So, at the start of this New Year (decade indeed) you've resolved to blog more to raise your profile as a sport or exercise professional. Right? Sure you have. Why wouldn't you?
Well, one reason might be that you think you've nothing to say. Well, you have. Trust me. Here are some thoughts that might stimulate blog ideas for sport and exercise professionals in 2010 and get people flocking to your blog, site or profile.
Major Sports Events
Major sports events generate incredible traffic. In 2008, when the Beijing Olympic Games were on we saw an incredible spike in traffic, often doubling our visitor stats and more.
We've no summer Olympics this year but of course the Winter Games are due to start soon, in Vancouver. That doesn't mean that London 2012 won't attract attention this year. Indeed, the closer the Games get the more interest will ramp up.
We've also got the African Nations Cup in football starting now - and if you didn't know that before the terrible attack on the Togolese team, you probably do now. But the big event in world sport will undoubtedly occur this summer, with the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
Sports Stars
Predicting who's going to attract the most attention in 2010 may feel like crystal ball gazing, but it needn't necesarily be so. You and I may not have predicted Michael Schumacher's return to Formula 1, for example, but after his aborted 'interim' contract with Ferrari perhaps it shouldn't have been such a surprise and may not have been to those in the sport.
Indeed, if you are working in and around a particular sport you are likely to party to a lot more intelligence than you perhaps realise. With a little thought, you're likely to be able to come up with some names that have the potential to make an impact this year. Of course, they may already be doing so, but just haven't come into the public spotlight yet.
In 2008 I posted a short blog in which I wondered what it must be like to be Michael Jordan's son (Marcus). To be honest, it was a bit of a throwaway blog, and didn't get that many hits at the time. But then, all of a sudden, in March 2009 it suddenly got loads of posts. Why? Partly it was down to the double whammy of Marcus Jordan making an impact in a major event (college basketball's annual 'March Madness'). If you live outside the US and don't know it - this is a huge deal. But the other variable was that I had included an image (with Marcus Jordan in the alt text and title - easy to do with our editor) and most of the hits came from Google's image search.
Big Issues or Trends in Sport & Exercise
Again, you don't have to be a clairvoyant to predict which trends in your sport or area of interest are going to be popular in 2010. The 'super suits' issue in swimming was around for some time before reaching a peak at the World Championships in Rome last year.
Things to consider might be:
What new technology or scientific breakthrough will have an impact in a particular sport?
What foods or training methods will the public grab hold of and turn into the fad of the year?
What more controversial issues in your sport are starting to build?
How to Take Advantage
The first point to make is that if you don't predict these things, you can post reactive blogs to good effect. Posting in advance will allow you to get picked up in search more effectively. Posting at the time will allow you to take advantage of the trend through more immediate media such as Twitter and Facebook. Of course, there's nothing to stop you from doing both - posting in advance and reminding people of their presence.
However, once you decide to post consider the following:
1) Keywords are, well, key! I see cleverly titled posts on here all the time that don't get a lot of hits because they just don't show up for the terms that are being searched. You have to signpost to people what you are posting about - putting the key words into the title, text and tags of your post.
2) Include images or video. Embedding mutlmedia into your posts will help it to show up in more searches, for example video or image searches on google. There's more about this in the 'How to use iStadia' club on this site.
3) Remember that search engines and hits aren't the be-all-and-end-all! Write for, and choose keywords that will interest, your target audience. 100 views from people that are actually interested in the topic you are writing on will add more value to you as a professional than 1000 views from people that are not. This means relating popular themes to content of value - for example the psychology of a particular star or the marketing of a particular event - and including content / key words that relate to your particular niche.
4) Promote your content. You can use the 'Share' button on iStadia to email, or repost your content to social media or bookmarking sites. Only making your content accessible through one site is like only selling through one outlet. You are limiting people's opportunity to discover how great your service or product is.
Recently Lewis Howes (of www.SportsNetworker.com) and Jason F Peck (www.jasonfpeck.com), two of the leading lights in sport and social media met at Blogworld and, in true style, made a video! In it, Jason shares his story about getting into sports social media, about how this had led to him branching out on his own, and his thoughts on where the 'industry' is going.
