credible

Becoming Your Own Sports Content Manager

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The global sports market revenue, as a whole, brought in roughly $90.9 billion in 2017 and increased $14.8 from last year.

With this market significantly gaining popularity and money, many individuals and companies are tagging along for their piece of the pie.  The issue you are probably having is the substantial amount of people that are taking money out of your piece.

Additionally, the problem is intensified when you are one in a million and have trouble standing out.  Creating creative content will take anyone to the top but I’m here to tell you that’s not all that matters.  While most focus solely on making content entertaining, I’m here to tell you that there are more aspects to becoming a trending, recognizable sports content creator, and manager.

By following these steps, I can help you become the best sports content creator you can be:

1. Be valuable while also credible

The backbone to this whole process would be this first step.  While you could be the most marketed website with more traffic than most, what keeps your audience is valuable information they can use.  This means releasing credible, timely information and not something that “grabs clicks”.  Step one boils down to what information do you have that other platforms do not.

2. Creative and Entertaining

This is where your idea comes to life.  What is important here is being versatile and taking advantage of all different forms of media.  Videos or audio clips of interviews, ways in which the audience can interact with each other such as comments or voting, and images are all ways that will set you apart if done right.  Another idea that keeps your audience coming back is sending notifications when you post or create anything.  Especially when you just start making content, it is wise to send out notifications to your subscribers to keep them updated.

3. Measure your success

Finally, after all, is done with content creating, it is essential to track what your audience loves and hates.  While you may have an idea that you love and think is perfect, in the end, it is all about your viewers and what they want.  You don’t want to turn them off to your content with something that doesn’t work.  Furthermore, content that they love will lead to content that they share with their friends and others.

 

Are there other forms of media you think your audience could use in the process?  What do you think is the most important step is?  Do you think I missed a step?

Fact vs Fiction: Finding Credible Sports News

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Probably one of the annoying parts of being a sports fan:

  1. BREAKING! ______ has been traded to _____.
  2. _____ has just sustained a season-ending injury.
  3. _____ has been charged with _____ and will be suspended.

…only to find out that none of these things are true after doing further research.  The point here that I am making is that there are numerous websites and journalists out there that put out information that is false.  They make a worst-case scenario assumption or provide clickbait.  When you want to know if your favorite player is injured, you’d usually want to find out immediately.  So as a result, you’re searching through every site on Google.  However, this can lead you down a rabbit hole of bad information.

Furthermore, to make matters worse, this could lead you to believe that no information is true and you simply have to wait days later to find out from a credible source such as CBS Sports.

There are a couple of easy steps to take to figure out what is credible and what is fake.  My solution provides not only how to pick these sources apart but also some sources themselves.

Credible vs Fake

Here are some ways in which you can easily interpret the trustworthy from the click-bait.

  • Do NOT just Google something you want to figure out.

Doing this will actually bring you right to the clickbait since that is literally what is happening.  When you Google what you want to find out, naturally you would click that top source with the catchy headline.  This leaves that source at the top of the list after doing so given all the traffic they are receiving. The Onion and Juke Left are two examples of this.

  • Pick apart every word of what you’re reading.

I know this one might sound weird at first but let me explain.  Say, for example, LeBron James is rumored to either sign with his current team or move onto another one.  What happens most of the time is a reporter catches LeBron walking to or from anywhere and asks along the way “how do you feel about (insert random city here).” If LeBron would say anything along the lines of it sounding pleasant than that reporter would take advantage of that statement and say “LeBron prefers ____ over ____.” The question was completely unrelated to his transfer but it happens all the time for clickbait. The message I’m trying to get across in this scenario is to not assume things based off of the title.  Make sure you read the whole article itself.

Credible Sources

So now that you can decide for yourself the good from the bad, I have compiled a couple sources that not only give reliable information but also go into great detail about what is going on.  These sources also provide all of the information without any sort of bias and keep it easy to follow for the audience.

Do you feel that these sources provide everything you need? How would you change them to cater to the audience if you were the one in charge?