Why should you liveblog a sports event? 

  • Storytelling
  • Traffic, lots of viewers and interaction if it is a high profile event
  • Show your passion, if you are a passionate sports person this will aid the fluidity of your liveblog.
  • Community engagement, sports is a community.
  • There will be high interest in your event with a community who are interested and active.
  • It saves time and makes you able to collect all the events key moments in one place.
  • By doing this, it also makes it easy for people to catch up on previous key moments which have taken place in a sporting event. Or makes them able to quickly see what is going on.
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Sporting liveblog formats:

  • Have the events in reverse chronological order, and update it regularly in a blog or story template.
  • Use websites like: 24LiveBlog, CoverItLive, ScribbleLive.
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  • Live-Tweet on twitter and feed it to your blog. Embed tweets and links.
  • If it was possible you could have a video stream to an after match press conference or a link to the game online if possible.

Sport blogging tips and techniques:

  • Upload short but frequent updates.
  • Engagement is your issue and you must engage in the event, the audience and the only audience.
  • “This liveblog becomes a notebook for your events story”
  • Consider links, polls, photos, audio, statistics, video.
  • Embedding tweets and using them as links and references is a great way to engage your audience, having a # set up for them to engage in and talk amongst others is perfect. Tweets are key to engagement and engagement is key to liveblogging. 
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Liveblogging issues during sporting events:

Accuracy, it is easy to tweet about a goal, or a card or a tackle, as it happens but then for a decision to be over turned or changed. Things can escalate quickly in sport but you need to be first in saying it and staying on top of it – this means you can sometimes be inaccurate(

  • Ask questions, verify, correct quickly any wrong doing.
  • Sports credentials and copy right can be an issue.
  • You need to learn to multi-task very well and sometimes this can be difficult at the start.
  • Liveblogging sports is a learning curve, a task and one which needs to be worked on a few times before it is successful.

Remember:

  • Verify
  • Be quick
  • Say what you don’t know too, not just what you know.
  • Involve your audience
  • Have a conversation, not a monologue
  • And consider your tone.