Expert Advice

I have to admit that when I checked out the Football Banter inbox the other day there was an email that did surprise me.  It was from Dan at Wikio, who does email on occasion and has given Football Banter a few sneak peeks at the monthly rankings a few times.

Dan's question to me was, would I like to be listed on the Wikio site as their Sports Blog "expert", with a nice blurb and link back to the site?... Hmmm.... sure, thanks very much.

So that's it, I am hereby installed to the lofty title of Wikio Sports Blog Expert and will be helping Wikio with a few things on the Sports Blog side and in turn I hope to do my bit to help the Sports Blogs take off, and offer some feedback and opinions as well as new links that I may come across.  There are some excellent blogs out there already; a look at the ranking speaks for itself.  There are many blogs that are closer to sports clubs than this one, and there are many blogs more frequently contributed to and better supported, I read a number of them.  There is more to come from the Sports Blogging arena, and I will be a small part of that.  My opinion on Sports Blogging in the UK overall is that we have only just scratched the surface, there is massive potential for more blogs and of differing character.  Large and small, all shapes, sizes and sports - it is not just football blogging to which I am referring.

I personally started blogging because I had been following Politics for a long time and Politics Blogs.  After I had set up my own blog, the same principles seemed to transfer across to football so very easily; I was surprised both at how many Politics blogs there were, and how few sports blogs.  Politics dominate the Wikio rankings partly because they are so numerous and partly because the political media have embraced them.  They have become required reading in their own field.  The realms of Political Blogging have been widely explored to an extent that Sports Blogs have not, well at least not yet been explored.  At the heart of the rise of the political blog are two key points.  1.  A desire from the masses to take more and more of their information from uneditorialised sources, and 2.  The desire of people to also have their own say.  By using those markers, the potential for sports blogs are great. 

The next challenge for the sports bloggers, new and established is to challenge the existing main stream media sites by offering rival content, written by fans and for fans.  The Sport Blog community is our community, we can make of it whatever we wish, and we can have a lot of fun along the way.

Final point I would like to add, is to acknowledge my co-author Tarquin.  I have said before that I would have wound this blog up if he had not of come on board to keep the content flowing more regularly and insightfully.  If Wikio have looked to this site and thought of me that is in no small part at all to Tarquins contribution to this blog.  Thanks.