Quantity over Quality?

 

I was never much of a schmoozer.  Actually, I was just never that good at it.

In college, all my accomplished professors made sure that it was instilled in our brains that the sports industry feeds off of networking.  We’ve heard it before so many times, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” and so far, at least from my experience, it’s been true.   This is why being able to attend the Boston Blogapalooza today was such a GREAT experience.  I want to extend a big thanks to Joe Gill for all his hard work and unrelenting marketing of Blogapalooza. It worked, I was really excited to attend!  And before I forget, I want to say thanks to Kristyn G for being such an awesome friend(entourage) and attending this event with me.  Hope you had as much fun as I did :)

Besides getting a little lost around Boston (which happens a lot for me ), my Sunday started out wonderfully.  Walking into The Baseball Tavern was a little overwhelming at first considering I had no idea what to expect from the event, other than beer, sports and food of course.  What I was curious about was how a bunch of sports bloggers would interact with one another.  Some people were brave and flew solo to the event, which I admire.  Even in a situation like this,  sports always manages to bring people together and before we knew it, everyone was talking like they’ve known each other for years.
There were so many people that I recognized from Twitter, Facebook and other miscellaneous blogs that I read on a daily basis. I won’t lie, it was pretty great when I would introduce myself to people and they’ve either read my work on Patriots Insider or have stumbled across my blog somehow and really liked what they read. It takes a lot to make me blush and comments like that definitely do the trick.

Some of the coolest conversations I had were with these fellow bloggers:

Kat from …On Being a Sports Girl

Soxy Lady

Dan from Dan Sullivan Sport Management

Ian Logue of PatsFans.com

Going into Blogapalooza, I knew that there was so much more to learn about the world of blogging and sports. The best things about this event? I had the chance to sit and talk to many respected journalists and sportswriters from the New England area.  One of the topics I wanted to really ask everyone? Is it more important to blog frequently or blog based on the events as they occur? The “Quantity over Quality” predicament was something that I’ve been asked recently and have pondered about before.  I find this part of blogging to be frustratingly tricky.  I asked Ian Rapoport of the Boston Herald at Blogapalooza about his thoughts.  Rapoport manages The Rap Sheet blog for BostonHerald.com and is also the Patriots Beat Reporter.  He explained that quantity is VITAL. He mentioned that it’s what builds the followers, that by consistently blogging, you become that reader’s go-to person for that topic…in my case, the Patriots/football.

Ian was so incredibly helpful in explaining it’s importance.   This was by far, one of the coolest/most informative conversations I had at Blogapalooza.

The tough part I think is that going through college, I was taught that the longest essay wasn’t always the most effective. Of course blogging isn’t an essay or a research paper. It’s sort of this weird medium where you can write about your opinions freely and by the magic of search engines, people find your site and follow it.  I’ve been incredibly lucky with finding success in this blog and being able to be a contributing writer for Patriots Insider.  This event made me realize just how much of a market there really is for sports bloggers and especially for such a Patriots and football specific blog like NR.

Conclusively, the consensus for this question was that blogging frequently is important but make sure it still has personality in it.  It’s the personality that sets your blog apart from people just going to ESPN, WEEI or NESN for the score updates.

Blogapalooza was a huge success personally and professionally. I handed out my business cards and collected a few as well.  It felt great to be around people who loved sports so much that they dedicate time and effort into writing about it.  Who knows what will come from my attempt at schmoozing today, I have a good feeling though that I made some really good friends in the blogging world.