Lakers Nation

Lakers Nation, originally uploaded by foxsports.

GARY@LAKERSNATION.COM

Hi Jim,

Here are the answers to your questions along with an attached image. Thanks again for the opportunity!

Gary

1. LakersNation.com started off as a Twitter account, @LakersNation back in September 2008. The world was going crazy over Twitter and I initially used it to learn more about Twitter and share my thoughts and some news articles I would discover my daily surfing on the internet. Being relatively competitive compared to most people, naturally I wanted to be the best Lakers Twitter account, but I needed to find an angle at which I could separate myself from the pack.

Chick Hearn has always been a great inspiration of mine, and I've always missed his play-by-play of Lakers games. So, I decided to channel my inner Chick (along with watching a lot of YouTube clips) and take Chick's famous "Words Eye View" into Web 2.0 by doing a play-by-play Twittercast.

This is when the Twitter account really took off, going from two thousand followers to ten thousand by the time we were partying at the Coliseum! With over 75% of my users following the Twittercasts on their mobile devices, I had accomplished my goal of turning mobile devices into Chick's version of the AM radio. People were following the ebb and flow of the game during awkward dates, graduations, and unavoidable family dinners and joining this virtual sports bar of chatter. It was also a way for people from around the world, from the Philippines and South Africa to the UK, Hong Kong, and Australia, to tune in to our Twittercasts.

I realized I had to finally make a blog, so in June of 2009 I tried to create a social networking site called mylakersnation.com, which didn't do too well. I decided to then launch LakersNation.com along with our Facebook Fan Page in August of 2009.

Our goal with the site was to write original content based on the pulse of Lakers Nation. Having the Twitter account and ever growing Facebook account allowed us to know what Lakers fans wanted to know more about. If there was ever any breaking news, we would post it on our Facebook and Twitter so that we could bring it to them, instead of asking them to come to us. This proved to be a successful strategy as we have been growing ever since, going from zero to eighteen thousand Facebook fans in less than six months. Our Twitter account also exploded, swelling to almost seventeen thousand followers. With the combination of our impressive Facebook and Twitter following we can proudly claim that we are the largest Lakers Fan Site in social media!




2. I don't think there are that many misconceptions about bloggers anymore. Blogging has really gone mainstream with sites like HuffingtonPost.com and PerezHilton.com dominating the news. If anything, people are amazed at how I can have a full time job and do this website on the side. Well, I'm not going to lie, there have been a lot of passionated people that volunteer their time with LakersNation.com. There is no way I could do this all by myself, and they all deserve a lot of the credit behind putting this site together, and keeping it running.

3. The thing that truly separates us from other blogs is that we utilize our Facebook and Twitter communities extensively. With the passing of Chick Hearn in 2002, I really felt that someone needed to try and carry the torch in bringing together Lakers fans from all over the world, much less Los Angeles. We have over 35 thousand fans and followers from all over the globe, which by far outnumbers any other Lakers fan site out there.

4. Yes, I currently work for an entertainment company. My job allows me to learn more and more about Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, so I feel lucky to be able to work on things that continuously help make LakersNation.com better and better.

5. The main advice I would give is to make sure you really love the subject you want to blog about. Passion is key, and it is hard to keep up with a site unless you truly care about the subject. Next, I would get a pad and pencil and really sit down and think about what you want your blog to look like, and what you would like to talk about. My suggestion is to surf the internet and take queues from sites you find aesthetically pleasing, then take a crack at drawing it out. After that I would write down ten blog post ideas and then get to writing them. If anything, this will show you how much you really want to start the blog, while at the same time giving you a ten blog buffer so you're not always crammed to think of new blog ideas. Just know that I'm always willing to help aspiring bloggers, so I always welcome anyone to ask questions about blogging.

If you're just wondering about the difference between TLN
and us, I can answer that real quick. Basically, TLN is more
of a Lakers News aggregator where they copy and paste other
Laker News from around the net and put it on their own site.
The thing that separates us is that we write all our own
content (all volunteers), but when the news comes, we put
those links on our Social Media Sites. My main goal for the
site is to bring the community together much like how Chick
Hearn did it when he was doing the games.

Facebook.com/LakersNation - Growth Since August: LN: 18k
Fans vs. TLN: 3k Fans
Twitter.com/LakersNation - 16k Followers vs. TLN: 4k
Followers
This would probably be part of my answer where we separate
ourselves from other blogs. We can make the claim that we
are the largest Lakers Fan site in Social Media, even if you
combine our competition all together in one.
I would say the main edge is due to my full time job as a
social media manager for Disney, so I've been doing this
blogging stuff for quite a long time.
Let me know if you'd like to chat some time or anything.
Sorry if I got a head start on answering the questions, but
I love my blog :)
Best,
Gary