Writer’s Guidelines

If you are a new contributor who has been accepted to write for Daily Soccer Blog or someone who is interested in writing for us, then please take some time to familiarise yourself with our guidelines.

These guidelines are here to ensure the content you produce for the blog is of the highest possible standard and will create the best possible experience for our readers.

Areas Covered

• Using Wordpress
• Post Structure
• Spelling & Grammar
• Images
• Video
• Writing Headlines
• Live Blogging
• Encouraging Conversation

Using Wordpress

Daily Soccer Blog is published using the Wordpress platform and as a writer you need to familiarise yourself with using its content management system (CMS).

Writers who have previous experience using Wordpress are preferred as we will not provide training or technical support for writers on using the platform.

Please write articles directly into the CMS rather than writing them in a word processing package such as Word and then trying to paste that article into the CMS. You are likely to run into a lot of formatting problems and these articles will not be accepted for publication until they are in the correct format.

Post Structure

You may not be aware of this, but people who read web content do not actually “read it”, they “scan” it, looking for keywords and phrases and more appealing visual content.

They are looking for short, sharp information and will not read huge chunks of information, written in essay format. This is the fast-paced, interactive world of the internet, not ploughing through difficult, word-heavy textbooks!

All your content should be produced with this in mind and should follow the below format where relevant.

• Feature Articles as Lists – The reason why “Top 10…” and other “list” based articles are so popular online is because they allow information to broken down into readable, easy to follow chunks of information. Use this format wherever possible with your articles. For example, an article on the reasons Kaka turned down a move to Manchester City could become “10 Reasons Kaka Turned Down Manchester City”.  Please note, “essay format” articles will not be accepted as paid content if a more web-friendly format is possible.

• Formatting – No large chunks of text please! Long winded content should be avoided and paragraphs kept as concise and to the point as possible.  Use bold, italics, underlines and even strikethroughs to emphasise important messages within your article to prevent readers from getting bored and missing the point.

• Numbers – When writing numbers within your article, write numbers 1 to 9 as words, i.e. one to nine, seventh minute etc and anything 10 and above as figures, e.g. Ronaldo scored 15 goals this season. Numbers for positions in a list and minutes within a live blog should always be written as figures.

• Sub Headings – If you are creating a list article or want to use subheadings, please use the Heading 2 formatting tag within Wordpress to ensure consistent formatting throughout the blog. Sub headings are vital to help readers find the parts of your article which interest them the most.

• Blockquotes – A one line quote should be emphasised using italics, but you must use the “blockquote” tag when featuring longer quotes within your article.

• Images & Video – You must include images or video with your articles. They break up the text and deliver a message which is related to the article you are writing. If you are producing a “list” type feature article, compliment each “point” with an image or video. More on this a little further below.

• Link to Other Articles Within Daily Soccer Blog – What sets a blog apart from a standard news site is linking. You should link to previously published articles on Daily Soccer Blog if they are relevant to a current article you are producing. This gives the reader a better context on what you are trying to say and means your older content can be read by a new audience who are visiting the blog for the first time.

Spelling & Grammar

Accuracy is very important to Daily Soccer Blog and all writers must check their articles thoroughly before deeming them ready for publication. Please use the spellchecker which is included in Wordpress and eliminate any grammatical errors.

If you want to write for us, you will probably need to have English as your first language. Articles littered with errors will not be accepted for publication because it sullies the reputation and professionalism of the blog and also the writer.

If you cannot produce well written and polished articles, then you are not right for Daily Soccer Blog.

Images

When using images for your articles, they must be uploaded to the Daily Soccer Blog server, do not just “hotlink” them from other websites as this will make us very unpopular.

Articles with hotlinked images will not be accepted for publication.

You can upload images from within the Wordpress CMS but please take note that any images should be a maximum 400 pixels in width.

If you do not have access to a image editing software, online tools such as Snipshot or Picnik will allow you adjust the image size to make them suitable for your article.

Video

As well as images, it is also worthwhile adding videos hosted on third-party services such as Youtube, Daily Motion etc to your articles.

Daily Soccer Blog has a plugin installed which makes adding videos very easy. Instead of having to copy and paste the entire embed code (which sometimes causes problems in Wordpress), you can add a video by writing something like the following into your article:

{youtube xxx} (but use the square brackets instead of curly ones)

The first word, “youtube”, being the video service you want to add a video from, and “xxx” being the identifying code unique to that video.

You can see a full list of all video services supported by the plugin and lean more about adding them into your articles.

Video services not supported by the plugin will need the full embed code to be added.

Writing Headlines

Your article headline is very important because it is the first thing the reader sees – you have to grab his or her attention.  The headline is your one and only shot at telling the reader what your article is about so ensure it is informative.

Shorter headlines work better. We have already established online readers hate huge amounts of text. However, if a longer headline is needed, make sure the attention grabbing aspects are at the beginning of it.

Here are some great resources on producing attention-grabbing headlines. The person in charge is a copywriting genius so spend some time reading what he has to say.

Live Blogging

Live blogging on football matches, or reporting the on-pitch events as they happen is a medium growing in popularity.

A good live blog should include more than just the bare facts about who is passing to who on the field. The writer should incorporate humour, enthusiasm and their own opinions into what is going on throughout the game. It should be entertaining, after all.

Here are two examples of effective live blogging on the same match by the BBC and The Guardian. These two publishers produce excellent live blogs, so read them and learn the techniques which are used. Another prolific live blogger is Victor Li who produces some excellent, informative content.

In your own live blog you should include:

• Match Preview – A short write-up building up to the match. You should write this a little earlier than 30 seconds before kick-off to ensure you have enough time to complete it.

• Line Ups – Let the reader’s know who is lining up for both teams involved and who is on the substitutes bench.

• Match Coverage – This doesn’t have to be every single minute if nothing is going on. Record all the important aspects of what is going on in the match, e.g. attacks, vital tackles, shots on goal, penalty disputes, booking and of course goals scored.

• Add Some Personality – In between the factual goings on, make sure you add some humour and your own personality into what you are writing. Live blogging is really boring for the reader if all they have is the bare facts of the football match.

• Interact With the Readers – If you spot a reader has left a comment on the blog during the match, respond to it during the live blogging timeline. Both the BBC and The Guardian do this superbly and it makes the live blog a far more personal and interactive experience for the readers if they know their contributions will be acknowledged.

• Provide a Conclusion – At full time, provide a short review, or conclusion to the live blog to round things off. In short, sum up everything you have just written about in one short paragraph.

• Offer Your Man of the Match – After reporting so intensely on the match, you must have been watching it more closely than the readers? Announce your Man of the Match and write a short paragraph on why you chose him.

Encourage Conversation

Blogs are supposed to be interactive and the content you write for Daily Soccer Blog should stimulate conversation between the writer and readers (via the comments section at the bottom of each article) alike.

• Choose Conversational Subject Matter – Write about a subject which evokes opinion and passion, two things football is all about. While not all football subjects are strong enough conversation starters, the vast majority are and you should bear this in mind when thinking about what to write.

• Invite the Reader to Share their Opinion – You could take a particular stance on a subject, which would invite readers with the opposite view to argue their point. Don’t put across all sides of the story in your article because that gives the reader nothing to discuss.

• Write Timely Articles – When a hot topic becomes apparent you must take action and produce an article on it quickly. Football is such a fast-moving subject in that what is important today, is not so a few weeks down the line. Latch onto a hot topic or trend and you will see a lot more comments and interaction from your readers.