Guide for a Good Football Blog

Guide for a Good Football Blog

Through the course of this semester I have learned many new writing techniques through blogging. For those of you that have never blogged or wonder what kind of writing style is acceptable in a blogosphere, this piece is for you. Coming into the semester, I had never written on a blog, or to be honest knew much of what they were. For me, I had to write a blog discussing any football related topics. The trick writing a good football post is to develop a purpose. One thing you need to do is to enjoy football and/or watch the games. If you enjoy the game, then the purpose for posting will come easy. Also, watching the games or reading about the latest football news will create topics to discuss. I started to struggle towards the end of my posting because I thought I had discussed all that could be talked about, but really there isn’t really an end when football is in season. After you figure out what you want to post about, develop a process. Through trial and error, I found that summarizing a game or event and then giving your own personal opinion was the best route. When I first started blogging, I would just do a play by play of the game, but readers do not want that. The reader can just as easily turn on Sports Center and see that. The reader wants the writers own personal opinion towards that certain topic and overall it creates a better blog with more people voicing their own opinion. When posting the blog, if you want to include information that you may have read or heard, you just credit that person or article. You don’t need to make a big deal about it. An example of this is from one of my posts on “Wednesday WideOuts” talking about the murder of Sean Taylor: “As you read on Irish's post, football star Sean Taylor was murdered a few days by an intruder breaking into his house and shooting him.” Next thing you need to worry about while posting is catching the reader’s attention. I discussed this earlier with the style of post that I prefer. The reader does not want something that they can catch anywhere else, they want something new. When you are writing, think of good words or phrases that will make the reader want to read more. It is also just as important to connect with your audience. Connecting doesn’t necessarily mean agree, but just understand what they are saying. For instance, one blogger may say something about how much they love the New England Patriots and then go on to give examples of why they like them. Me being a fan of the Colts, I wouldn’t agree with that, but I could connect with the blogger because he may say he likes them because of Moss or Brady. Lastly, you need to develop a voice. I still struggle with this because I may say how dumb one thing is but later in the post I could understand why it was done. Basically, just be consistent. Another thing that is very important in a football blog is to not be a bandwagon fan. If you root for a team at the beginning of the season, then root for them all the way through. Don’t root for a team until they start losing and then change to another team. I mean yes, you can credit a team when they are playing better than normal, but don’t completely change your opinion on your team you first started out with. An example of this is the Purdue Boilermakers. I talked about how they were doing good towards the start of the season, and how they might end up to be something good this year. Once they started losing, I started to post about where the errors were being made, and what needed to be done to fix the errors. The main error they have is Coach Tiller. I then started posting about other teams, but I didn’t completely lose track of where or what Purdue was doing. Another trick that I found helpful was to listen to your peers. Talk football with some of your buddies and see what they are thinking. Some of your buddies will create topics that will turn out to be your best writing because they have a completely different thought of things than you. You may not agree with your buddies and write about that. Write about what they said you don’t agree with and write why you do not agree with it. Another thing that I think helped my blog out were the readers. The readers would tell me things to change or to add. This made the post’s better, attracting more readers. The more readers you have looking at your blog the better! You never want just a few people coming and going, traffic is the key. Lastly, I think the key to a good blog is to post often. When readers check out your blog and see the same post they did two weeks before, they will not come back but when they see new things coming up all the time, they will comment or post with a reply. Overall it is interesting to see what they think and to post back. Almost like a long distance chat.