How do I attract people for a college football group blog?

August 20, 2006 4:26 PM

I'm in the process of starting a group blog that covers a couple of college football conferences. I'm not making any money off this and have no plans to in the future. Its a love of the game thing for me. It seems like it would be easy to find folks interested in college football to blog, but I'm having a tough time.

Its hard enough for an individual to keep a blog going for long periods of time, so I thought a group blog would have a good chance of lasting awhile.

I've posted to craigslist and I've gotten a couple of people on board, but I need individuals who will cover specific teams. Most of the respondents from craigslist are asking to get paid, but I can't at the moment. I've tried posting to the big college boards run by scout.com and rivals.com, but they always get deleted. Its easy to understand why.

Basically, how do find bloggers who want to write about college football?

posted by bored to sports, hobbies, & recreation (10 comments total)

Haven't tried this so I don't know if it would produce results, but what about starting a MySpace page for your blog? Then, adding other sports-related people/groups as friends. Seems like a good way to get some free traffic - I just don't know how much.
posted by jbickers at 4:36 PM on August 20, 2006

Try posting a diary on any of the Sportsblogs Nation sites looking for writers - go to the SB Nation homepage, find some of the baseball sites that are geographically close to the conferences you want to blog about, and post diaries on them looking for people to write for your site. There's lots of football fans that post to these sites as well.

I've found that Athletics Nation and Lookout Landing have the most participation on a daily basis, so you may want to start with those two.
posted by pdb at 4:40 PM on August 20, 2006

People like to join something that's already a success. I think the thing to do is for you to kick in and do your best (even if not very good) on your own, but make sure there's a prominent notice on the site that you're looking for cobloggers. If your blog is halfway decent but clearly could be improved, then once you build up a moderate regular readership, some of them will come forward and give it a try.

And don't be disappointed if some of them end up not being very good at it, or if they post a few times and then give up. As we all know, the majority of people who try blogging eventually lose interest and quit.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:48 PM on August 20, 2006

What about smaller boards devoted to specific teams? You can usually find pretty prolific (and decidedly opinionated) writers who might be interested.

If you're going to go in the MySpace direction, Facebook could be a good place to post a notice, too.

A couple of friends and I tried to do something similar a couple of years ago but never got it off the ground (because of a similar lack of interested bloggers) -- depending on what teams and conferences you're looking for, I know some people who would definitely be interested.
posted by ThatSomething at 5:58 PM on August 20, 2006

thatsomething,

I've tried posting to smaller boards, but most moderators (and board owners) feel threatened somehow. Like I'm stealing their users. I'm not sure why this is an issue if they are running a quality board.

Its not to say all boards are alike, I've gotten the blessing of a couple who encouraged me in my endeavor.
posted by bored at 6:31 PM on August 20, 2006

Well, it sort of depends on where you are. One idea that people have mentioned is Facebook - this is probably a good idea for getting at people who are either in college or have just recently graduated. I'm sure that, for example, someone who goes to Ohio State or whatever would absolutely love to have their voice heard on your blog. Maybe you should post an ad on the main Facebook pages for specific schools from which you are trying to attract writers.

Additionally, you might try contacting some of the sports departments of a few schools' campus newspapers. While a few school newspaper outfits have decidedly decent web presences, most are absolutely terrible - while they may have plenty of content (theoretically) to put up, many schools don't even bother with a website simply for perceived lack of interest or lack of a person technically inclined / interested enough to build a blog site. I'm willing to bet that there are more than a few brilliant, witty, and attention-starved minds out there that would love the extra exposure - they could even use the same articles in their school newspaper and get paid for those, no?

Hit up the school sites, find the newspaper section, make a few emails/calls and see if anyone makes the cut. Good luck!
posted by dihutenosa at 7:27 PM on August 20, 2006

I'd say the first thing you need to do is put your contact information in your profile. After all, this seems to me to be two questions at once. One about how to do something, and the other polling to see if anyone is interested. (even allowing that you did not intended it that way.)
posted by absalom at 7:54 PM on August 20, 2006

absalom,

you're right about the contact information. I've updated it to include my email address if anyone wants to get in touch with me.

Heck, you are right about polling too. If anyone wants to join a group blog about SEC and ACC sports, let me know.
posted by bored at 5:05 AM on August 21, 2006

Have you tried contacting the local alumni chapters of those schools?
posted by snickerdoodle at 10:23 PM on August 21, 2006

snickerdoodle, I haven't tried to contact alumni chapters. I wasn't sure they would want to be hassled about something like this. But I guess I won't know unless I try.
posted by bored at 5:24 AM on August 22, 2006