In short, Jason sees more athletes and teams using social media, as it provides people with a direct channel to the people they want to engage with, and consequently more power. His own story is remarkable. For such a young guy to have build his own personal brand and a successful business primarily through social media. As he says, he hasn't had to go out and sell his consultancy services. People have come to him.
Don't take it from us. Take it from two guys that are out there, doing really well for themselves, using social media as their platform.
This week some colleagues of mine were at an internal conference, where former Olympic track & field medallists Roger Black and Steve Backley presented. Apparently they were very engaging. Whether they can have a lasting impact is something we'lll have to see, but that's not what I'm posting about.
Curious to learn more about their new Venture (Backley Black) I googled them. Given that their strapline is "Transferring Olympic Performance to the Workplace" I was amused and interested to see that the top 3 items in Google were currently:
1. Backley Black - Transferring Olympic Performance to the Workplace
2. Athletics: Backley doubt, Black is out - Sport - The Independent
3. Athletics: Watts makes Black struggle: Backley and Jackson ...
So while at #1, Backley and Black are transferring their Olympic performance, #2 and #3 cast some doubt over their brand!
This is a great example of how important it is to ensure that You are in control of what people will find when they look for you (as recruiters are increasingly doing) or your business in Google (or other search engines). Of course, many of Backly Black's potential clients will remember their exploits and these memories will be more important than what shows up on Google. But not everyone will!
Posting articles, blogs, news and keeping your iStadia profile up-to-date will, of course, all help to ensure that people see what you want them to see.
It's August. The office is quiet. Nothing happens. Everyone you need to make a decision seems to be on holiday. If you're a consultant working in the sports industry, you might as well pack it all in for the month and go on holiday, maybe take in the athletics, the Ashes, some tennis or another of the many sports events that are happening worldwide.
Is that really true? It's certainly true that your customers may be on holiday or at a major sporting event. It may also be true that client work is limited and that you can't get any sales meetings booked in until well into September.
But August may represent the best time to get your house in order and put in some of the groundwork that will see your consulting business thrive in the next year. While getting your house in order might include getting your books up to date, or tidying the office, I'm thinking more of marketing.
Whatever the state of your order book, you can't really ever put too much effort into marketing, and the web continues to provide great opportunities to develop and execute a marketing campaign on a tight budget.
Social media, such as blogs and articles, are a form of marketing that help you to reach new audiences, build credibility and trust, and start building a pipeling of "qualified leads". That is, by the time you get to trying to sell to them, they are already engaged and interested in what you have to offer. The beauty of using the web as a marketing platform is that high-quality content that you put down now can be tweaked and improved, and serve you well for years to come.
So: What are you doing this August that will help your sports consulting business over the next 12 months or longer?
If you look at the right hand side of iStadia's blogs page, you see our most read blogs. It's worth observing these, because they give some clear clues for anyone that wants their blog posts to be noticed. Of course, quantity isn't the only game in town, and quality of views (in relation to target market) are also important. (Still, more views is likely to create more links, thus feeding more relevant views anyway!).
Here's the list:
Does Rugby matter in the world of sport?
My Olympic Star for 2008: Michael Phelps
What must it be like to be Michael Jordan's son....
Is Olympic Sponsorship Worth the Money?
Tiger Woods, Sport Psychology and Mental Toughness
Who will host the 2016 Olympic Games?
Playing Styles and Leadership Styles
Cheerleader Uniforms: I’m Shocked, Shocked
If Manchester United is the most valuable football (soccer) club in the world, which is the most valuable sports club?
Stade Francais 'Warhol' Kit: What is the psychology of team colours and outfits?
Better Golf Ball Design Helps You Play Better Golf
Where was the application of sport psychology during the Ashes cricket debacle
What do you notice? Ok, the first thing is that only the titles are shown. That's one clue!
Yes, some of the blog posts are pretty old now, and that's one of the things to remember. Older content on the web doesn't disappear, and a well-written blog post that links to you can be an assett for a long time.
However, the first and possibly most important clue is in the title. All have keywords or combinations of keywords that people search for. "Tiger Woods Sport Psychology" for example. "Cheerleader Uniforms" (a great example of hooking people in with a potentially more provocative title!), "Olympic Sponsorship" or "Golf Ball Design" for example. These are all searched for and we see the evidence on a daily basis (through our stats).
