SB Nation is an incredibly successful sports network that has put itself in a position the challenge the big guns of sports online media. For the month in April, the network ranked tenth in sports online reach, ahead of Bleacher Report, Sports Illustrated and the Sporting NEws. The network continues to grow, and is well on its way to being a presence known nationwide.
Still, there could be changes that would put them in a better position for the future. The biggest one is to make the site more RSS-friendly. As it stands, the only RSS feed for the “mothership” is everything – you can’t filter by sport or what kind of article or even by author. That results in spamming of your Reader when a big storystream happens, like during the NBA Playoffs. During big events like these, authors often post one sentence updates, which clogs up the Reader and makes it extremely frustrating for the reader.
Also, they should put a stronger focus on real news writing. As it stands, they have some of the best feature writers in the business, especially among those that involve humor in their writing. Jon Bois, Spencer Hall, Matt Ufford and Bomani Jones are all superstar writers for the network, and their longform pieces (or videos) are always a must-view.
They started to make this change by bringing in Rob Neyer, a big-time baseball writer from ESPN, who writes features as well as more conventional news stories. Bringing in more of these style of writers could give the network more nationwide legitimacy, if that’s the sort of thing they’re after. As far as I can tell, SB Nation is fine with its current set-up and readership, and as a current reader, I’m fine with it too.
When looking at the page analytics information available at Quantcast and Alexa, much of the information found is to be expected. Most of the visitors are male 18-24 year old college students visiting the site from school. This falls in place with the usual internet savvy sports fan – that’s the kind of audience you would expect to regularly visit SB Nation.
Unfortunately for them, it appears most of the audience are not repeat visitors. Only 19% of visitors are regulars, and less than %1 are what Quantcast classifies as “addicts.” However, the regulars and addicts combine for 45% of their visits.
Additionally, a good amount of the traffic comes from images, most likely tweeted or linked from another website. These images are on the assets.sbnation.com subdomain, which accounts for 12.49% of their traffic. The new MLB section is also a big drawer of views, with 4.07% of hits.
They are also ranked 237rd in the country by Quantcast and 714th by Alexa. What we can learn from all of this is that SB Nation is doing an effective job bringing in the kind of reader they are looking for, but need to do a more efficient job of keeping them. Most of their traffic comes from links tweeted out and Google searchers, which is a nice way to start, but they need to keep bringing in those continuous readers more regularly if they want to continue to grow.
For the most part, the home page of SB Nation effectively uses tracking and navigation to flag key sections and stories. Here’s how the front page of the site currently works:
There are two main problems with this design. First, while I understand it is important to continue to push the SB Nation Youtube channel, a new addition to the network, but this is a little overkill. Their main story on the page is the newest episode of Bomani & Jones one of their featured shows. That’s on top of what you can see cut off, which is their storystream for the 2012 NHL Playoffs, which almost definitely should be the main story featured. Also, unless it’s an absolutely huge story, nothing should take up that much of the screen room on first viewing.
If we take a look a little down the page, it starts to get more organized.
This is a nice way to organize it. They have simple stories on the left side from their columnists, with big storystreams in the middle and links to their blogs and social media platforms on the right side. It’s visually appealing and is easy to navigate.
In terms of the main navigation bar, it’s also easy to navigate. You can search for different sports or teams, and find whatever coverage you’re looking for fairly simply. Nearly every part of SB Nation is accessible with one click from the front page.
There is no corrections page that I can find, most likely because they simply edit the stories with a large bolded EDIT at the top when a correction is needed. The About Us and Contact pages are linked at the bottom of the main page.
Because it is an online-only entity, SB Nation has had a devoted focus to social media tools to get their brand out there as well as increase the reach of their stories. On the large and small-scale levels, they effectively use these tools, especially Twitter, to run their business.
The mothership’s Twitter page has over 37,000 followers and their Facebook page has nearly 35,000 likes. On the main Twitter page, they post all of the major stories of the day, with interactive features that include their authors.
Here is a tweet sending out a silly story by former NBA player Dan Grunfeld on the five NBA players you’d want to spend spring break with. They supply the link, as well as a brief description of the story (without giving away too much), and include the Twitter profile of the author who wrote it.
Here is one of a running set of tweets regarding SB Nation’s 2012 NFL Mock Draft, where the editors of the various NFL websites picked as their teams in a mock draft. Each time they tweet one of these out, they use the same format: “With the BLANK pick in SB Nation’s 2012 NFL mock draft, the TEAM/@BLOG select … LINK”. This is a useful format because it doesn’t tell the user who was picked, which encourages them to click on the link, and it also includes the Twitter handle of the team doing the picking.
In addition, there are Twitter profiles for sports-specific SB Nation feeds. This allows users to only follow the sports they’re interested in, adding a level of user customization appreciated on social media sites.
As a solely online entity, SB Nation has had the opportunity to explore many different multimedia and interactive elements in their coverage of sports. This was enhanced recently with the addition of the SB Nation YouTube channel.
