Hello friends how are you all? Today we are going to talk about How To Improve Your Skills As A Well-Paid Sports Writer. What comes to your mind when you hear that the global sports industry is worth over $600bn?
Yes, there is an incredible fortune to be made in sports. But here is where it gets even more enjoyable. Making a money-spinning career in sports is no longer exclusive to professional athletes.
Today, we have everyday people heavily making money from sports, either via betting with accurate predictions from liontips.com/tips/russia or being a sports writer.
Yes, many today are jumping on the swelling sports writing bandwagon. And this swell is not misplaced, either. Sports websites like Goal.com pull hundreds of thousands of websites daily.
Given the overwhelming demand for sports content, there has never been a better time to be a sports writer as a freelancer!
Having established the viability of a sports writing career, how can you equip yourself to become a formidable sports writer? I will tell you.
How To Improve Your Skills As A Well-Paid Sports Writer
Your Audience Will Loathe You If You Don’t Understand Them
You are not writing for your mom – she can take anything from you. In reality, you are writing for sports lovers and, in some cases, prospective customers.
This clan of readers is most times terribly impatient. You can be sure they will not take anything from you. Courtesy is not a virtue of website visitors; they can jump off your sports article in the first paragraph if it doesn’t appeal to them.
According to Nielsen Norman Group, the average web visitor reads just 20% of your content. How unfortunate! This explains why you need your content to engage your audience as quickly as possible, sending the message. This is not possible without an acute understanding of your audience.
A top-notch sports writer has an accurate grasp of his audience persona, empathizes with them, and connects with them emotionally.
You can cautiously sprinkle in some humor to flavor the content. But more importantly, you must step into the shoes of your prospective reader and simulate how well they would interact with your sports content.
Without such audience understanding, here is what you should expect from your readers: ‘YUCK!’ And they are off.
Build Authority As A Sports Writer
- While versatility is a formidable weapon in the armory of every sports writer, it also helps to build strategic depth in specific niches.
- Sports writing is as broad as your imagination can accommodate. There are hundreds of niches to write for, cutting across football to poker.
- However, the last thing you want is your audience feeling drowsy while reading your articles due to the amateurishness oozing from the writer.
- Be renowned as an authority in one sport. This way, you better position yourself to grow into a specialist sports writer in that department.
- What is more, specialist content marketers are paid more because they write from an expert’s perspective. Now, tell me if you don’t like to earn more as a sports writer.
Don’t Miss The Call To Action If You Write For A Sports Brand
Let us be sincere. Content writing isn’t always a walk in the park. Most times, it requires rigorous research and immaculate presentation.
This could swallow many hours from your day. For all this enormous volume of effort poured into developing every piece of content, audience conversion is only fair.
You can’t always give up all that amazing content for nothing.
Content, however free, should at least drive customer action.
In your sports article, if you are not selling a sports product in the end, at least integrate a call for the reader to sign up for an email newsletter.
But not just any call to action (CTA) would work here.
Personalized CTAs are more appealing. According to Hubspot, personalized CTAs perform 202% better than your generic CTA.
Note that your CTA must not always be to buy. Website visitors today are so scared of being told to buy.
Your CTA could be as cordial as encouraging readers to sign up for a free ebook or just to share on social media!
You Will Still Need Seo In Online Sports Writing
Content marketing is fundamentally built on SEO, and the same applies to contemporary sports writing.
Millions of websites are fighting tooth and nail to break into the first pages of search engines – and stay there. Would you fault these websites for battling so hard?
No, according to Search Engine Journal, 93% of all traffic comes from a search engine.
Therefore, sports writers (even those writing for sports news platforms) must leverage strategic keyword-optimized content.
This would increase the digital visibility of your sports content, allowing it to rank higher on search engines and catch more eyeballs.
It would help if you used high-value keywords with impressive ranking potential. Ahrefs is one lovely tool that can help you with such keywords.