Last week’s guest speaker Adam Timworth spoke about how he finds blogs to be at their best when an enthusiastic writer finds a niche, and blogs regularly on a range of topics within the subject.
Talk of this turned my mind to one such writer who does all of the above with great success.
One of my favourite journalists is Tim Vickery, a sports writer who has been reporting on football in South America since 1994.
In the 14 years he’s spent in Brazil, Tim has become arguably the foremost English-speaking voice on South American football - to the point where he is regularly called upon as a panellist in studio debates about the game on mainstream Brazilian television.
Whilst I first became familiar with Tim through his work in World Soccer magazine, where amongst other things he is known for his observant, descriptive player profiles; in recent years I have begun to follow the content he writes for online audiences.
Currently Tim writes three internet-only columns, a weekly piece for the BBC Sport website, and fortnightly articles for the CNN Sports Illustrated and Australia’s SBS The World Game sites.
Tim has been writing his Monday BBC column since 2004, and as a regular reader I was interested to see that in August his columns were integrated into the wider BBC Football blog network.
From this...
...To this.
But although the format of Tim Vickery's articles changed, that didn't mean the content had to.
Although what the BBC did here was nothing new – indeed Tim’s SBS columns have taken blog form since the beginning of 2008 – it did strike me as being an excellent way of getting instant interaction from readers and measuring exactly how popular Tim’s niche is.
After a slow start in blog form, Tim has built an audience of contributors and tends to get 50 to 100 comments on each one (barring those on Diego Maradona which are predictably more popular).
The tone of the feedback sent is generally complimentary; at times even reverent (to the point that he’s been given the nickname ‘The Legendinho!’).
That Tim is willing to speak to his audience, not just on radio phone-ins and in responding to mail, but – unlike many other bloggers – through actually replying to posts on his blog regularly must attribute to the popularity he enjoys amongst the audience he plays too.
Not only is Tim happy to talk, but he is willing to listen too.
A good example of this came back in September, when on a blog about Paraguay’s World Cup qualifying success, numerous readers noticed that the ‘Readers Questions’ section – over the years a consistent feature at the end of his articles – was missing.
Some left comments on his blog asking for these questions to be brought back, to which Tim replied that he would have a word with his web editors.
Two weeks later and they were returned to their usual place.
By keeping the Readers Questions section, Tim is able give a detailed answer to a specific query in a more lasting form, rather than just a quick reply soon to be buried amongst a myriad of other comments.
Not only does this say that, to a good blogger at least, what the audience thinks counts; it also goes to show that whilst new ideas and technology may bring improvements, it doesn’t necessarily mean the new must supersede things we already have that work well as they are.
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