Categorized | sports

The Challenge of Launching a Sports Blog in the Offseason

Posted on 28 July 2007 by Daniel Dessinger

As Matt Mosley of ESPN well knows, it is difficult to launch a sports blog in the offseason. Timing is crucial, and bad timing can make building a blog brand even harder. Although Mosley's Hashmarks is a football blog, the same principles apply that affect my MavsUpdate basketball blog. Mosley was intending to launch near the NFL Draft day, and something corporate got in the way. By the time his blog launched, it was all he could do to recover from the lost momentum of announcing the launch months in advance. Granted, Randy Galloway is doing everything in his power to help promote Hashmarks. It seems like every time Galloway has his Tuesdays with Mosley, he mentions Hashmarks every 5 minutes. 

I don't have the benefit of a radio personality to push MavsUpdate, and the fact that I cover the Dallas Mavericks rather than all NBA news puts me at somewhat of a disadvantage to Mosley (beside the fact that I don't work for ESPN). So when I launched MavsUpdate.com this July, I had just missed out on the NBA Draft. I still got to talk free agency and trade rumors, but the offseason is a heck of a time to try to build sports blog momentum.

Some might argue that this slow start might work out to be a strength come game time. For example, if you've covered the Mavericks in the offseason, you already have some pages out there on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask for sports fans to find and visit. You might build a small fan base early on. But beyond that, you also come into the season having established yourself as a voice for the sport and/or team. You are no longer a newbie.

I would argue that I might find greater success long-term with MavsUpdate than Mosley has with Hashmarks, though I wish him all the best. Though he blogs several times a day about multiple teams and league issues, I have a niche audience - only Mavs fans need stop by. Perhaps my competitor websites are fewer and further between than his. If so, MavsUpdate can gain a greater percentage of the market share.

I am looking for additional bloggers for MavsUpdate, in case you are interested. I'm looking for five people to contribute at least one blog post per week. Five per week is ideal, but one per week is acceptable. The idea is to get different viewpoints on the news, the players, expectations, gossip, etc throughout the year. I have no illusions that everyone wants to hear my voice. This is your chance to be a Mavs commentator. Aaron Phillips has already contributed a column or two here on CultureFeast, and I expect to see him contribute more to MavsUpdate as the season approaches. A few other bloggers may stop by to contribute from time to time.

But you can be sure that if ever there was a time for blog networking, the offseason is it.  

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3 Comments For This Post

  1. Jake Says:
    July 29th, 2007 at 12:30 pm

    I launched my Mavericks blog after the season ended, and that was somewhat my intention. I felt that there was more of an opportunity to get everything fine-tuned, since I wouldn’t be crazy busy tracking down a ton of news. I think it has worked out well.

    I think you underestimate the competition, however. Beyond my mavelo.us site, you have Mavs Moneyball, Hoopshead, along with the Showboating blog over at MVN. This doesn’t even include the official blogs at the Dallas Morning News and Ft. Worth Star-Telegram that are exclusively focused on the Mavs.

    So it’s going to be a tough path.

  2. Daniel Dessinger Says:
    July 29th, 2007 at 6:33 pm

    Thanks for weighing in, Jake. I really enjoy reading mavelo.us. I love what you’ve done with it.

    I’m not really concerned about the “tough path” as you put it. While I’ve put some effort into making CultureFeast rank well for various search terms and have boosted the traffic to 12k visitors per month, I picture MavsUpdate as more a labor of love.

    My initial exposure to blogs several years ago was my total submersion in the search engine optimization culture. Hundreds of people blog about search marketing and comment on each other’s blogs. It’s a community more than a competition.

    Of course, I do hope for and expect some readers, but even the 6-8 blogs you mention leave plenty of room for growth in the space. Had I tried to focus on the entire league, I’d be competing with several hundred blogs at least for readers.

    It’s been my experience with the six blogs I own and two others I’ve written for that readers will come, as long as you’re optimized for search. Developing a dedicated and regular readership may take more time, but MavsUpdate has already seen a decent rise in traffic for being less than a month old.

    I’ve appreciated every comment you’ve made thus far, Jake. It’s always good to build community in a given space. And for everyone reading this, go check out his Mavericks blog at http://mavelo.us!

  3. Jake Says:
    August 5th, 2007 at 7:25 pm

    Thanks, D!

    I’m completely lost on SEO. My random traffic bumps have been from the old-fashioned method of just leaving lots of comments in lots of places. The best bump I ever got was a comment I put on the Denver Post NBA blog. It directly generated 200 referring visits in one day.

    I’m at the point where I don’t check my traffic but once every few days. I’m just enjoying the process and the writing, and i figure that over time, if it’s good enough, it will grow.

    You remind, me, though. I need to add a blogroll.

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