2025/26: Telling more stories as we turn 10

Hello and welcome to season 2025/26. It’s started slightly earlier than usual but hopefully that might mean a slightly less hectic end to the season?

We wanted to put some notes out about how we see Football in Berkshire working this season as we approach our 10th anniversary in March.

Why?

Fundamentally, the landscape for a niche website in 2025 has flipped on its head. Changes in the way Search (Google) and Social Media (Twitter etc) work have affected the amount of traffic the website gets – and while we don’t pay huge attention to overall numbers (because this is still a hobby) it would be remiss of us not to try to adjust what we are doing to find an audience.

Other things have changed as well over the last 9 and a half years. In 2016 the majority of clubs didn’t do social media, let alone have regular photography, video interviews, goal highlights packages. Most clubs, even down to Step 7, have a social media person and in many cases a social media team doing incredible things. There are many unsung, historic and difficult roles in grassroots football but we believe the “marketing role” has become one of the most crucial. And when it comes to day to day coverage of their club, they all do it better than we can.

What next?

The footballinberkshire.co.uk website will remain at the very core of what we do. It’s going to have a big old facelift over the next few months but that’s where we live online. That will not change.

We’ve spent time looking at what works and how we can use that to tell stories. Do you need live score updates from us on Twitter/X? Probably not.

Our hyper-focus this season will be on telling stories. Of people, of clubs, of moments. This might mean we’re not across every transfer story or result as the weeks role by. It might mean we’re not putting out new content daily, but we believe it means you will have something different to get your teeth into and help us differentiate our output, both with new written content and video.

“Do you need live score updates from us on Twitter/X? Probably not”

It will mean we’ll have a look at Woodley United and the difference a summer makes, our intimate (and painful) knowledge of the dangers of the Holyport dugout, talking to Lola Pollard about choosing between playing and reffing as she heads to WSL2. It will hopefully also mean we can do more events.

As always, if you’ve got a story, think we’ve missed something or just want to get your club a bit of publicity then get in touch via editor@footballinberkshire.co.uk or join our WhatsApp community.

There will shortly be a heap of new ways to do that including uploading your match reports directly to the website and creating a brand new club noticeboard.

You can also keep up with everything by subscribing to our newsletter, join The Panel or catch up across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and Bluesky. Details on how to subscribe and following everything are here.

GET INVOLVED: We’re always looking for new people to join our team. Want to write? Want to video, podcast or just do something different? We’ve great connections built up over 10 years across football and football media as well. There’s so much to do and so many opportunities! Get in touch via editor@footballinberkshire.co.uk