Another season draws to a close albeit a short one for me following my ankle injury last summer. With the games coming to an end it’s time to take stock and look at the future of this project.
I just wanted to pen a short blog to let you know I am mulling over making a few changes for next season. This project has been great fun to do over the last four years and I’ve really enjoyed meeting and writing about so many fantastic people and clubs in the non-league set up but I think it might be time to make a few changes.
One of the reasons I started doing this was to help clubs that don’t receive a lot of coverage to get a little more via visiting and blogging about the experience usually with a match report on my website, and posting on social media. Unfortunately, figures have slowly been going downhill for the last couple of years now with interaction and engagement on social media a large part of that.
I don’t know if changes to the algorithm on X/Twitter have meant clubs I’ve been covering either no longer see posts or if they are just concentrating on their own social media projects, but a large number are no longer reposting or sharing blog reports, meaning interaction via the platform is plummeting.
Now at times it feels like I’m shouting into a black hole. With hosting, domain and other costs increasing every year to run the website (like everything else!), and uncertainty over my work situation, I’m asking myself whether I can justify keep it running as it currently is.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been posting my reports on a couple of non-league pages on Facebook and the interaction and number of visitors/views has outstripped those on X, a couple of weeks by nearly ten times! I’ll continue posting there for the remainder of the season to see if that trend carries on before making any further decisions.
With this in mind, I’m now exploring the possibility of opening a page on Facebook to add the pictures and blogs from my travels rather than continuing with the website or possibly posting my reports and photos on the other non-league Facebook pages, either way I’ll be relegating the X account to a secondary posting account. My contract for the website is not due for renewal until July so I still have plenty of time to take stock and fine tune any decisions going forward.
Alternatively, I could go to games just to watch and not write/report about them at all. This option would certainly save my hands from freezing during the winter months!
For the moment everything is currently on the table but I do need to think carefully about how best to continue going forward with interaction and engagement falling online.
One thing for certain is I’ll still be out wandering most weekends next season blogging or not, and, having reached a certain age, I now have a shiny new Senior Railcard which means I can get discounted rail fares throughout the UK (not just the South East), allowing me to visit many more new clubs! I’m planning more trips to the South West, pick off a few more Sussex & Kent clubs, and venture further north using the railcard.
You will likely still see my name around as I’ll still be producing reports or articles, possibly as a guest writer for other non-league outlets. If I do decide on not doing so much writing, I may potentially have some time available to take on a media type capacity at a local club if anyone needs any help.
As I said, as it stands, all options are still open and no decisions have been made just yet but I feel I’m likely to move away from keeping the website, post reports on Facebook or on other sites, and to move away from the X/Twitter platform as the main source of posting (using it only for planning games as it’s still the best site for non-league football in that respect).
Whichever direction I decide to take, it’s been an absolute blast visiting so many wonderful clubs and meeting some remarkable people along the way, so thank you all so much for being so supportive and the clubs being so welcoming over the past four years. It has genuinely been a pleasure. I hope to visit many more in the future!
I’ll give you an update once we hit July and hopefully I’ll have decided on a new direction by then!
On to the next chapter…
Cheers!
Dave
