Your Guide to Sports Content Marketing

Sports content marketing can help you take your business to the next level. Whether you’re trying to draw more athletes and coaches to your gym, or you just want to leverage popular sports to build your audience, you can become a star player in your field with the right approach.

Channels for Sports Content Marketing

With so many different platforms and outlets, you might not know where to focus your time and energy. Here are some ways you can get your digital sports content out there.

Write Blogs

Sports blogging is a powerful tool that can help you captivate more people. Not only can you reach more potential customers, but you can also build relationships with people in the industry and establish yourself as an expert. Social Media Today reported that 77% of people who use the internet are blog readers.

When you use blogs for sports content marketing, you can focus on a particular team, athlete, league, or event. The content may be a personal account of a fan’s thoughts and feelings about their favorite teams, or it may provide an analysis of the events taking place.

According to Ahrefs, longer blog posts often generate more traffic and backlinks. However, if a post exceeds 1,000 words, there’s a negative correlation when it comes to backlinks, and if you go over 2,000 words, you may get less traffic as well. Keep this in mind when you look at a post’s word count.

Leverage Social Media

Through social media, you can keep up with whatever your followers are discussing that day. This should give you an idea of what will resonate with people, and you can address any questions or concerns in the comments.

One of the best things about social media is that it allows you to create a hub where your followers can share their own insights into sports and fitness. Most people are happy to share their success stories, and through a social platform, you can encourage them to do so. This is a great way to personalize your brand and garner a more loyal following.

Of course, the impact of sports content marketing will depend on the social platform at hand. Morning Consultant found that Facebook is best for drawing in sports fans, with 51% of people visiting that platform for sports content. YouTube gets 46% of fan attention, Instagram gets 31%, and Twitter gets 25%.

To maximize the value of your social media accounts, you’ll want to create engaging content that utilizes images, videos, and gifs along with your writing. Well-rounded content can hit a home run with your audience if you’re tactful enough.

Use Email for Digital Sports Content

Hubspot reported that 37% of brands plan to devote more of their budget to email marketing. This is likely because email allows businesses to reach a large segment of their target audience in one go. When you use email for a sports content marketing campaign, you’re broadcasting to your target market on the topic of sports.

You can use your email to offer discounts on equipment or to promote upcoming sports events. You can also drive sales by keeping your audience in the loop about your products and services.

There are different ways to customize your emails depending on your brand. For example, if you own a gym, you can write fitness-related content such as new workout routines or news about athletes who train in a particular way. If you own a boxing club, you can lean towards boxing-related content with tips for new boxers or articles about the latest boxing news.

Best Practices for Sports Content Marketing

Even if you’re a sports connoisseur, you shouldn’t start pumping out content without a game plan. Here are some best practices that are worth following.

Understand Your Target Audience

Before you start writing content, you need to understand who your target audience is and what they want from your brand. You should also have an idea of how these people use and consume sports content.

You can create a survey and ask questions about your audience’s interests and habits to get a better idea of who they are. As you devise your survey, here are some questions you should ask yourself about your audience:

• What are their demographics?
• What sports do they follow?
• What teams and players do they root for?
• What types of sports content marketing do they prefer?
• How many of them are athletes themselves?

You can also get insights into how your audience enjoys sports. For example, if many of your followers like fantasy sports, you can create guides and infographics that help people build their rosters. If much of your audience likes sports travel, you may want to focus on step-by-step travel guides and informational posts about sports in foreign countries.

Time Your Content

Knowing when to post content and how often can help you maximize your reach and engagement. This can be a tricky task, as there are many factors to consider when timing your content.

You can adapt your sports content marketing to the current time of the year. For example, in the winter months, you can write about sports that are more suitable for colder temperatures, such as skiing, hockey, ice skating, and curling.

You’ll want to update your webpage with any recent sports news, stats, or analysis that can help inform your work. There are always changes happening in sports leagues, so you have to stay on top of relevant news.

You should also consider what your competitors are currently doing when timing your content. For example, if your main competitor is posting content that focuses on game previews during the NBA preseason, you may want to focus on player interviews instead.

Measure Your Success

Whenever you bring sports content marketing into play, you want to see how many people click through to your website and purchase your products or services. There are web analytics services that can show you click-through rates, how long people stay on your page, and what people are purchasing.

You can also use analytics tools for social media to see how many followers you’ve gained over a certain period of time, as well as how many comments and likes you’ve received. You may find that some sports topics are far more effective than others on a certain platform, and you can adjust your content accordingly.

Sometimes numbers aren’t enough to show you how well your content is performing. Here are some ways you can go deeper:

• Read comments on your social media page.
• Read people’s replies whenever you send an email.
• Read reviews that customers are leaving about your company.
• Ask your audience for feedback on your content.

Evaluating the success of your content will allow you to refine and adapt your marketing strategy going forward.

Make the Most of Sports Content Marketing

Sports writing is a great way to captivate and excite your audience. However, athletics is a broad and complex field that requires you to keep up with sports news and understand the ins and outs of different leagues and games. This isn’t easy when you and your team are juggling so many other responsibilities.

BKA Content can take the weight off your shoulders by delivering material that is scalable, SEO-friendly, and engaging. Our team of writers can leverage sports content marketing on your behalf and draw in a larger following. For more information, check out our sports content writing services.