Around MLB.com Blogs – Baseball Is Back
HAPPY SPRING TRAINING!
Welcome to SF Giants Photos, a blog launched a couple of weeks ago by Missy and Suzanna in the Giants’ Photography department. As you can see already, it will be a blast to follow.
Congrats to my colleague Britt Ghiroli on her second anniversary today as our MLB.com beat reporter covering the Orioles. She talks about it in Britt’s Bird Watch.
Welcome MLB.com columnist and MLB Network studio analyst Mitch Williams to MLB.com Blogs. Wild Things promises to have a lot of opinion from the former World Series closer, so jump right in and leave him comments.
If you love to blog, then you probably also have a Tumblr. Be sure you are following Drawn to MLB – the official Tumblr of Major League Baseball. We started it here at MLB Advanced Media around the Super Bowl and so far the response has been pretty incredible.
Check out The Brewer Nation‘s regular series, Brewers by the (Jersey) Number. Great idea…might want to do that with your team!
Mariners fans love their new front-office blog, which is now renamed as From the Corner of Edgar & Dave.
David Rhode and our friends at Pitch In For Baseball have relaunched their blog in a big way, updated with timely posts that take you inside their important organization. PIFB gets new or gently used baseball equipment to communities in need, and I encourage anyone reading this to get involved in a really great cause.
New Phillies Ballgirls, new trading cards, new post.
Thanks to our buddy Tommy Lasorda for posting all those pictures from last weekend’s big Latino Baseball Hall of Fame ceremony in the Dominican Republic, including the ones with him and Bernie Williams and Bobby V et al. In case we don’t say this enough, everyone should know that Tommy saved the first-ever MLB.com Blogs post back in April 18, 2005 — a tribute to his friend Jackie Robinson. We have all literally been following Tommy ever since.
Keith Olbermann’s Baseball Nerd is always around the top of our MLB.com Latest Leaders, but in case you are not on top of things there lately, check in and see what KO had to say about the batter who allegedly ran to third base, and also his post about Steve Carlton 40 years ago.
Fantasy draft chatter is pretty hot. Make sure you subscribe to MLB Fantasy 411 and Bloomberg Sports blogs here unless for some reason you don’t want an edge in your league.
How is your MLB.com Blog going? Please let us know in the comments and always be sure to include your full URL there so we can easily click on it and follow you over there. Help us surface cool blogs by bringing them to our attention in the comments here as well. And remember to sign up for MLB.TV so you will blog smarter than everyone else.
Around the MLB.com Blogs
We’re waiting on a sunny day, just like the author of Blue Batting Helmet. Pitchers and catchers will be reporting to Arizona and Florida shortly; MLB.com & top blogger Jonathan Mayo just released our 2012 Prospect Watch; the Super Bowl will lead right into our Fantasy rankings; Prince Fielder is joining the Tigers; there are no obvious favorites for the 2012 World Series; and there is more to blog about than ever as a Major League Baseball fan.
How’s everyone doing out here in MLB.com Blogs country? I wanted to check in before heading down to Florida later today for a vaca including my second Miami Marathon on Sunday (a very sunny day, hopefully not too much humidity!). We’ll be back midweek to present you with the first monthly installment of Latest Leaders. It has been great to see so many people apply the MLB.com Blogs Top 100 badge to their own MLBlogs after such hard work in 2011, and we have already seen some great new blogs start up that are sure to make the 2012 list. I just expanded the Comments list to the right and as you can see I hope you will always leave your full URL within any comment — use this technique to get people like me to your blog, and please go through their comments and look for other blogs.
Want to see a Tim Lincecum-Prince Fielder matchup in late October? Our friend Emily of Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend just posted a what-if about a Giants-Tigers World Series, so tell her what you think. Kevin of WestSide Culture vows in those comments that he “will be atop that list in 2012, starting now.” He just made the switch to an MLB theme (thanks!), which is necessary to be tallied for Latest Leaders page view search. We plan to update our themes soon and I’ll give a headsup whenever that date gets closer.
Jenn is coming up on her fourth anniversary of blogging at Phillies Phollowers and you can get some nice widget tips from her, such as incorporating your own Facebook page. It’s easy to drag the Facebook Like widget from your Dashboard, like I also did here to the right and below. Just go to Appearance –> Widgets. Another Top 100 Phillies blog is from Michael at The Phanatic Addict and you can see how he set up a favorite blogs Link set, including Jenn, which is what reminded us to check in on Phillies Phollowers. Be nice to others and you will benefit.