Multiple videos are posted daily on the channel, covering the biggest stories in sports of the days. In addition, there are multiple series they run, including 4 on the Floor (a rundown of the top four stories of the day), the Petey & Lomo Show (a show run by two Miami Marlins on what they do during spring training) and Bomani & Jones (a show run by Bomani Jones on whatever he wants to talk about).
Usually, when a new video is posted to the Youtube channel, they add a link to the front page of the mothership. They did this for the latest episode of Bomani & Jones, with a short preview of what the video covers and an embedded version of the actual video.
Another effective use of interactive elements from SB Nation is Cover It Live, a program that allows live chats between writers and readers in an article. This has been used largely in Jon Bois’ coverage of baseball games, especially those between two bad teams. There was a period of time during last year where he covered the worst baseball game of the day, and used Cover It Live to have an interactive conversation with the readers, making funny comments and asking questions like “Who is the most 1980s Cubs player of all time?” The answer, by the way, is Damon Berryhill.
As a online-only sports media organization, SB Nation has plenty of opportunities to use graphics, multimedia, and interactive elements in their coverage of the days events. They’ve recently expanded to this with the new SB Nation Youtube channel, and have done this effectively in the past with Cover It Live.
SB Nation covers big stories every week, as they write about every imaginable sports topic. One of these big stories is the current Big East Tournament in college basketball, which the folks at SB Nation are covering from every possible angle.
As it is a network of blogs, the individual blogs that cover teams in the Big East naturally have their own coverage. SB Nation’s Syracuse blog, Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician, has had preview and recap posts over the past few days about it, including an article about their most recent game here. SB Nation’s Big East blog, Big East Coast Bias, has been covering the bigger games, like UConn-WVU.
Back at the “mothership”, they’re paying attention as well. There is a story stream set up for the tournament that is being constantly updated:
Readers get an automatic notification if a new story is added to the StoryStream while they are looking at it, and given an option to refresh the page right there. There are updates in the middle of every game, as well as a recap when they all finish. Additionally, there are periodic bracket updates:
At certain intervals, they also have video highlights that help the flow of the StoryStream and give the viewers a visual to go along with the writing:
In addition, one of the new SB Nation Youtube shows, 4 on the floor, had a new episode posted today, and the Big East Tournament was the first topic mentioned. Overall, SB Nation effectively uses their local blogs, StoryStream format, and new Youtube channel to cover big-time stories.
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“Prof. Pyles received DM from someone who wanted to give info re: mall. Detailed info through e-mail, broke the story. #jour352
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“Alexander Pyles received, direct message from source… led him to breaking a story over mall demoltion. #JOUR352
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“My professor received a scoop through direct message about Baltimore development plans! Call it a Tweet Scoop #jour352
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“Professor Pyles got information from a source on Twitter and broke news. #jour352
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“@aapyles had a source find him on twitter for a story about a mall renovation. Story had hit a lull before the source found him. #jour352
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“Tyler was able to find a source for a story through an expert he followed on Twitter. #jour352
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“I just told a story about using informed followers to create the best stories #jour352
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“Tyler Weyant was able to find multiple sources for a story through his Twitter account #jour352
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“Officers ran across field to go into burning building, Erin found out about story through PG PD Twitter feed. #jour352
To look at the quality and presentation of stories on SB Nation and their effective use of the online medium, I decided to take a look at the current front page of the web site:
At the top of the page, they have a video story from the brand-new SB Nation Youtube channel, starring Miami Marlins players Logan Morrison and Bryan Petersen:
Video is obviously one of the best examples of a kind of story that can only appear online – and it’s done effectively here. There’s a short intro that explains what the show is about, and then the video is embedded along with a subscribe link to their Youtube channel.
Next, there is a very short story on TV numbers:
This is the kind of story that wouldn’t make a newspaper (due to its length), but works well in a blog format, and it’s a compelling-enough story to merit reading.
After that, there is a featured opinion pieces by one of their top columnists, Jon Bois on why empathizing with millionaire athletes is okay:
It’s a piece that could likely be featured in a newspaper (with some editing to cut down on foul language), but it works very well here thanks to its length and the skill of the writer, Bois.
Next, there is an analysis of a video, another strength of the online medium:
Travis Hughes, another of their writers, looks at a video where NBC Sports Network analysts Mike Milbury and Jeremy Roenick argue about a hit in a recent hockey game, and runs down both sides of the argument while bringing in extra analysis by linking to a site on the SB Nation network.
Finally, there’s a hard news story where they use their vaunted “StoryStream” method:
The Eagles used their franchise tag on wide receiver DeSean Jackson, and SB Nation linked to it on their front page and made it a part of the Eagles Free Agency 2012 StoryStream. This is one of SB Nation’s strengths, and it’s shown here. They have a large picture of the biggest story on top of the Stream, with a story about it right below. Below that, they have previous updates on the Eagles and their Free Agency search in 2012.
In general, I feel SB Nation does a proper job of mixing online specific aspects (video, shorter, funnier stories) with news aspects (opinion pieces, hard news). They present it in a way that works with their medium without sacrificing quality.
Pete Volk JOUR352 