TLDR:
- Niche down as much as possible. As Hormozi says, “the riches are in the niches.”
- Provide unique perspectives to everything that’s happening in your sport relevant to the niche you decide
- The best way to generate content ideas is simple: whatever catches your eye
- If possible, build a team to expedite the growth of your newsletter
- Be consistent with when you publish, whether on a weekly or monthly basis
- Engage with the community and your readers. Don’t be a complete stranger
Maximizing the potential by understanding the basics
Any sports fan thinks they can be a much better pundit than the ones they often listen to on air. Some will look to carve out their own area in the sports they follow with that intent, with one of the most common avenues being a newsletter.
Some will also look to start their own newsletter with the intent of expanding their knowledge of the game by writing their thoughts on such topics.
Irrespective of what your intent is, if you want to start your own sports newsletter, you have to understand the basics. No matter how much you dislike that pundit who somehow always ends up commentating, it’s not as easy as it seems.
The same principle applies to starting your own sports newsletter, particularly when it is a saturated market and occupied by giants such as ESPN. Our intent with this article is to provide you with a thorough understanding of those basics.
1. Identify your Niche
If you haven’t already, you must identify your niche. Sure it may seem exciting to write on every angle of the sport like ESPN, but remember that it means you’d have to directly compete with much more established individuals. You’d have to convince reader bases that your content is worth more spending time on than an ESPN contributor for 25+ years, and you’ll have a very hard time doing so.
And that is why as Alex Hormozi says, you should look to compete at a category of one and serve a very unique avatar in solving their specific problem in a unique way, for after all, “the riches in the niches.”
By niching down as much as possible, you’re not constrained by higher volumes of competition, and you’d be able to give maximum attention to a specific array of content, produced at the best possible quality.
Common examples include writing on a specific team, specific types of players, and a certain set of leagues if applicable to your sport.
2. Provide a Unique Perspective
People don’t want to consume rinse-and-repeat content of what makes Messi the best football player in the world over and over again, they want to hear unique perspectives.
One of the best ways to write content for a sports newsletter is by writing your thoughts on what’s going on in your sport. So for example if there was a major trade deal just finalized relevant to your niche, what are your thoughts on it? What makes it a good or bad deal for one of the parties?
These are the types of questions that fans want answered and want to digest analysis and opinions on. It is imperative to be as current as possible with your content for maximum engagement.
3. Content Generation
The best way to come up with ideas for content is simple: whatever catches your eye.
If you observe something interesting in an ongoing match that you know people in your niche would love to read about, pursue it.
The process for generating content does not have to be complicated, it can be as simple as this. Remember, your objective is to be as unique as possible with not just your perspectives, but also the content you write on.
4. Build a Team
Depending on the vision and niche of your newsletter, it would be helpful to assemble a team, that too of people who share the goals you have.
It would not only increase the frequency at which articles are produced, it also increases the quality and reach of your newsletter if you’re able to publish high-quality content that connects to the fans a part of your niche at a deep emotional level.
5. Consistent Schedule
This spills over to the next point, to be consistent with how often you publish. You don’t necessarily have to publish every day, but you should have a weekly or monthly schedule in mind of when you publish that you’re able to commit to.
If you’re able to stay consistent with that, your regular readers will eventually develop an expectation that you’ll be publishing on these days at whatever regularity each week or month, and know you’ll deliver on those expectations.
6. Engage with Your Community
If people like your content, they’d also want to be able to engage with you, which is why if you don’t already have a personal profile on a social media platform pertaining to your sports newsletter, create one immediately.
Regularly engaging with your readers and people a part of your sports’ community in general will help you in becoming a known figure in the space, and you’d also become synonymous with your sports newsletter, all of which ties in together in building your personal brand.
Your personal brand should be one that represents you even when you’re not writing or talking about the sport, it should wear you and your identity. An excellent starting point is our free eBook on how you can use ChatGPT to build your personal brand you can download here.
7. Related Links
At the heart of it all, for a vastly successful sports newsletter, fans just want to know that there’s a human behind the scenes pulling the strings with whom they can also directly talk to about the unique lens from which they view the game.