In all the hubub around our recent announcement of mycolts.net, let’s not forget the Colts are also in the process of redesigning our main Website. The current version of colts.com is about to get a facelift; and along with improved look, we’re doing some cool stuff under the hood as well.
As you can see we’ve mellowed out the overall color scheme and one our best to reduce “noise”, thanks to our graphic design partner, Hotbed Creative. What you can’t see is that we’re integrating the site very tightly with our fan network.
Our plan is to allow free, anonymous viewing for Colts fans at the main site, but if fans want to dig deeper, comment on stories, etc., then they’ll be promped to register for (or simply log into) the Colts Fan Net. Registered users will have an expanded set of privilages. Eventually, we plan to add a “premium” level of content / permissions which users would need to pay to access.
Once fans are registered members of the Colts Fan net, they get can earning points for their behaviors - building up their good reputations - so that their posts, their blogs, etc. might find their way to public pages. We’re even considering allowing comments from the Fan Forum to make it all the way to the main colts.com home page (see Fan Forum section). In fact, earning the ability to have your comments reach the home page may be the first “premium” privilage that fans will pay for. It’s a thought.
Allowing user generated contents to reach our home page carries significant risk, so we’ll tread lightly at first. But the temptation is strong to allow it. After all, every fan wants his or her 15 minutes of fame, and we believe our site visits and page views would spike nicely!
Sounds like a solid plan. Do you plan on the UGC (user generated content) to bubble up to the homepage automatically after a period of tight control? It should be interesting to see what kind of users generate points from other fans.
I would imagine that over time, perhaps quicker than expected, a handful of fans will emerge as almost columnists for the site. Producing content that other fans come looking for each week.
The new site design looks really nice as well. Plenty of sponsorship opportunities I see across the board.
The only place UGC might bubble up to home page would be in the forum window. That being said, inside the Fan Network there are several places where fans can earn “columnist” positions. On every “group” home page (for example, Colts fans in NYC Group (hee hee)), there are 3 places for the “top blogs”. Whichever blogs are the highest rated by virtue of popularity, frequncy of posting, etc., those 3 blogs will appear on the group home page. Fans can also review products and these reviews can hit the group home pages.
I’ll address sponsorship in future posts. There are ample opportunities, yes, and there’s a lot more where that came from.
Thanks for the encouragement on design. Coming from you guys (www.nyjets.com) that means a lot!