Live Blogging football matches- Part 1 (Basics)
Football Blogs are in some manners a cliche’ business. While the business is still being re-invented by the likes of Chris Toy (Studs-Up), yet as a blogger there is little variety that you can add to your blog compared to what other bloggers are writing except in terms of great insight. Live Blogging is one of those little innovations that can add the extra sauce that makes the difference without putting in a lot of effort.
Before we begin, let me explain that there is a difference between Live Streaming Feeds and Football Live Blogging. While the former in all its forms is illegal until you are not paying for it or the company providing has the necessary copyrights, the latter is not illegal (at least till Football Data Co decides so). However before there begins a debate on the legalities, let me remind you that Footy Tweets received the dreaded ‘Cease and Desist’ for using the Club Crest and giving out match score updates in his Tweets! Live Blogging refers to a setup in which the Events of a match are reported live via appropriate tools available on the web. Before we go into the Best Practices and tricks for Live Blogging let me first give you two great products that make it possible.
Both these tools are very robust and have two sections. The backend that is present on the respective company site and the place from where you as an author report the match. The front end is what the users see on your own site. Both of the solutions use an iframe version that contains a code which you would need to paste in the HTML of your post and you should be good to go. While Cover it Live is very dynamic and preferred by the major blogging houses, I tend to have a corner for ScribbleLive and its simplicity which simply is amazing. Both offer fully white labeled solutions as well to big blogging houses. But the cost involved is very high and not really pragmatic for a regular blogger.
Beside these two amazing tools, you could also use the tiny little birdie of the Twitter world. Micro Blogging and fresh content is the mantra today. If you are not into regular hassles of setting up the post and embedding the code, worry not twitter comes to your rescue. Simply keep twitting the crucial events along with the latest goals from the match.
Prepare Before You Go
Live blogging is easy, but you need to make sure you’re prepared ahead of time.
-Check Internet access: Check to see whether the venue has Internet access in case you are not doing it from your home or office.
-Consult the match schedule: Be very particular of the match timings and the TIme Zone difference if you are not in the UK esp.
-Post early: Inform your audience that you will be live blogging so they know to expect regular updates during the day, which will improve your site’s traffic, attract new readers and provide fresh content and most importantly Google will love you with first page rankings when proper query is searched.
While Live Blogging will not make you one of the best bloggers in a day, it is certainly one of the best tools that will give your blog that extra share of viewers and followers. Also the during match commentary and comments produces some of the best humor.
The second part of this post will cover some cool tricks that every pro blogger should have up his sleeve just in case his television cable gets ripped or stream cast gets dead. It would not be a great position for even the most established bloggers now, would it be?
One Response to “Live Blogging football matches- Part 1 (Basics)”
Aw, this was a really good post. In theory I’d like to write like this also – taking time and real effort to make a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and never seem to get something done. London,UK