From the Corner of Edgar & Dave is the brand-new blog of the Seattle Mariners PR department, and despite launching in mid-month it is tracking as the No. 5 PRO blog right now and has a pretty good chance to go on to become the top overall blog into the season at MLB.com Blogs. Why? Check it out if you haven’t. It has been fun working with Jeff and the crew there as they take it very seriously and seek out feedback on what people like. Copy their widget techniques — the best I have seen since we switched to WordPress.com! Think of From the Corner of Edgar & Dave as a part of Mariners.com — a great club site.
March is my 10th anniversary with Major League Baseball Advanced Media, and probably my favorite photog in the business through that time has been Jon SooHoo — the official photographer of the Los Angeles Dodgers. It is a joy viewing his photo galleries on Dodgers.com, and his Top 100 blog known as Dodgers Photog Blog is back better than ever. Check out his posts from the past week and consider subscribing to his blog so you see whenever he posts. These are great shots — even worth a Pinterest board. Jon appreciates feedback very much and I encourage you to please leave comments there on what you’d like to see from him.
MLB.com has the only traveling network of 30 beat reporters and there are some ongoing changes in beat assignments that you’ll want to know about. The list is to the right here and all the writers involved have used their blogs to discuss their moves for 2012. Alden Gonzalez now covers the Angels, Jen Langosch is moving over to the Cardinals to replace our first-ever MLB.com beat reporter/blogger, Matthew Leach, who has a new MLB.com gig coming up. Longtime MLB national writer Tom Singer is returning to his roots in Pittsburgh to replace Jen on the Pirates beat. We wish them all the best in their new roles and look forward to more great blogging!
In 2012, you will see more really cool changes as we continue to advance with the times. Part of that will be a way to find a lot of MLB.com Blogs through shares, likes and popularity. We’re discussing a number of aggregators we like — Punchfork, for example — and I would really love to hear from YOU in the comments here. How should MLB.com surface and showcase our MLBlogs? Included would be (only) any blogs started at MLB.com/blogs and any of the millions of WordPress.com bloggers who choose our MLB themes. Hey, we all have Facebook and Twitter, but you need a baseball blog for more long-form thoughts. Our widgets allow you to integrate it all.
For anyone who has joined us since last May, here was the relaunch post after our MLBAM deal with WordPress.com. Reminder that WP handles support for our MLB.com Blogs community, so you may use this community blog for anything you wish but use their support link for fast action on any issues or questions. Have fun blogging and look for the next installment of Latest Leaders right here after we test out an IT Band issue over 26.2 miles of South Beach, Coconut Grove and other great places.
New arrivals
Please welcome Larry Dierker to the MLB.com/blogs community. He just saved his first post at Dierk’s Dugout. The longtime Astros manager and pitcher commands a lot of respect among baseball fans and especially folks around Houston. See what he has to say about the Astros’ 2013 move to the AL West. Please be sure to leave Dierk some comments and questions so he can comment back. He’s using the WordPress.com Dashboard just like you and me, and so does fellow former pitcher Jim Kaat.
Two words: Hot Stove. It is the same year-round blog at mlb.mlblogs.com that is maintained by MLB.com reporters, and it heats up before the Trade Deadline and throughout the Hot Stove season. This is the best source of buzz, from the only network of 30 traveling MLB club beat reporters — plus an army of other contributors from around MLB.com. Please be sure to follow it by entering your email. Tracker is here.
Alden Gonzalez sits right next to me here at the Major League Baseball Advanced Media HQ in Manhattan, and I can personally attest that he just hit “Publish” on a post about his conversation with Jerry Reinsdorf. See what the White Sox owner has to say about realignment and playoffs, and please be sure you are subscribed as a regular follower of Alden’s Gonzo and ‘The Show’ — always good insights.
I just posted a review to our official MLB.com Books Blog. See what you think and remember that anyone can add a review to that blog. Got a baseball book that you just read and want to review it? Either leave the review in comments here or let me know and we can post it there for you. If you’re a baseball book author and want reviewed, give a heads-up here also, please.
