Since my first stint writing for sports website Sideline Sources, I have moved to a website called Roar, an Australian platform. This has meant a completely different audience that I am writing for, and I therefore had to adjust accordingly. I had a look at articles written by other contributors on the page, and found that the articles that get the most interactions are opinion pieces, particularly those about Aussie Rules, Rugby and Cricket. My knowledge on the latter is far greater than the others, so I thought that cricket articles would get the most clicks.

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I started by firstly testing the water and writing a football article, but quickly realized that football articles on the page get very little interaction. I then stuck to my original plan of writing cricket articles. I did one which was similar to a news report, and one which was more of an opinion piece. The news report got around a thousand reads and several comments, but the opinion piece on Australian T20 cricket got a lot more interactions.

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I enjoyed reading and replying to the various comments from Australian fans, and made a realization doing so. Australian fans are known for their test cricket love and culture, much more so than their passion for the shorter format of the game. Combining all that I had learnt about what types of articles get the most clicks, and specifically what type of audience I am writing to, I decided to write a piece about Australian test match cricket. Following a loss to India earlier this year, Australia’s number 5 batting spot came under a lot of fire, and heated debate about who should get to play there. I decided to write an article about conundrum, and write it in a way which left all the readers to debate their opinions with myself and others in the comments.

This idea worked well, as the article got more than two thousand reads, and nearly 100 comments. Many of the readers got into debates and discussions with others about who they thought should take the spot in the team. The article was actually trending as the second most popular article on the platform for back to back days, which is quite an accomplishment. Many people disagreed with each other, and me in the comments, which is great. I enjoy having and seeing discussions about Australian cricket, as many fans seem to be very open minded towards others opinions.

Following this, I hope to write more opinion pieces on test cricket, as those are the ones that do get the most clicks. I also wrote one on English cricket, but it obviously didn’t get as many clicks as the Australian articles. I plan to write another article very similar to the one on the number 5 batting spot, and hopefully that can perform even better in terms of engagement. With a lot of international cricket being played over the next 6 months, I hope to also gain some kind of internship here in Sri Lanka so I can write for a local audience too.