Three noteworth Reddit groups for hockey and sports fans

Reddit isn’t just a message board. It’s also not a dump-all marketing destination either. As a long time blogger, I didn’t deliberately try to mine traffic from Reddit because I didn’t want to be the one who posted any of my written-content from my days at Raw Charge on major subreddits. That’s ethics, though. I’ve turned that around in my time moderating on a subreddit devoted to hockey blogs. The subreddit /r/HockeyWriters is devoted to what is basically blog content and hockey authors. I’ve been the one (by way of content submissions from around the hockey blogosphere) to give the group some life.

Yet I can’t do it all. By that I mean I can’t be expected to post everything on the group.

HockeyWriters is there to highlight writing. I’m talking feature content from a more personal (and not trained professional a-la TSN, Fox Sports, ESPN, etc.) level. That means it’s a great place for those doing hockey blogging as a hobby to share one of their rants or coverage content (though I highly suggest not to post game coverage or standard news coverage from your blog). If you’re a hockey fan and Reddit user, it’s a worthwhile location if you’re looking for a wider array of reading and coverage about the NHL (and not just getting lost in video clips and Twitter quotes that so often runs the /r/Hockey subreddit).

I’ve actually spoken with hockey bloggers in the past about Reddit and some are intimidated by it as a content promotion destination because of the message-board element (read: Comments on links) that drives the site (that and the ratings-system). What gets said in comments shouldn’t be your concern as-so-much the click-thrus generated by posting links. Mind you, if you really don’t want criticism toward what you just wrote about, going to /r/hockey or a team subreddit is not a wise idea.

There’s another hockey-themed subreddit that’s notable for those creating content in the sport. If you do Podcasts or Videocasts/Vlog posts, /r/Hockey/Talk is a place where you can share links to your podcasts and video-clips. Mind you, /r/HockeyTalk has a very small following at this point (only 51 subscribers, though /r/hockeywriters isn’t much better with 125) but exposure is a plus and the more content posted on that group, the more people who cross it will join it.

Now, if you’re a general sports fan or you blog about hockey or the other major sports (baseball, basketball, football, soccer, tennis, etc) there’s another subreddit of relevance here that is also a dark horse when it comes to content and audience on Reddit: /r/Sports_Blogs covers … well, blogging in sports. I’ve seen this group used too often as a dump all (videos, news articles) and generally not feature coverage from the sports blogosphere. Perhaps that tells you enough to keep away from it as a reader or a content promoter? Hell, while this covers all sports blogging, it only has 268 members and no breakdown of what sports they hold dear (or how active they are reading posted content). All that said, it’s another avenue to consider using to promote sports blog content about teams or the wider leagues/sport.

One other highlight that all three subreddits have the makings of (if more content promoters participate) is networking. If more than one blogger is participating, working together to cross-promote their sites and perhaps their content might very well happen. Networking is an asset in the blogosphere and yet it seems to have vanished as most of the blogging done out there now is network drive.