If you don’t have an MLBlog of your own, then what are you waiting for? Go to MLB.com/blogs and start your own — it’s easy! Got any questions about MLB.com blogging? Want more people to see what you’re posting? Always leave tons of comments here and remember to type your full URL as an obvious breadcrumb back to your blog. See you in the next MLBlogs Latest Leaders at the start of December!
Happy Birthday to Jim Kaat
Want to wish 2012 Hall of Fame candidate Jim Kaat a Happy 73rd Birthday? Just go to his comments on his MLBlog and tell him. Kaat, winner of 283 games, just four fewer than 2011 inductee and fellow longtime Twins pitcher Bert Blyleven, is looking forward to hearing from his blog readers. Stop by Kaat’s Korner now!
Now blogging, Jim Kaat
I hope everyone in the MLBlogs community will join me in welcoming the great Jim Kaat as our newest blogger. Jim wanted an outlet to express his thoughts about what’s going on this Postseason and beyond, and in typical Kitty Kaat fashion he pulls no punches. Kaat writes in his first post that he thought Jon Lester and Josh Beckett had “scouting-reportitis” — worrying about the batters and trying to avoid contact. In contrast, he raves about the Carp-Halladay duel as a textbook example of how to be in charge with a quick pace and be almost oblivious to whatever body in a uniform happens to be standing in the batter’s box. Get familiar with this 283-game winner’s MLBlog and be sure to say hi to him, ask any questions, and leave your own URL as a breadcrumb so other commenters can find you. Happy postseason blogging…
Use Publicize to help grow your crowd
One of the great features that came with our transition to WordPress.com this season is the Publicize tool for social media promotion. Be sure you have it activated to take advantage of more no-brainer traffic. Use Publicize to send out a new status update or tweet every time you make a new post to your blog, so your friends, followers and connections can stay up to date with your blogging about Major League Baseball.
Setting it up is simple in your dashboard. Create a connection under Sharing, found in the Settings menu. Once you have given WordPress.com permission to access your account on the other side, you will notice a Publicize section has been added to the Publish box when you are composing or editing a post, showing where the post is to be publicized. And it is fully customizable. You can choose to not publicize an individual post or to only publicize on a particular social media site. You can even customize the text of the status update or tweet if you want to explain a little about the post.
If you want to get onto the MLB.com/blogs Latest Leaders rankings for August, or want to try to run away from the pack, this is another good idea. There are many more ways to increase traffic as well. Be sure to comment on other MLBlogs routinely, always typing your full URL within the comment as it stands out more as a clickable ID. Post often, and obviously well. Make sure you About identification is prominent on the first screen, using the Gravatar or other method of display to show who you are. Give them a subscribe widget so they can get your posts by email. Experiment, and ask others who are in the monthly Latest Leaders how they do it.
Also, remember that you can order a JUMBO presentation of your MLBlog at MLB.com/blogs — the kind of specific baseball-crowd advertisement that only MLB.com can deliver. Just follow those specific instructions we gave you to do that, as others have done.
Make my MLBlog a Jumbo!
Want to be featured on the Jumbo panel at MLB.com/blogs and draw a crowd?
If you’d like to see your blog considered for promotion on one of the six panels there, it’s as easy as 1-2-3. Here’s what you can do:
1. Create a new post for your blog explaining why you should be featured.
2. In the post, include an image at least 480 pixels wide, preferably with your face visible.
3. Give the post the “Jumbo MLBlogs” tag.
We hope to see you on the front page!
Around the MLB.com blogs
Speaking of hot…make sure you are all over the Trade Buzz Blog. It’s our hottest blog and interest is spiking hourly now, with six-figure daily traffic expected in the final days. All 30 traveling MLB.com beat reporters post to it with what they are hearing leading up to the July 31 Trading Deadline, plus a roundup. You can subscribe to it, and also remember that all 30 of the MLB.com beat reporters have their own individual MLBlogs as well. Stay subscribed to this one, because after the season it morphs back into the Hot Stove blog. PRO BLOGS >
Did you see what The Pittsburgh Peas posted this week? Sometimes a picture says it all.
Check out the nice promo Russel got for his Wrigley Regular blog. Feel free to request something along those lines in the comments here, and we’ll see what we can do. One upside of our relaunch this season was the expansion from one to six panels on the MLB.com/blogs media wall.
