Four things you should do this summer
The school's out for summer. Whilst the sun shines bright over a lush green football pitch, the water drops from the sprinklers glisten like precious pearls on every blade of grass.
When the news has dried up and there is nothing to draw from the well, except the occasional transfer rumour, every football blogger leans on his purple prose (like the intro above) to keep the website running.
If your website isn't fan specific and covers everything under the sun, then I got news for you.
How the modern transfer window rumours work, lesson number 37. Please sit comfortably ;)
— Sport Witness (@Sport_Witness)
An ITK on Twitter will start a rumour based on some loose information which has been around for a while.
— Sport Witness (@Sport_Witness)
Eg, saying Carlos Tevez has agreed personal terms with Juventus. Not too wild a claim because Tevez has been linked with Juve for years.
— Sport Witness (@Sport_Witness)
This could also be done with Tevez to AC Milan or literally anyone to Juve, given previous links.
— Sport Witness (@Sport_Witness)
Others then see the ITK tweet and copy and paste it, rather than RTing. This makes it look like a real story is building.
— Sport Witness (@Sport_Witness)
People then rush to put bets on the move. Tevez is now odds-on to sign for Juventus skybet.com/football/trans…
— Sport Witness (@Sport_Witness)
Regarding the last tweet, make sure you are on any one of the betting website's affiliate programme before starting a transfer rumour. You wouldn't want to miss out on all those betting referrals, when fans folk to put their monies on Tevez moving to Juve, would you?
Build fake Facebook walls
Sportskeeda.com popularized the use of fake Facebook walls of all the big names in football.
It pulls in a huge amount of readers and piques fan interest when shared on social networking sites. And this your big ticket to indulge in a bit of tomfoolery without the fear of reprisals (like starting a transfer rumour).
The Wall Machine is one way of generating, effortlessly a fake Facebook wall. There are many more easy-to-use programs on the internet, that will help you build your own fake FB wall.
These websites are the best sources of information outside mainstream media sites. Reddit gives you the power to mine volumes of data and, more than often, it throws up some interesting facts. It helps you to generate more ideas for an article you could work on.
For example, news of the Bring Ronaldo Home campaign first broke out on Reddit. After a little bit of sleuthing, I published an article questioning the motives of those running this crowd funded campaign. Reddit users called the campaign a sham and drew similarities with the KONY 2012 initiative by calling it RONY 2013.
Reddit gave me an exclusive news story that no mainstream news media site would have never stumbled upon first. I got down to the bottom of it and the article got a handsome 4k reads.
Reddit can also be used for sleuthing information similar to Quora.
For example, before the league season ended, I was planning on doing an article on relegation battles. I posted the question, "What was the greatest relegation battle in the premier league history?", on Quora.
I got some pretty decent answers from other users. If Wikipedia, Google and your mates don't have the answers then Quora does.
Football isn't just the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A. There is more to it than cash-rich European clubs. The UEFA U21 and U19 tournaments are currently underway and it gives you a good glimpse at upcoming players. All the major European clubs sent their scouts to cover these two competitions. You may not be physically present in Tel Aviv, but that shouldn't stop you from writing your own scouting reports.
And the big summer bonus is that the Confederations Cup begins this month on 15th, and you have some big teams like Brazil, Italy, Spain and Mexico competing for the same honours. This competition should keep you busy for most of June. Keep pedaling the good old Match Reports, Five Things We Learned, and Player Ratings. You can keep milking it till you have exhausted all the list of topics you could cover. And then there are the 2014 World Cup Qualifiers. Match previews, reports etc. you know the drill.