Writers

A: Why do any of us write about football? It's because we are in love. We have a deep, irrational, unhealthy obsession with a group of grown men kicking a ball. We also have an enormous amount of knowledge and expertise about football that we would like to share with others. And therein lies the rub. It's easy for those of us with firmly held beliefs about our favorite team to wax eloquent about substitution patterns or underperforming superstars, but the hard part is finding an audience who wants to listen and participate in the discussion. That's where we come in.

FTBpro is the largest fan generated media platform in global football. If you write compelling articles about your team, we'll share it with the relevant FTBpro communities and it’ll get read by thousands of fans (if not many more). You supply your opinions, and we'll supply the audience. Finally, you'll be able to get the exposure, recognition and gratification of being a real sports writer.

In addition to receiving fanfare on FTBpro, feel free to add a link to your Twitter account and/or Facebook page and start collecting followers there as well. If you already have a blog and are looking for more readers, with just a few easy steps we can enter into a long and mutually beneficial relationship (see: ‘What if I already have a blog?’ below). And we don't ask for chocolates or roses.

Q: What qualifies as an article?

A: In order for our editors to share your writing on our Facebook and Twitter communities, and feature it on FTBpro.com, we ask that your posts meet a few basic guidelines.

• Articles must be at least 200 words long (300-500 words are ideal).
• The contents of the article must be your original thoughts (no copy/pasting or plagiarism).
• The article must have correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.
• We strongly recommend that you add an image or video by using our image bank or uploading your own.

It's that simple! If your article meets these guidelines and is interesting and well-written we’ll post it to our Facebook/Twitter pages and it will be featured prominently on FTBpro.

Writer of the month:

Gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded to the top writers for each team in a calendar month. Once you've won a gold medal for being a Writer of the Month, you will have entered the FTBpro pantheon of top writers forever. This medal, as well as any badges you've won, will be displayed on your Pro Page for all to see and covet. Writer of the Month medal winners will also be featured on our Team Pages.

Q: This all sounds great, how do I start posting?

A: It’s simple - Just follow a few simple steps:
• Sign up (Facebook connect button, top right) and pick a team.
• Click ‘Write an Article’ or use the pencil & pad icon in the header.
• Start writing!

Picking a topic:

• Picking an interesting subject is a good start. The amount of potential article subjects you can think of is limitless. You are likely to have the most success with the following topics:
• Transfer News
• Best Ever, Worst Ever, Top 5, Top 10 Lists. (These are easily made using our 'Best or Worst List' Template)
• Controversial Topics (ex: goal line technology, homophobia/racism in football, etc)
• Manager Analysis
• Tactical Analysis

A few other important things to keep in mind:

• To qualify as an article and have stats count towards the writer leaderboard competition your post must have 200+ words. 300-500 words is the optimal word count for most articles and will give your post a better chance of being shared to our social networks.
• Add a related image. Only posts with images get shared.
• Posts must achieve a certain level of grammatical and spelling accuracy to be featured on FTBpro.com and our social networks. Please proofread your articles closely before pressing "Publish".

Q: Why does an article need to have 200+ words? What happens if I write an article with less than 200 words?

A: If your article contains less than 200 words it will be published as a status. It's hard to express a well thought out opinion in less than 200 words. In order for our editors to be able to publish your article to our pages, it must be well-written, grammatically accurate and long enough to fully express an opinion or piece of news. If you do elect to publish a post that is less than 200 words long it will appear as a "Status", which means it is shown in your stream and gets shared with your followers.

Q: What if I already have a blog?

A: Connect it to auto-publish on FTBpro! It's easy peasy. Send us your blog's RSS at Care@ftbpro.com with a short message introducing yourself and your blog and we'll do the rest. If your blog is up to snuff we'll begin auto-publishing your articles on FTBpro.com and sharing them with our massive community to get you as many reads at possible.

Have more questions? Drop us a line at care@ftbpro.com and we’ll get back to you ASAP.