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Inside, you’ll learn:

• 11 different monetization tactics.
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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.

Football Nomad, an independent web-documentary combining film and social media to share the color and excitement of the 2010 World Cup, is set for launch on June 4.

Brisbane-based brothers Andrew, 24, and Patrick Weber, 18, will travel the world armed with a laptop, Handycam and with the support of enthusiastic locals, aim to provide an intimate and engaging experience.

Andrew says:

“Football Nomad will be an amazing project – a true fans’ experience of the tournament that captivates the planet.”

“Patrick and I want to show what the World Cup is like for people who live and breathe the game. What’s more, we want to use online social media to share our experience as it unfolds.”

The journey begins in London on June 11 and ends a month later with the World Cup final. Along the way the Weber brothers will film, photograph and blog their way around Europe and South Africa to share World Cup culture.

The Webers will visit six of the biggest footballing nations in Europe – England, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands before heading to South Africa to watch three live games in Johannesburg and Durban.

Andrew added:

“We are both young and adventurous people by nature, so we’re really looking forward to meeting as many locals as possible.”

“We really know our stuff when it comes to football culture and history, so people can expect intelligent and insightful commentary. The fact that we’re brothers should make it good fun, too.”

“We believe the most captivating thing about the World Cup is the bubbling mix of cultures on display. We want to capture footage of the bars and pubs on days when the national teams of the countries we are in are playing; to get interviews with locals about what the passion of the World Cup means to them and their country and to share the vibe in and around the stadiums in South Africa where the tournament is being held.”

The 2010 World Cup will be the most connected in the tournament’s history and the brothers intend to take full advantage of recent advances in online technology.

“It will give us the opportunity to share the documentary footage online as we travel.”

“We will update the blog daily with edited videos, photos and written posts of the best bits. Followers will be able to interact with us as we travel and we hope to include as many people as possible during the tournament.”

Andrew’s previous experience as a football blogger has created a community eager to support the project. He is the editor and head writer of Arsenal FC Blog, as well as a member of the world’s prominent football website network, Football Media.

Andrew says the Football Nomad website reveals a thriving community of followers eagerly awaiting the launch.

“Arsenal FC Blog has over 1,800 subscribers and gets around 90,000 unique readers each month, many of them extremely loyal and active participants. Most of the locals we will stay with during the trip are people I have met through the blog, which shows you just how enthusiastic people are about the project.”

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.

On the pitch, the Spanish champions have won their second consecutive league title, and have an incredible six pieces of silverware from the last two seasons alone. To say that they are the best side in Europe today would be an understatement.

And off the pitch, they are committed to, and quite successful in, making reality of Barça’s strapline, ‘més que un club’ (more than a club).

MeetTheBoss.TV has secured an interview with Lander Unzueta, Chief Marketing Officer, F.C. Barcelona, where the man charged with making reality of Barcelona’s ideology off the field speaks at length about how ‘the Barça way’ is changing the world for the better.

Lander believes the sports industry has evolved “too much” over the last ten years, and that it is indigestion, not starvation, that poses the biggest threat. Too many opportunities, too many sponsors, and players’ wages going through the roof. For F.C. Barcelona, it’s has been a case of adapting to the changes while maintaining their identity with a strong and clear direction.

“Stadium development has been key. A stadium is no longer a place where teams play, or athletes run, they are venues to hold big concerts and social, cultural activities,” says Lander. “This has been a big revenue growth for us. F.C. Barcelona is more than just a football club. It’s a theme park, we have an arena, several pitches and a stadium; we even have an ice hockey rink.”

“We are at the top, without using our jersey sponsor and without putting a sponsor’s name in writing on our stadium,” says Lander. Which means there’s plenty more money to come…

To see this interview in full, visit www.meettheboss.tv. Registration is fast and free.