Like many of you, I listen to a lot of podcasts. Each week I drive three hours from New Jersey to Maryland, and pass the time listening to one podcast after another, including many related to online marketing (yes, my goal is still to build a side hustle along those lines), and a recent podcast from Amy Porterfield caught my attention.
In her 200th episode she had a number of guests share their stories of “zigging when everyone else is zagging”, i.e. doing something quite different from others in your field and as a result, standing out from the crowd and making an impact.
That brought to mind a similar story from my sports blogging past that I thought might be worth sharing here… a real example of “zigging while others are zagging” that not only helped grow my website, but actually turned a serious liability into a significant advantage.
Sports Bloggers In The Press Box
Several years ago (say 2007-2012), the hot topic in sports blogging was about writers getting into the press box and locker room for pro and college teams, allowing them the same kind of access that professional media (beat writers and columnists) enjoy.
At the time I ran a hockey blog (OnTheForecheck.com) that covered the NHL’s Nashville Predators as part of the SB Nation network, and I took seriously the charge to provide timely, high-quality content relating to the team, its fans, and the hockey world at large. So naturally, I wanted to take advantage of that opportunity when the Predators offered me a media credential.
What happens on Game Night is that those with press access sit in a special section of the arena where they can work on their laptops during the game, and then as soon as the final horn sounds they go down to the locker room to interview players and get quotes to include in their post-game articles. After 20 minutes or so, the head coach also holds a brief press conference to provide his thoughts about the action and perhaps share an update on an injured player.
For typical media outlets, these post-game quotes provide the meat of their content, adding context and detail beyond merely saying “Team X beat Team Y”.
The big issue with bloggers being allowed access is that teams want to safeguard their environment from bad actors and unnecessary distractions, so there are established professional guidelines that we were expected to observe. Within the professional media world these rules are so well understood as to almost go unspoken, things like “no cheering in the press box”, and “no asking players for autographs”.
In short, act like a professional, don’t stir up trouble, and most important of all for the bloggers, let the real professionals ask the first questions since they work on deadline and rely on this stuff to put food on the table. By comparison, us bloggers were all doing this as a hobby.
I was familiar with these rules because I was actually one of the very first hockey bloggers to get such access from an NHL team, back in 1997 and 1998 with the Detroit Red Wings. My first game on press row was the infamous March 26, 1997 game between Detroit and Colorado, which featured a massive brawl and is, in my not-so-humble opinion, the greatest regular season NHL game in living memory. You can still read the story I published on a now-dead website thanks to the Internet Archive. The next year, I got to cover Games 1 & 2 of the Stanley Cup Final in Detroit as well, as the Red Wings marched to their second consecutive championship.
So at least I knew a bit about what NOT to do when working a game, and how to stay out of harm’s way.
The Locker Room: No Place For An Introvert
The problem was, I was terrible at getting post-game quotes from players and coaches.
I’m a natural introvert, and when placed in wide open, dynamic social settings I often freak out inside my head, paralyzed by doubt and anxiety. So the idea of walking up and asking strangers questions about a hockey game that had just completed didn’t work well for me. I often found myself lingering around the perimeter of the action, asking one or two lame questions, or sometimes none at all.
I found the coach’s press conference more interesting, as that was a bit more structured and I could hang in the background. Some nights I would sneak a question in, but not everyone got the chance each night due to limited time so if I didn’t that wasn’t as big a deal.
After gathering those quotes the media (professional and bloggers) would head back up to their workstations to transcribe their quotes and finish their game stories, often not leaving the arena until a couple hours after the game was over.
For me, going through that stressful (and sometimes depressing) locker room experience left me sapped of energy and confidence by the end of the evening, and as I wrote up my post-game article I often felt like I was doing a terrible job trying playing a pro’s game as a rank amateur.
So that’s when I decided to start “zigging when everyone else is zagging”.
Nerd Gotta Nerd
One night, as the final horn sounded and everyone else on Media Row dashed off to the elevators, I dreaded the thought of going down to the locker room and floundering through another media scrum. So instead I chickened out and stayed upstairs. I grabbed another bowl of free popcorn from the nearby Media Lounge (the best aspect of that gig, let me tell you) and worked on my laptop.
I decided that rather than file a post-game story built around quotes obtained from the locker room, I’d focus on getting a post up as quickly as possible that contained the features I could bring to the table, and leave the quotes to everyone else.
In my case, that meant a story that included a brief recap of the action, a series of personal observations about the game (players who did something especially noteworthy, trends I picked up on, etc.), and then a unique table of advanced statistics that I compiled in Excel and exported into my blog post. Here is a typical example of the type of article I would produce. The formatting looks a bit weird because that’s an old article and the site has been redesigned since then, but you get an idea of the content.
Since I had most of my observations written during the game, I was able to publish the article about 15 minutes after the game was over. I still had time to make it downstairs to catch the coach’s press conference, and if there was anything worth sharing, I could then edit my initial post to include that update.
After the press conference, while everyone else got started working on their articles, I was already done for the night and could head home to my wife and three kids.
Zigging Pays Off
What happened next surprised me.
Website traffic for those post-game stories skyrocketed, because our site was the first to have a post with some meat on the bones in the immediate aftermath of a game. The link would get shared on Twitter as the initial analysis of the game, so it drew attention from beyond Nashville as well, for hockey fans curious about the result.
Those articles also worked well because they provided a perfect space for conversation among fans. The comments section was often filled with people reacting to my observations, making their own commentary on the game, and all the other things sports fans do after a game is over. And since this article was the first one out there, it became the natural landing spot for that conversation.
So in terms of all the measurable aspects of running a sports blog, that change in my post-game routine created a huge win. It led to increased traffic, membership, and relevance as we took that “first mover” advantage.
And best of all? I felt a hell of a lot better about myself. I stopped throwing myself into an uncomfortable situation any more, and instead focused on what I could do best: put together a quick analysis of a game that included unique information and a forum for conversation.
By “zigging while others are zagging”, I helped my site take a major step forward, got home earlier each game night, and felt more confident in what I was doing. That sounds like a winning combination to me!
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