A little bit of sports business news here about blogging, the results of my
Sports Bloggers’ Press Release Survey

The basis of my survey was to find out how marketers are targeting sports blogs, and if they are being successful, with press releases in mind. At Juiced Sports, we receive press releases from a lot of promoters of books, websites, and other products, so we were interested to hear if other sites did, and how they handled them.

We sent out some emails to bloggers, and we only got 16 responses back, so it’s definitely not a good sample size by any means, but we will present the results as they are, not for any scientific or official means, but just to spur thinking about the issues.

Thanks to the bloggers at Losers With Socks, One Bronco Nation Under God, Gridiron Goddess, Tailgating Ideas, Moondog Sports, Double Extra Point, The Big Eleventh, The Sports Union, OC Domer, Block-C, Song Book Sports, Year 2, Waiting For Next Year, YepYep, Guyism, and Project Spurs for taking part.

What we found was that most of those surveyed do not regularly receive press releases or publicity mailings. Only 12.5% often receive press releases and 50% receive them rarely or seldom.

However, when sports bloggers do receive press releases, they typically read them. 62.5% said they usually read them, with 31.2% answering that they almost always read them. 31.2% usually don’t read them, and 6.2% almost never read them.

But sports bloggers will not often write about the products or services advertised.

6.2% said it was pretty likely they would write about what is being promoted, while 75% said they probably wouldn’t.

When sports bloggers do give publicity to a product or service, it is usually not negative. 56.2% said that when they post about a promoted product, it is usually neutral or favorable. Only 6.2% said that their coverage is usually negative. 75% said that their coverage is not negative very often, with 62.5% saying it is almost never negative. A few responders specifically noted that they just don’t cover releases, if they think it is a low quality or useless product being advertised, rather than give it negative coverage. (For the methodology of the poll, visit here.)

Some comments from responders on how marketers can better connect with blogs:

“The best press releases are sold and created as information…I’m not looking for spin and can see right through it, but if there is an event, award or research story that could be of interest to me that I might not otherwise have found, I’ll give that a mention…”

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