more exposure you’ll get (a lot of it for free).

7. Get Referrals

Bloggers talk to other bloggers, and contacting a blogger through a referral (or mutual introduction) makes you more acceptable than a standard cold call / email.

Referrals are usually possible later on in the relationship once you’ve built up trust, but it’s a valuable tactic to use especially with well-established bloggers.

A related point is to target blogs that are popular amongst bloggers themselves – and give them special attention. That way you will be almost ‘recruiting’ bloggers to pitch your product not just to the general public but also to other bloggers. You can use events like the Soccerlens Awards to pick out the top blogs / podcasts / forums, or you can just study the industry and spend time getting to know who goes where and who likes what.

Hint: It all points to meeting with bloggers – whether in groups or individually.

8. Educate bloggers

Some bloggers might not know the best way to review a product / service on their site. Some bloggers might not know how to use viral videos (like the Nandos World Cup Ad (NSFW)) to their own benefit. Others may not know what works best in your specific niche (tickets, betting, tv subscriptions, gifts, etc).

It’s your job to help them / teach them the best practices that will get maximum results for you and for the blogger as well.

At Soccerlens (and through the Football Media ad network), we found that most betting partners either relied on sheer force of numbers or by continually working with sites / site owners who news what they were doing. They had little in the way of knowledge-sharing and quite often it worked the other way around when we would keep asking them for specific features / information to help drive more conversions.

In contrast, some of our smaller commercial partners have shown remarkable initiative in sharing what they’ve seen work best in their industry, which results in positive results (or a win-win) for all parties concerned.

More crucially, if the blog does well, it looks good for the PR guy, it’s good for the brand, AND there’s another reason to work with the blog in the future, which will only open up the blogger more to you.

9. Become social media kings

If you want social media exposure or better search rankings or viral promotion, you need to learn, in-house, how everything works. This applies more to the agency than individuals, but it’s strongly relevant.

You want your video to become viral on YouTube? Setup a YouTube video channel and start using to upload brand-specific videos. You want bloggers to talk about you on Twitter? Where’s your twitter account? What about Facebook fans? What about your own blog?

I’m not advising that you blindly put up a blog / twitter account / facebook page for every brand / product you work on, but that you USE these mediums yourself EXTENSIVELY for your projects and learn how they work best.

After all, you’re the PR experts, which is why you know what to say / ask for / do when you approach the print and online media for PR exposure. And if you wanted more social media exposure, wouldn’t it pay to become experts in that field as well, so you’d know what worked, what to ask for and how to drive and measure results?

10: Read the article below. No, print it out and learn it by heart

How To Pitch To Bloggers – 21 Tips.

It seems to me that Football PR is a few years behind PR agencies in other industries when it comes to bloggers – or it might just be a case of the UK community in general being a couple of years behind their US counterparts. Whatever the case, it’s high time they tailored their pitches to suit their targets better.

At the very least it’ll drive better results, and on average, you’ll be surprised at how much more valuable and in-depth bloggers can be compared to their mainstream media counterparts.

There are many differences in what Google AdSense and Football Media each provide for web publishers, and I strongly maintain that football blogs (or other sites for that matter) shouldn’t use AdSense as their primary monetization strategy. But that’s not the point.

The most interesting part about the revelations (which conspicuously omitted any mention of ‘Premium AdSense Publishers’ who get higher revenue share and several other perks) is how well Google have done to keep their costs down and margins high enough to offer publishers 68% in revenue share. This is purely down to automation – allowing millions of advertisers and publishers to seamlessly create adverting campaigns and monetize websites without the need to go through a real live person.

I read the article this morning and it got me thinking about the different ways we could learn from Google’s management of their AdSense products. It’s important to look at three aspects – reducing costs, increasing gross revenues and improving our brand (so as to attract more prominent advertisers and publishers) – and evaluating which methods and guiding principles work for us or not.

For example, one of the driving forces behind setting up Football Media was to provide ‘more’ services to our partners (publishers and advertisers) than traditional media agencies. The personalised approach has it’s downsides – it’s costly once you start scaling upwards and it can become irrelevant very quickly if the profit margins offered by another agency are higher than yours. Then again, the services model is also something that sets us apart, and if we want to continue with it then we would have to work on improving efficiency and focusing on premium publishers and advertisers almost exclusively, which brings with it another set of questions.

Football Media is still evolving, and we’ll keep working on improving the results and the quality of service that we offer to our publishers and advertisers. You’ll read about these changes over the summer right here on this blog, so make sure to follow us on twitter for all the latest updates.