This latest Client Spotlight features, SportzHype, a community for passionate sports enthusiasts. Launched only a few months ago, this budding sports community is the place to catchup on the latest news about your favorite team, trash-talk your fiercest rival and engage with other rabid sports-fans.
We got to sit down and talk with the founder of SportzHype about his up and coming community, and here’s what he had to say:
What inspired you to create SportzHype?
SportzHype: I have always been intrigued by social networking all the way back to the Myspace days, and really fell in love with Facebook because of how SIMPLE it used to be to use. It was really easy to scan through images, talk to friends etc. But overtime it became complicated and slightly overwhelming, and to be honest I rather just focus on what I enjoy. I came across Pinterest one day but it was too much for me as I was not into food or fashion, but I loved the simpleness of it all along with the overall layout. As you can tell by SportzHype I am a big sports fan, and I know millions of people across the world are too. As I searched for other sites like Pinterest that had to do with sports, I couldn’t find any. They were all focused on design, fashion, food, but none to do with sports. So SportzHype was born! A place where Sports Fans can share photos, news, videos, and follow individuals with similar interests.
How did you go about attracting your first members?
SportzHype: Honestly, at this point I am focused on filling the site with content, as sports fans will come to the site and search for players, teams, stories they want to know about but as for our first members, I’m using Social Networking to it’s fullest (Twitter, Facebook, blogs) and word of mouth. Just three weeks ago, we were nobody and our Alexa rating was over 4 million and now we have slipped below 2 million, a huge step. Nonetheless, we’re not anywhere near where we want to be, but as you all know it takes time to fine tune something before it really catches on.
What are the most popular posts? Have you found any recurring themes?
SportzHype: The posts that we have seen so far are really revolved around photos of favorite players and or popular sports stories being talked about that day.
Are you working with any 3rd party developers or is this a homemade operation?
SportzHype: It’s mainly homemade, but I do work with a developer to help me fine-tune and make changes as we grow.
What made you decide to use SocialEngine Cloud?
SportzHype: I have actually used SocialEngine PHP in the past, but what I was working on did not work out due to uncontrollable reasons. It was a lot to manage especially for a person like myself with no real development experience. SocialEngine Cloud allowed me to have a “frame” to build upon overtime, almost cookie-cutterish but very much customizable.
Do you have any advice to other SocialEngine Cloud users out there that are just starting out?
SportzHype: The biggest piece of advice I can give is be patient and understand it will take time to build a community. We are in a generation of instant gratification but with something like this you have to use trial and error and make it your own! Don’t allow outside opinion impact your vision on what you want to see become of your future community.
What’s next for SportzHype?
SportzHype: What is next for SportzHype is to be able to grow a user base, retain them (digest e-mails will help to a certain extent), and customize the site slowly but surely to make it SIMPLE and user friendly for Sports Fans across the world. In a fantasy world, I would love to blow up and be the next Pinterest for Sports, but only time will tell how truly successful we will become.
Anything else you want to share?
SportzHype: My personal opinion for anyone creating any community is to make it simple, change is good but it can’t overwhelm the user. Use all the tools you are provided by SocialEngine to grow as big as you want, as I am sure the bigger you get the more SocialEngine will help as they have with us.
Join SportzHype today and get involved!
