People who have a passion in life, whether it be sport, gardening, philosophy, or collecting medieval coins, all share at least one thing in common – they like to talk about it! Footie fans are notorious for being able to talk about their beloved team for hours on end, and many have an encyclopedic knowledge of their subject. If that’s you, have you considered getting your opinions and expertise out to a much wider, potentially global audience?

Social media pages

Free to set up and operate, and you can put whatever you like on your page. You could have an Aston Villa Facebook group where you and your fellow fans share news and views about the team and related topics. If you take decent photos, you could have an Instagram page to collect all your best team and match pictures and display them or get involved in multiple conversations about your team on Twitter. The great thing about social media is that the pages are easy to set up and add content to, and there are lots of opportunities for linking up and connecting with like-minded people.  

Blogging

Blogs have been around for years now but are still viewed as something that takes a lot of effort and expertise. There are blogs around that are so professional and full of additional content you can barely tell them apart from a website, but don’t let this put you off. If you have something to say on a fairly regular basis, for example, a few times a week to start with, you can set up a simple blog with no expertise at all, and just post your thoughts whenever you wish. You can add resources and links later if you want to, but if you just want to have your say, you can.

Getting an audience

You might be perfectly happy just to have a platform for recording your views and maybe sharing them with a few friends, but if you’d like to reach more people, there are a few simple things you can do to get the ball rolling. Make your page as inviting and interesting as possible. There are plenty of tools available to make this easier, for example, you could use a background creator to design a personalised background for your blog page. Write as clearly as you can, spellcheck every article and make sure you don’t say anything that could get you into trouble from a legal point of view. You’re free to say what you like, but check the guidelines for the platform you’re using and be clear on what is not acceptable. There are plenty of free resources online that can help you with how to write and promote your blog and social media pages, so do a bit of research if you want to do a really good job.

You might find you have a talent for writing and your blog or social media page starts to get a lot of page views. If you start getting enough views, you could look at monetizing your pages, and make some cash from your passion too!