How to become a sports blogger and how was this professional figure born?
The origin of this profession can be traced back to the human need to narrate and/or write what is deemed worthy of being remembered. Sporting events such as the Olympic Games have been recounted since ancient times in the works of great literary classics such as Homer and Pindar. Already in the past, narrating a story had two purposes: to transmit objective value (knowledge of an event) or intangible value (values).
Even today, in the digital age, we are driven to write and talk about sporting achievements and events from a more or less personal point of view: this is how the figure of the sports blogger was born!
In line with this tendency to report sporting events is the diffusion of sporting practice, which has recorded rather interesting rates in recent years. According to ISTAT data, there are around 20 million who play sports. It is this milieu that has laid the foundations for the dissemination of blogs related to the world of sports.
In addition to generalist blogs and those linked to a single sport, fitness bloggers were born. As we will see later, this category of sports bloggers is skilled in the digital and social management of their image and brand.
At first, however, writing about sports is above all a passion for many boys and girls who want to have their say on a specific topic or practice with certain tools that are essential for writing on the web.
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Who is and what does a sports blogger do?
By sports blogger, we mean a person who loves to write online content of which he has a good command. In the early days the blog was mainly used as a laboratory of ideas and writing in which to deal with the topic of interest.
Before creating and publishing content, the sports blogger informs himself, reads, and researches to become an expert in the specific sector he wants to write about. After the study phase, he starts producing material for the blog. Furthermore, the sports blogger must be skilled both in writing the content and in promoting them through social channels and PR activities.
There are two main differences from the classic sports journalist.
- The first concerns the media used to communicate because the blogger lives on the web and thanks to the web, while the sports journalist can also write on the classic paper newspapers.
- The second distinction concerns the absence of sports bloggers in a professional body such as the Order of Journalists. Furthermore, newspapers, unlike blogs, must be regularly registered with a court.
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How to Become a sports blogger in 4 Steps
After analyzing who and what sports bloggers do, it’s time to find out what are the first requirements to have to become a sports blogger. There are less technical skills, the so-called soft skills, others more technical, the hard skills.
Soft skills
Among the soft skills, there is certainly passion, the prime mover that can push us into the initial investment of opening a blog, perhaps on WordPress or another CMS (Content Management System).
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Passion must be seasoned with the right critical thinking to avoid giving excessively partial points of view on a given topic. Another fundamental skill is time management, ie time management because constancy in writing is necessary for the profitable management of one’s sports blog.
Another quality is the curiosity that pushes one to explore concepts and topics from a simple starting point. A sports blogger must differentiate himself from the plethora of sites offering the same content, sometimes recycled, giving life to valuable content.
Hard skills
The concept of value is the common thread that connects to hard skills, i.e. the necessary copywriting and SEO skills.
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Knowing the basics of writing on the web is a prerequisite to starting writing online. After this premise, it’s time to find out how to effectively become a sports blogger by following 4 simple steps.
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1. Analyze the market
The success of a sports blogger is measured by his ability to be unique compared to the mass of sites offering the same content. In this phase, therefore, market research is necessary, which serves to note the positive and negative aspects present in the sector in which we want to operate.
Perhaps, a tool like the SWOT analysis can be useful, which allows us to focus on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
2. Communicate the Unique Selling Proposition
After analyzing your target market, to be successful you need to be as unique as possible from your competitors. Communicating your Unique Selling Proposition consists in making explicit the differentiating element of your site and at the same time allows an initial targeting of the audience that may be interested in your content.
The USP communicates your uniqueness and the tone of voice to adopt when speaking to your niche. Based on the message you have selected, you will choose a different type of content.
3. Intercept the right target
In the embryonic stage of the sports blog, you have identified a target that you believe may be more or less interested in your content. However, a sports blogger must be good at reading his site’s data on Google Analytics to understand how to increase traffic or conversions on his blog.
Digital gives the opportunity to objectively track and allows for a reshaping of the editorial calendar and digital strategy. Furthermore, with the advent of social networks, we can also monitor views and interactions with our content. Listening to feedback and doing customer care is the cheapest way to understand the needs of your audience.
4. Create the content
“The content is king” and even more so in the case of blogs. Creating quality content respecting the guidelines of copywriting, and SEO, but above all placing the target at the center of the message is the only viable recipe for success.
Quality, but also quantity because search engines love to scour the web in search of ever new content. It is no coincidence that in the first results of the SERP (the search results page), there are blogs that consistently produce valuable content.