Let's look at one of these - Tiger Woods and Sport Psychology. Why does this work? Well, there are loads of hits out there to be gained for the term "Tiger Woods" (in particular) or the term "Sport Psychology" but you are never that likely to get to the top of search engine rankings for either term alone using a blog post (as good as they are for getting noticed). However, the intersection of these terms provides an opportunity to get to the top of the rankings for a less competitive but still well-searched term. Let's look at the figures (from Google's keyword tool):
Search term Competition Global Monthly Search Volume
Sport Psychology Very High 49, 500
Tiger Woods Very High 2, 240, 000
Tiger Woods Psychology Low 140
Tiger Woods Sport Psychology Very low Not enough data
(This ignores the additional term "mental toughnes" that's in the title, but it doesn't change much).
Interesting. Search volumes are low, but importantly so too is competition. At the time of writing, the blog was approaching 3800 views. So we know that "low" volumes can add up, if you're top of the rankings. On the other hand, unless you are a massive player and your site is highly relevant to Tiger Woods (for example his own site) you are not even going to get a minute share of the 2 million monthly searches that Tiger gets.
Important lesson: Distribution of search hits is unequal and skewed almost totally to page 1 rankings (whatever the search engines, but obviously Google is the biggest at present). So getting to the top of page 1 for a relatively obscure term which is relevant to your target market is an effective strategy.
How do you exploit this phenomenon (which is the 'long tail' that Chris Anderson wrote about)?
Well, here's one view of the Top Ten Positive Search Engine Factors (from SEOmoz.org):
1. Keyword Use in Title Tag
2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
3. Global Link Popularity of Site
4. Age of Site
5. Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure
6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links
7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
8. Keyword Use in Body Text
9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
10. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site
Note number 1 - keyword use in title tag. That's one you can control. What else can you control?
Well, you can certainly control #8 - Keyword use in body text (but don't "stuff" it with keywords - it should be readable! and don't forget to add 'tags') and you can influence #3 by sharing your posts or RSS feed on boomarking sites or feed aggregators. Much of the rest is our job and iStadia is proving to be an effective platform (while we're always strivign to improve it).
Other important considerations are:
- One blog post isn't going to change your business, but a strategy that incorporates regular blogging can
- You should not be penalised for posting on your own site and on iStadia. if you are concerned about this, a few changes to the wording of title and text will help (but the WHOLE page including menus is considered 'content' when a page is assessed as duplicate or not). This advice can be subject to change (and debate).
- Photos with ALT and TITLE tages that contain your keywords are very effective at driving traffic through image searches. Indeed, the Michael Jordan and Rugby posts in our list derived most of their hits from image searches.
- Likewise, content that includes both text and video can attract more traffic
- Oh, and questions (as titles) can help, especially if they are questions that you might expect a potential customer or client to ask.
As part of our overall promotion, we obviously try to practice what we preach to sport & exercise professionals by maintaining a profile on other websites.
Ultimately, if you are a member of iStadia (and if not why not?),
it is of benefit to you if you can take a few moments to join and help promote these groups.
If you are on Facebook, please become a 'fan' and share the page with your friends, either in a message or by posting it to your profile.
Now, we know that lots of you will be members on Facebook, so no excuses...
iStadia also has a group on LinkedIn. We automatically post all blogs, articles, news and events to the LinkedIn group, and also repost specific content in other sports and fitness groups.
If you are on LinkedIn, please join our group.
Socialmedian is a relatively new site that has been gaining in popularity and is already very popular among those 'in the know' when it comes to social media.
Socialmedian is about pulling news together into networks. Guess what? Yes, we have a group there too!
Twitter is the social tool of the moment, and all sorts of sites are capitalizing on its popularity. Twitter groups is one of these. All you need to join is a twitter ID - no additional signin required.
Diigo is more of a social bookmarking site, but also has groups, so why not have one there! I'm finding that Diigo is getting better and better results, having recently acquired furl.
Ballhype is more aimed at sport fans, but is also very popular. It's slant is towards sports that are popular in the US, but does cover sports such as Tennis, Golf, Soccer and there is the old 'other sports' category too.
