I received an email from one of our soccer tournaments yesterday, asking if we would put one of those soccer news feeds every other soccer Web site has in the sidebar or on the front page. The logic, he said, was that visitors would stay on the page longer reading the news and that is a good thing for sponsors.
Despite the conventional wisdom of these news feeds making pages sticky, they only really serve to “fill up space” for web sites that have a hard time coming up with fresh material. TourneyCentral soccer tournament sites don’t have that problem as there is always something going on.
Keep this in mind; Teams at a soccer tournament care about their games and their scores. The best way to serve your advertisers is to put them in the DEALS area and plug them. Even then, you’re only going to get major traffic at your deadline, when you accept teams, publish the schedule, directly before the tournament and during for scores. (and to the rules page when teams start losing on tiebreakers but that is a whole other article 😉 )
You are a DESTINATION site. Visitors go to your site for one reason only, to participate in your soccer tournament, i.e., apply, get scores, standings, deals, etc.
All this other stuff is just a distraction, clutter and more stuff to maintain that adds absolutely no value whatsoever. It is the same with online games, “engagement tools” like a spirit center, even photo uploads. If it did add value and it would help you monetize, we would already be doing it. It is in our best interest to generate page views as well.
Our Advice: You are better off writing news about YOUR tournament. Publish that on the front page and publish often. Engage with your teams by email when a significant event happens. (significant to them, not you.) And always be thinking when writing your news items, “What’s in it for my guests?” If you can’t come up with an answer that you would believe yourself, pass.