To answer Catherine and BlueJaysNest among others in the comments, we are working on bringing back a Recently Active Blogs list and hope to hear something on that during the second half of this season. I was told before the All-Star break that this will be doable. Please post lots of comments here, and feel free to do so every time you post. It’s another way people can see you.
Thanks for all the (impassioned) discussion about the Latest Leaders. All points well-taken. In a perfect world you would have this awesome WordPress.com dashboard plus the ability to experiment with all the WP themes and always be tracked for Latest Leaders traffic. Alas, you need to keep the MLB theme for us to be able to measure your page views, otherwise you are part of the millions of WP blogs at that point and MLB Advanced Media cannot track your traffic. Other great benefits of having WordPress.com as our partner is their blog support for you (MLB.com customer service does not support MLBlogs), and the overall promotion of Baseball, with so many WordPress.com bloggers finding our themes. Some of those will make their way into Latest Leaders going forward as the community evolves.
We keep an updated roster of MLB players on Twitter. There’s a blog for that.
Tell us about some great MLBlogs you have seen lately…
How MLB.com bloggers are using new features
One of the many great things about our new WordPress.com blogs is the enhanced ability to customize your MLBlog’s look and feel. A number of you already have done some extensive work on your blogs, and we wanted to highlight some examples for those still getting a feel for the new platform.
Phillies Phollowers is a good example of the wide variety of widgets now available. Same with The Heirloom.
Links are handled slightly differently than in the past, and we are seeing some great use of Link widgets in your sidebars. Strictly Cubs Baseball is one such example of good use of the Link widget to highlight favorite blogs, while This is a very simple game takes it even a step further, categorizing the blog links by division.
Kaybee of Unfinished Business is one of the MLBloggers who has integrated her blog with her Twitter account. World Series 41, Rangers Fan 1 put a poll widget in his sidebar for readers to weigh in with their votes.
On the multimedia front, 2131 and Beyond! is showing what you can do with photos in WordPress.com, while the guys at Red State Blue State are kings of all media with their videos and podcasts.
Finally, a number of you have discovered the wide variety of non-MLB themes available out there. Ashley’s West Coast FanGirl, The Phanatic Addict, Prose and Ivy and Yankees Chick are three great examples of this. And if you want to see an amazing customization job, check out The 1 Constant.
Got any others you want me to include here? Please leave the URL in comments and I’ll check. Also be on the lookout for Latest Leaders to see which blogs are most-viewed.
If you do decide to go with a non-MLB theme, we strongly suggest taking a page from Matt at The Cardinal’s Base and linking back to MLB.com/blogs and/or to this community blog, as you will lose that red MLBlogs Network navigational ribbon atop the MLB themes. And we again welcome all you pre-existing WordPress.com bloggers who have just discovered our new MLB themes. Happy blogging!
Status update on photos and storage
All or nearly all of the photos on fan MLBlogs have been restored, a final step in the conversion process as outlined in previous posts. Thanks for your patience.
We have made sure that you have enough storage space to continue posting photos on your blog. This was very important in advance planning, as you can look through our Latest Leaders and see many examples of blogs that have great photo usage, like Crzblue’s Dodger Blue World, Rockpile Ranter, MLB groundskeeping guru Murray Cook and Cook & Son Bats’ Blog.
The default storage limitation on WordPress.com is 3GB, standard for their many millions of bloggers. To check your current storage status in your dashboard, go to Appearance –> Media. This was not an issue for all but a small handful of the thousands we converted.
For anyone who will require further space, the first tier of paid storage is 5GB. The next tier is 15GB. See the Space Upgrade page for more details, part of the FAQ for MLBloggers you were presented here after the relaunch was announced on Monday. And reminder to go here if you need MLBlogs Support.
Did you see what Prose and Ivy or Yankees Chick or By Gosh, It’s Langosch have done with their MLBlogs?
Will approve all constructive comments on this community blog. Thanks for all the feedback (also for those who commented on Paul’s post), and please keep it coming. Also please do share in comments any tips you feel are useful for your fellow MLBloggers in utilizing the new functionality. It’s cool to see so many people enjoying the infinitely upgraded capabilities, and we’ll have the April Latest Leaders up asap, probably later tonight. Be sure to check and see if you ranked among the most-viewed MLBlogs, and also see to the right here about how to have your MLBlog spotlighted in this space over coming days!
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