If you are aming to reach consumers - in particular sports fans - you should try ballhype. Even if you are not, it is worth bookmarking your blog posts here for the purposes of SEO.
Help us to help you - by joining us on these other sites. If you would like to suggest any other sites, please do!
Working in a transatlantic company by day, I'm always struck by just how different the American and British cultures are - and nowhere is that much more evident than in sport.
Reflecting on that, I thought I'd check how the difference in our sporting cultures played out on the internet by looking at Google Trends. Just how real is the transatlantic divide in sport? Are we really two sporting countries divided by a common language?
Top Sports Searches in the last 12 months
The differences really are remarkable. Looking first at the UK, over that last 12 months, the only entries in the top searches that really match up are golf and the generic "sports". Of course both share the top entry of "football" but of course the term has a completely different meaning in the two countries.
Both top search lists reflect the popularity of specific sports in each country. "Football" in the UK (soccer) is followed by golf, rugby and cricket. Sadly, WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment, which markets itself as "sports entertainment) makes the British top ten. In the US, the big sports by searches are football (American football), golf, basketball and baseball, with soccer (perhaps surprisingly) making it too.
While the big news agencies are also represented, another noticeable difference is that while in the UK two football clubs make the top ten (Liverpool and Arsenal - I suspect that Manchester United do not make it because there are more ways of searching for them e.g. "Man United", "Man Utd") while it is the leagues themselves that are the bigger brands in the US - NFL & NBA.
Rising Searches in the last 12 months
The top spots in the rising search reflect the sports that are most searched for, but while in the US it is an event (Superbowl 09), in the UK it is a computer game (Fifa 09). Unsurprisingly, the Olympics made a big splash in both countries. More surprisingly so did Euro 2008. Otherwise, both lists to some extent represent the teams and athletes that were in the spotlight. In the US, we see Michael Phelps, then the (Boston) Celtics (NBA "World" Champions), (Philadelphia) Phillies (World Series Champs) and the (LA) Lakers (NBA Finalists). In the UK, the obsession with football comes out again, with Hull City (newly promoted to the Premier League) and Ronaldo (World Player of the Year).
Rising Searches in the last 30 days
If you want to see the transatlantic sporting divide in action, however, just look at the last 30 days, and the rising searches in particular. While the Americans have been going crazy for NCAA (college) Basketball's 'March Madness', the UK seems most concerned with the knockout states of the UEFA Champions league.
If anything, the UK shows slightly more diversity, with horse racing (and the Cheltenham festival) and the start of the Formula 1 racing season coming into focus.
I hope you found that interesting. It is just a surface skim of our sporting cultures, but the differences are stark. It would appear that the transatlantic sporting divide is alive and well!
Top searches in Sports, United Kingdom, Last 12 months
1. football
2. club
3. golf
4. bbc
5. sports
6. rugby
7. cricket
8. wwe
9. liverpool
10. arsenal
Rising searches in Sports, United Kingdom, Last 12 months
1. fifa 09 Breakout
2. beijing 2008 +4500%
3. surf the channel +1750%
4. olympic games +650%
5. euro 2008 +250%
6. olympics +200%
7. hull city +140%
8. soccer manager +130%
9. wiki +90%
10. ronaldo +40%
Top searches in Sports, United States, Last 12 months
1. football
2. golf
3. basketball
4. sports
5. nfl
6. baseball
7. soccer
8. olympics
9. nba
10. espn
Rising searches in Sports, United States, Last 12 months
Rising searches in Sports, United Kingdom, Last 30 days
1. champions league draw Breakout
2. champions league +450%
3. cheltenham +350%
4. uefa +250%
5. carling cup +130%
6. jumpers for goalposts +100%
7. inter +100%
8. real madrid +90%
9. f1 +90%
10. racing results +70%
Rising searches in Sports, United States, Last 30 Days
We're starting to see some really positive signs that sport and exercise professionals are warming to using iStadia to develop their networks, caeers and business. Membership is accelerating, we see more people posting (though we'd like some of the early adopters to come back!) but one thing isn't happening: NEWS.
