2300 Thoughts

ReAL Salt Lake Team Blog

As a huge fan of ReAL Salt Lake, and a season ticket holder for 3 years I would like to offer some suggestions to the organization regarding their “team blog.”

Let’s begin with basics, the design of the blog. It has a gray background with a white strip down the middle for their content. Gray is boring! And ReAL Salt Lake’s colors are Red, Blue, and Yellow. If you want to get specific their actual colors are Crimson and Cobalt. From a public relations stand point a team this new to an area and a league should be trying to build their brand, ReAL Salt Lake is definitely not taking the opportunity to do so with their current team blog. (If you would like to see a team actually doing a good job of building their brand look at Seattle Sounders FC, this is their first year in the league and they already have a phenomenal team blog.)

Multiple ReAL Salt Lake fans have started their own blogs about the team, and actually have more followers than the teams own blog. I personally would say that is because of the lack of interesting content on ReAL Salt Lake’s team blog. I think the current content on the blog is quality; they just need to add more quality content, and a much larger variety. The current “Across the Ticker” feature is good, and takes very little time to put up, but has very little content soccer fans have not already read, most of the articles are taken from other blogs and a few news sources, this feature needs to be ramped up.

Other Major League Soccer teams are frequently writing articles or doing small interviews about their players on their blogs. Jimmy Conrad of the Kansas City Wizards hosts his own radio show every week and has it streamed over the web. Supporters groups have been featured on other MLS team blogs, ReAL Salt Lake has multiple supporters groups that could be featured. I think this is a great opportunity the ReAL Salt Lake is missing out on.

Last year they started a bit called the “Kyle and Javi Show,” and put out several episodes. The “Kyle and Javi Show” featured two key players for ReAL Salt Lake in, team captain, Kyle Beckerman and Javier Morales. Fans loved it the episodes always got the most positive comments on the blog. I think ReAL Salt Lake should start producing episodes of the “Kyle and Javi Show” again to draw fans back to the team blog.

So in short my suggestions to ReAL Salt Lake for their team blog upgrade would be
• Create a better color scheme for the blog with a more intense soccer design
• Feature quality “inside” player articles and interviews
• Read fan comments and try to implement suggestions