When Jerod came to me as a new employee with the idea of creating a sports blog so that he could have a testing ground for his passions around both social media and SEO, I said, sure.  What is amazing is that this blog has grown from an experimental project to a heard voice in online sports.  18 months later, the site has accomplished more than either of us would have imagined in our wildest dreams.  With Jerod’s leadership, this sports blog dedicated to Midwest sports has reached the 2 million page view mark, has over 16,000 total pages and 3,614 hand written posts, was in the Top 100 most popular sites on Digg.Com for February of 2010, has been featured on ESPN, referenced by hundreds of newspapers, featured on the front page of The Huffington Post, and has more front page appearances on Digg for this month than Yahoo Sports, CNN, and ESPN.  In 2009 it broke the Top 50 sports blog list.

MidwestSportsFans.Com has been hitting on all eight cylinders ever since the Spring of last year.  With only 6 months of traction as a blog on the Internet, Midwest Sports Fans was a prominent source of Internet information for March Madness 2009.  The single highest source of page views on the blog was last year’s March Madness preview post having over 60,000 page views.  This weekend, Jerod set out to break records as he posted the March Madness 2010 preview post on MidwestSportsFans.Com.

March Madness is always a crazy time of year and it is evident from the search and interactivity online.  I’m excited about our preview coverage on MidwestSportsFans.Com and am looking forward to keep with the content that Jerod creates!

Jerod congrats on your accomplishments with Midwest Sports Fans and at Orangecast!

(Oh, and did I mention that in 18 months he went from “employee” status to having an equity stake in the business?  The power of blogging. . . .)

As I wrote in my March 29th, 2008 Post, “From Consumer Vigilantes to Freedom from Communism“, Social Media has enabled individuals with a powerful voice.  In some cases they are outright aggressive against companies and individuals that frustrate them.  I’ve also reviewed The Communications Decency Act and how its protections really foster edgier content on the Internet.  Recently, I learned of an interesting site that pretty much calls out Angry Bloggers via posts that are a nice combination of facts and subjective opinion.  My introduction to the site, which is relatively new, is because one of my company’s bloggers got called out on it for a post about an Acai Berry Scandal.  The site is called The Angry Blogger .

The Angry Blogger calls out everything from blogs that are dedicated to “angry blogging” to individual posts that show a little hostility about something.  There are four major classifications of which the funniest is the Tasmanian Devil which is reserved for bloggers who make a lot of noise but really don’t have much of a readership.  It is based on the Buggs Bunny Cartoon character.  Though the overall theme and light humored approach to the site is interesting, I think there are a couple of take-aways.

Advice For Bloggers

When content hits the Internet, it syndicates and is generally there to stay.  There is nothing wrong in using a blog or other form of social media to get a point across.  However, if the post goes viral and ends up getting TV coverage or other media attention, you’ll want your post or your blog to withstand the scrutiny.  Be proud of what you write.  A couple of tips for doing so are:

• Write well researched content.
• Tell both sides of the story
• Give the other party a chance to comment prior to publishing your post.
• Understand your civil liabilities

Advice For Marketers

If you are a marketer and angry content is posted on the web about your company, brand, or an executive, have a planned approach.  Unthought out responses and retaliation can often cause more harm than good.  A couple of tips are:

• Determine whether the blog has “share of voice” or is a Tasmanian Devil.  Is anybody listening to the blogger?
• Reach out via phone or email versus the comment section of the blog.
• Do not attack in your responses but provide factual based content with useful links and information that support your response.
• Ensure you have Google alerts set on the key terms (brand, company name, etc) so that you know where this content has spread to.
• Don’t combat belligerence.
• Admit room for improvement where the criticism is accurate. (after consulting legal counsel for potential liability from the admission)

Though I think the Angry Blogger is a funny little site that takes a humorous approach to calling out anger in social media, it does puzzle me a little bit as to why social media has to go down the angry path.  I hope Twitter doesn’t go down that path as it is way to dynamic a community and will likely result in the equivilent of an Internet bar fight!