The basis of the content strategy is the creation of an editorial plan, also called PED, which reports in a detailed and coherent manner the various contents that will be published on the sports blog in line with the USP.
What type of content to create?
We can distinguish at least 5 different types of content for a blog that deals with sports topics:
- interview: it is the content preferred by the recent updates of the search engine algorithms that love unedited and always new content;
- case study: a good self-respecting blogger means to have his say and analyze a certain story from a new and personal point of view;
- list of resources: it is a mine of progressively updated information that can be useful to save on your devices and consult periodically;
- practical guide: in this case, the tutorials depend on the Unique Selling Proposition. For example, personal trainer guides lend themselves well to this format than others. Furthermore, the guides can act as macro-contents that can be broken down into many micro-contents to optimize and reuse what has been created online;
- evergreen: they are contents that are always valid and are not linked to a specific external event. This typology does not always lend itself well to sports content that is often subject to sudden changes.
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How does a sports blogger make money?
There are several monetization strategies for sports blog owners. All available solutions must be closely related to the content strategy well defined in the PED.
After this premise, let’s see 3 monetization strategies that sports bloggers use:
Advertisements
The first type of earnings is linked to the presence of advertising banners on your site. The earnings are directly proportional to the topic of our blog and to the degree of loyalty that the sports blogger can generate in the reference target.
To monetize it is necessary to dedicate a daily time slot to update the contents of the blog.
Sell your product
This is the case of fitness bloggers who use blogs as a medium for the promotion and sale of video courses or e-books on the latest industry news or training techniques.
As previously stated, it is advisable to plan a content strategy that integrates communication on social networks and in some cases also offline communication.
Affiliate marketing
In this case, the type of remuneration for sports bloggers can follow two paths.
The first and easiest to follow is that of an Amazon affiliation, perhaps for the sale of products or services related to the topics covered in the blog.
The second road seems to be more paved following the 2018 Dignity Decree, which has placed strong limitations on those who intend to enter into affiliation contracts with betting companies or intend to promote gambling-related activities on their blog: “(…) a starting from the date of entry into force of this decree, any form of advertising, even indirect, relating to games or bets with cash prizes, however, carried out and on any medium, including sporting, cultural or artistic events, television broadcasts or broadcasting, the daily and periodical press, publications in general, billboards and the internet. (Title III Measures to combat gambling addiction, Article 8, Prohibition of advertising of games and bets).
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Who are the best sports bloggers?
The panorama of sports bloggers is quite varied in terms of composition and angles from which the same competitive event is seen.
Football blogs
Football is analyzed and declined in many facets. Remaining with the best-known cases related to the universe of marketing, there are Arisax Sardella and Buzzsports. The objective of these two blogs is to analyze sports phenomenology through the magnifying glass of marketing, social media, and communication.
Max Sardella worked for several years as a copywriter in communication agencies, while today he manages the social accounts of football players. BuzzSports. by Alessandro Iorio and Giancarlo Diamanti explores strategies and case studies on digital marketing and sports social marketing.
In the financial sphere, there is the blog of Marco Bellinazzo, the famous signature of the Sole 24 ore. In his books and his blog, he deals with the economic-financial issues related to the world of football.
The information hub Earn with football is directly connected to the economic sphere and earnings, illustrating the various opportunities for winning by exploiting one’s passion for the game most loved. Here you can find news related to betting, sweepstakes, work, and fantasy football. This last topic is the core of SOS Fanta, which provides advice and ideas on fantasy football.
Unique in the panorama of football blogs is Luca Marelli, former referee of the FIGC, who analyzes the weekends of Serie A with acute insights into the most thorny cases.
Fitness bloggers
The category of fitness influencers is clearly on the rise. The latter raised at combining the management of their blogs with a commendable social strategy, especially on YouTube and Instagram.
Among these, the best-known are:
- Silvia Fascians,
- Team Commandos,
- Melissa Zino,
- Sergio Chisari,
- Oliver Montana.
In these blogs, there are many video lessons, tips, and real guides on how to improve your physical shape and athleticism.
General blogs
In this sub-category, there is the Gazzetta blog, Nati Sportive.it, and the sportsman’s blog which reviews the main sporting events ranging from football to rugby. The editorial projects headed by these sports bloggers are often similar to those of a real newspaper, with the only exception of the lack of registration with a Court.
The success of this type of sports blogger is closely related to constant publication and constant updating as they often risk lacking that Unique Selling Proposition we mentioned earlier.
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