I started my personal blog about 3 years ago, just to see how blogs work, and to see whether I could get an audience.  I chose to write about Arsenal FC – which had an advantage and a disadvantage.  The pro was that there are lots of Arsenal supporters out there.  The con was that there were also hundreds – maybe thousands of Arsenal blogs already existing.  It was hard to imagine anyone would read my stuff.

The key to solving the readership issue was clearly that I needed to make my blog stand out from the rest - and a quick analysis showed that most of the rest were a) critical of the management of the club and b) centred wholly on players, rather than the issues surrounding the football industry.  That told me where to take my work – to the place no one else went.

Since then the blog has grown (now getting around 300,000 hits a month) and has six writers working for it.  Several things have helped us along the way…

a) the BBC featured us about 6 months ago.  The link from the BBC web site to my site is still there, and that has given us a ranking boost on Google as well as new readers.

b) we started to feature a regular issue about match fixing, running lots of statistics and analysis – that brought in a lot of readers

c) recently we started to run a series on bias in the media – asking the detailed questions why the media might be pro some clubs and against others.  Unfortunately the answer is getting a bit awkward, and we can’t run everything we’ve found, but it certainly makes for interesting reading and again brings in new readers.  Themes it seems are good.

Despite this success, and the success many other firms have had with blogs, most companies don’t run their own blogs, claiming that the sort of thing I’ve done with regards to the Untold Arsenal blog is not relevant to them.

But my point is that each subject area has its own issues, which with a bit of thinking, can be exploited and explored.

What’s more, it is not just a numbers game.  If you have just 500 readers a month, that might seem small.  But if they are the key readers in your industry, then you have become the prime centre of information in that area – and that can only be for the good.

My experiment with an Arsenal blog was created only because I wanted to see how blogs worked, and I had a point of view I wanted to express.   Since setting the blog up all sorts of unexpected things have happened, the most recent of which is that I’ve been offered a regular slot in the club programme for the coming season, the club is about to stock my last book on Arsenal in its shops, and there is a real interest in the next book.  I get calls from the media, and the blog is making money (although not in the way I imagined it would at the start).

And that is really my point.  With a blog, if you put a bit of energy in, take it here and there, see where it goes, then the outcome is often unexpected.  It is a long term process, not a short term activity, so you need a long term view, but the results can be extraordinary, if you keep it going.

My personal blog on Arsenal is at www.blog.emiratesstadium.info It is not a model for how other blogs should look, but rather an example of one (often messy) approach.  How you do it is up to you – but I still maintain that setting up a blog is really worth exploring no matter what your industry.

If you would like to know more, call me on 01536 399 000.  You can also follow our discussions about direct marketing on Twitter @HHMailings

Tony Attwood

Hamilton House Mailings Ltd reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB.  Phone 01536 399 000.

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