NextGoalWinner Update
NextGoalWinner has now been up and running since April 2020 when, purely out of lockdown boredom and a desire to do something creative, I decided to buy a domain and learn how to write a blog. With no technical knowledge at all to work from, and little more than an English GCSE (A* I will say however), I decided to get to work, noting ideas from football and football culture that I wanted to talk about. Often merging the tactical and game analysis side of football, with silly quizzes and discussions of merchandise, kits and everything in-between. I love doing this blog, and although it takes a lot of free time to maintain as a 1 man operation, and often with little reward (averaging a handful of readers daily), I will not be giving up anytime soon.
So, why the update?
Well, basically everything I said about it taking time to maintain, monitor and produce, that’s taken a toll in 2023 so far, and as a result I’m sitting on about 30 half-finished posts from earlier in the year. My first goal is to get them up, so the website remains consistent and complete. Secondly, I want to throw myself in even further with this thing, and will be upping my production and output even more for the upcoming season ahead.
With updates for NextGoalWinner.com, the social channels (do follow us if you don’t already), and bigger plans in the pipeline also, this season is our season, and I’d like as many readers in for the ride.
Please do always leave any feedback (be it good or bad) on the blog, the creative style, the social posts or just anything you see of ours. This whole thing is a lesson for myself, so any feedback is always appreciated.
Blog Update
Firstly, as we mentioned in the intro section, there is a backlog of half-complete, or drafted posts from the previous season. I know the sensible approach would be to ditch these and move on, but my OCD and organisational need for perfection won’t let me do that, so I will be working on those in the background these next few months. As will be discussed more in the social section, sorry for the spammed posts as we play ‘catch up’, but it’s now up to date and will continue to share our most recent and up to date content.
Along with those ‘background’ posts to come, this season and from this blog post onwards, there will be 3 posts every week. From our previous Monday and Friday output, I have also decided to throw in a Wednesday post. These will be centred around matchday reviews each week, match reports/breakdowns of tactics or transfers, and generally some silliness like our ‘Who Are Ya?’ quizzes and the like.
As part of this increase of posting, I will also be focussing on the matches, latest news and transfer speculation from Manchester United. I can already hear the groans from most of the football community, but they are my teams (whether I like it or not), and I have always wanted to be able to have a space on this blog for that. My hope is that if 1 post out of 3 per week is based on United, then other readers will still get the 2 usual posts alongside so nobody loses. Hopefully this will be interesting no matter who you support, as the match reports will breakdown the games throughout the season, breaking news on areas like the takeover and various other off-field issues, and transfer speculation.
The final point on the posts especially, is that I would love to collaborate with other football creators who want a space to write about the game, or a specific story that interests them. These will hopefully be featured later in the season, but NextGoalWinner has always been a space where I will take any stories you want to put out and give you the space to do so. These would be open to anyone and just reach out on social media to let us know if you’re interested.
One of the biggest changes you will see to the look of the whole blog, is the images used for each post. Previously, I have enjoyed putting together little drawings for each post of players, managers and moments, however the time it took to make these was almost as long as it takes to write certain posts, and after looking at some of the previous works, I wasn’t thrilled with the whole style of it. Instead we’re moving to a style more similar to the Instagram posts we have had previously. Hopefully these keep the blog in a certain theme and style that you all appreciate.
There will be further changes and updates throughout the year/season, most of which won’t be a huge change to the reader, but hopefully everything that gets tweaked improves the blog as a whole, and perhaps even attracts a few newcomers along the way.
Socials
Over on social media, we have our Twitter account which we will aim to grow into a more interactive place, posting regular updates from the blog, commenting on various football stories and engaging in discussions with other football fans on the key issues. This platform is one that has been fairly consistent even when the blog fell behind, but I’d love to grow further and make the profile more interesting for all who follow.
Instagram is our main area of improvement. There has been the huge backlog of posts on there from old posts and just getting it up to date, but this has been done so now it will be more up to date, interesting and almost a form of short-form blog content as the posts discuss our content on NextGoalWinner.com, but also little stories and points of interest that pop up in the week. Each week, the target will be 6 Instagram posts, and 6/7 stories each week, including our football playlist series, player profiles and also tracking the FPL progress of my team this season.
Finally, there will be an introduction of NextGoalWinner to Threads, just as soon as I get around to starting that up. It will be likely similar content to Twitter but again hopefully can be used as a platform to interact with other football fans on the latest stories. Keep an eye out for this in the next week or so.
And Beyond…
NextGoalWinner isn’t just a blog and social channel however. Since we started the blog really, I have an Etsy store where I produce and create football-related greetings cards for most occasions. They are fairly reasonably priced and handmade. I also take any customisation requests for specific designs or messages on the card, so head over to Etsy and check those out if you haven’t already. There will be weekly new designs added and all products will be shared on to social media for those interested.
I also have some longer term plans to get the NextGoalWinner YouTube page up and running this season also. I know this space is crammed as it is, but I believe I can put together some interesting content on there which I hope to do in the next few months. As with all of this, I am learning on the job, so video production, filming and editing will come as part of that hopefully also. If anyone knows anything about this area and has tips or knowledge to share, hit me up on social media and let’s have a chat. This could potentially lead to future collaborations, podcasts and a few travel related ideas I have in the pipeline, but for now I’ll leave it there.
Once again, as I mentioned at the start this is a one man operation (although I often write ‘we’) when I have little knowledge of this whole writing, content, social space and all the bits involved here. Any comments, interactions or feedback goes a long way, and thank you to those who read this stuff, I know there are thousands of others talking on the same topics/issues etc, so thanks for hearing me out on this.
Take care, keep reading and bring on the new season.