Sports on Earth writers and editors laid off

Sports On Earth had a blog used similarly to The Triangle.

 

Sports on Earth's problem, as compared to Grantland, is the same problem as Fanhouse had, as compared to Grantland: It is not linked to and promoted on the one site that 99 percent of sports fans go to every day.

 

What SOE didn't do was tweet well to draw traffic in. As of this post it has 8,030 tweets.

Every day my feed was full of Grantland (17.1K) and SB Nation tweets (140K).

Lo and behold, the feed has been full of SOE tweets since the massacre.

 

I wasn't aware that SOE ever had a blog like the Triangle, which probably says as much about my regular visits to the site as it does the site's marketing and outreach. Did the blog contain one-off things like quirky videos or Tweets from athletes? Or things like Metta World Peace changing his name? Ya know, the kind of inane shit that drives traffic.

BTW, the editor of Sportsgrid wrote the following piece about why SOE failed in the current climate. Basically, he said it didn't have enough T&A.
http://www.sportsgrid.com/media/jerry-jones-paulina-gretzky-and-why-im-not-surprised-sports-on-earth-was-downsized/

You might not have heard of Sportsgrid, but I think the guy has a decent point about the use of lowbrow stuff. Of course he completely undermined his argument by not reaching out to Leitch for a comment.

 

I highly doubt social traffic drives THAT many pageviews, or enough to make a huge difference anyway. It's part of the pie, I'm sure, along with direct traffic, search referral, partnership deals, etc.

But I would wager SOE's problem is that it isn't driving enough direct traffic and not creating enough loyal brand users.

 

You have to create that loyalty by hammering them over the head every day with tweets and FB posts etc etc. And by having the RT's. I don't think people are going to automatically remember, "Oh, I have to go check Sports on Earth now" especially when the name was rather tepid to start with.

People remember "Grantland" and in SB Nation's case it's because they hammer you over the head every day.

The numbers add up, create daily loyalty. It's not the end-all be-all but it's important.

 

People remember Grantland because it's a must-stop for NBA fans (it's the one thing the site does truly well) and Bill Simmons is behind it.

SBNation has what seems like 1,000 little sites and an underdog/mumblecore mentality.

 

I'd say Grantland also does baseball really well, especially now that Lindbergh is on board. Keri, Lindbergh, Baumann, and (occasionally) Jazayerli is a strong group. But yeah, as a big NBA fan, that's the main reason I go there most days.

 

I agree with who said SoE took itself way too seriously.
That might the function of a senior staff.

 

Wholeheartedly disagree. Top sites usually have social numbers near/at/above search numbers. Unless you have a huge gateway (Yahoo!) or a ridiculously popular TV station (ESPN) you better have a social presence, and that's far more about Facebook right now even though Twitter is the more popular medium among sports journos.

 

Your name suits your post.

 

Now more than ever,
I'm glad I'm not on Twitter.