The unveiling of David Beckham’s new underwear poster last week in San Francisco attracted a large audience, and created the buzz Macy’s and Emporio Armani were looking for. I don’t know how much they paid Beckham or how much underwear they sold, but I’m sure the investment is paying off. The English soccer star revealed via his blog that he was shocked by the interest in his billboard. Read the full story
Putting all of the losing and lawlessness aside, the Cincinnati Bengals have figured out another way to be first in the league.. With a widget.
Bengals’ fans market them. Courtesy of The Enquirer
Bengals Widget. Courtesy of Cincinnati Bengals.com
Photo Courtesy of Cincinnati Bengals.com
Tags: Cincinnati Bengals, NFL, Widget, Myspace, Facebook, Blogger, Wordpress
The guys over at Five Tool Tool dropped their Top 10 Tips For Sports Blog Traffic a few days ago. I wanted to talk about a few of the things they’ve mentioned and add a couple of thoughts. Here’s a review of the FTT list:
My list looks like this:
1. Good Material: It doesn’t guarantee traffic, but you have to have something interesting for the masses if they find you. How many boring blogs have you stumbled upon and then bookmarked? Exactly. It doesn’t matter if your post are breaking news, spins on mainstream stories, youtube clips, faux interviews, real interviews, something original, or a crazy story, you want to have something that can keep people’s attention.
2. Ass Kissing/Get Links: If you’ve crafted a masterpiece or you got a story/angle nobody’s going with, you gotta get the word out. The biggest sneezers in the sports blogosphere are DeadSpin, The Big Lead, and With Leather. If one of those sites picks up your story, you’re looking at a good day numbers wise. On the mainstream side of the tracks, your traffic’s gonna boom if you get picked up on SI’s Hot Clicks or The 10 Spot Blog… You’re fooling yourself if you think any of  those folks have time to sit and read through every blog, so your gonna have to point them in the right direction.
3. Be Social: The number one stop for a sports blog trying to get a rep is Ball Hype. It’s the easiest way to connect with other bloggers, and you can check out what everybody else is doing. In a nutshell it’s Digg for sports… Other bloggers see your stories on Ball Hype and they hype ’em up or down. On a good day, a number of sites will link to your story because they saw it on Ball Hype.
Don’t limit yourself to BH and Digg.. Go do some searching around and find which social site works for you. Blog Carnival is another site that can get you some new traffic, but I can’t explain how it works even though I know how it works… It’s just one of those things. All I can say is find a carnival, hop on, and enjoy the ride.
4. Spread Love: Traffic is the ultimate goal, but you have to remember you got brothas and sistas in the struggle for numbers. You see a story you like, link to it, or you can have the increasingly popular ”link dump”. The ”dumps” are a collection of stories from around the blogosphere. I have Bloggas Be Typin but you can check out Cheap Shots or Spanning The Blog as other examples. When you’ve linked to others, it encourages them to link to you. You can call it karma, I call it the Blogger Way.
 Deadspin’s “Blogdome“ is the most popular link dump, even if it’s been getting some neg(ative) press lately. Earlier this week Stop Mike Lupica wondered who’s leg do you have to hump to get a link on Deadspin, and got a few people aggy.. I definitely see certain blogs linked more often than the rest, but it is what it is. Like I said in tip #2, sometimes you gotta point people in the right direction.
5. Cheap Heat/Keywords/Window Shoppers/Current Events: I use this category to draw people that are passing through.. People that are looking for sports but not really. These terms draw the most people to me through search engines:
The key there is the women. They don’t say sex sells for nothing. I wrote about the first story and linked to the last two, and everyday people find my blog by searching for those terms. I’m not saying those are the 3 best, but those perform for me.Â
Just like sports radio hosts can yell “Pete Rose” or “Steroids” and watch the phone lines light up, bloggers have some automatics they can go to. I like to call ‘em Kobe and the 7A’s (A-Rod, Arenas, Artest, & African-American Athlete Arrested). Everybody does it in one way or another, and the only down side to this technique is if it’s your only technique.
STAT SHEET
These sites, technorati/alexa, allow you to track your ranking according to their guidelines. If you want all of your numbers delivered to you in one place check out popuri.us. Hopefully all of the tips above will have you climbing up the charts.
Top Ten Tips For Sports Blog Traffic. Courtesy of Five Tool Tool
DIGG ITÂ *Â DEL.ICIO.USÂ *Â REDDITÂ *Â BALL HYPE
All you ever wanted to know about a woman making love to a Red Sox fan. Courtesy of Ladies Dot Dot Dot
Taking a look at ESPN’s new football blog. Courtesy of The Big Lead
Roger Goodell prefers bitches to women. Courtesy of Leave The Man Alone
Joe Budden says Nas is right..Hip Hop is dead. Courtesy of XXL
Is the end near for Curt Schilling? Courtesy of the WBRS Sports Blog
Retro gear galore… If you’re in NY. Courtesy of Dallas Penn
Paris Hilton played high school hockey? Yeah right.. Courtesy of With Leather
Jim Jones and Cam are cool again? I can’t keep up. Courtesy of SOHH
Let’s all pray that there’s no video of Michael Vick doing this. Courtesy of Awful Announcing
Bill Simmons hasn’t off’d himself yet..Give it a week. Courtesy of ESPN.com