Does this mean that our members have no news? Is there nothing interesting happening in their professional lives? Are there no new contracts being won? No changes to their professional discipline? No interesting developments in their market? No new courses being offered, products launched or services delivered?
Of course not.
So, do they know that 'news' means their news? Perhaps sport and exercise professionals don't like to blow their own trumpets. I bet there's some truth in that (as you are such an ethical bunch), but sharing news doesn't mean overstating the truth or making other unethical claims.
But I'm sure that there is some of the former. I know that we have members who share their news with a mailing list. I'm on some of them. So, that must be part of the problem.
Of course there's at least one other explanation: They don't think it will make a difference. Well, you'll never know unless you go (as one advert used to say). But what we can say is that:
Some other members of iStadia - other sport & exercise professionals will see it AND
Other people that are searching for content like yours - potential customers - will see it.
So let this be a rallying call. Tell us what you're up to. Share your news. You are interesting. We do want to know. The world WILL be a better place for it, and if you do it regularly, it probably will make a difference.
Commenting is an essential and central part of blogging and Web 2.0. It is, after all, what makes blogging different from 'normal' publishing.
Commenting can add a great deal of value both to the original post, and to your own profile/blog, and people (and Google) can follow the link from your comment. the more activity there is around a blog post, the more traffic it will ultimately generate, as it will be seen by Google as a 'live' topic and by people as something of interest, a developing conversation.
Important, too, in a community like iStadia is that commenting helps to develop a relationship between blogger and commenter (and the roles can be reversed).
Reciprocity is also an important concept. If you you want to receive comments, give them first. To reward comments on your post, thank people, provide clarification and so on. If you do not want to receive comments (maybe more applicable to articles), you can switch them off for a post.
For any sports business looking to use the internet as a marketing tool, iStadia works.
Here is a relatively trivial example, yet one that demonstrates what can be achieved by posting on iStadia - whether that be through blogs, articles, news, jobs or events.
Some time ago, I reposted a video of former England football manager, Steve McLaren, and his rather strange and newly acquired Dutch accent. I noticed that it had received a lot of hits. Of course, the subject has been a popular one in the United Kingdom, so I didn't hink too much of it. Tonight, however, I Googled "Steve McLaren Dutch" out of curiosity.
Here are the results:
Posting iStadia put us ahead of the Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mirror and The Daily Mail newspaper sites, which are all major National papers. All have the keywords in the title. It even puts us ahead of Wikipedia (though their entry doesn't have 'Dutch' in the title) and the original Youtube post itself - which was further down the page than my image.
Of course, it isn't just in this case that we can punch above our weight. During the summer we were on Page 1 for 'Olympic News' above many of the leading news agencies, as as a result our visits multiplied by around 300%.
How do you make your content work for you?
1) Choose the keywords that you want people to find your content for
2) Embed your keywords in the TITLE, TEXT and TAGS of the post
3) Include a signature with a link to your own website or iStadia profile, using your keywords as 'anchor text' (of which this is an example). This is easy to do with our editor (highlight the text and choose the chain icon).
Join iStadia's Global Sport & Exercise Network today!
If you are not a member yet, registering is quick and easy! Click here for Quick Registration and keep up to date with what is happening in the community, network with and learn from iStadia's growing community of experts.
However if you are a sport & exercise professional or business and would like to promote yourself by building a detailed, search-engine friendly profile to attract potential clients, customers or employers, we recommend Full Registration.
Again, you don't have to be a clairvoyant to predict which trends in your sport or area of interest are going to be popular in 2010. The 'super suits' issue in swimming was around for some time before reaching a peak at the World Championships in Rome last year.
The first point to make is that if you don't predict these things, you can post reactive blogs to good effect. Posting in advance will allow you to get picked up in search more effectively. Posting at the time will allow you to take advantage of the trend through more immediate media such as Twitter and Facebook. Of course, there's nothing to stop you from doing both - posting in advance and reminding people of their presence.
Both top search lists reflect the popularity of specific sports in each country. "Football" in the UK (soccer) is followed by golf, rugby and cricket. Sadly, WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment, which markets itself as "sports entertainment) makes the British top ten. In the US, the big sports by searches are football (American football), golf, basketball and baseball, with soccer (perhaps surprisingly) making it too.
