Around Town

#FollowFriday: Zach Hall. Are you ready for some futbol tonight?

By Abby Miressi
Photo by Nell Redmond/CharlotteFive archives<br>The Charlotte Independence and Charleston Battery face off Friday at Matthews Sportsplex.
Photo by Nell Redmond/CharlotteFive archives<br>The Charlotte Independence and Charleston Battery face off Friday at Matthews Sportsplex. NELL REDMOND

…and by “futbol” I mean soccer. Zach Hall wears many hats around Charlotte, including mastermind behind CrownTownSoccer.com, a teacher’s assistant at Tech Talent South (a school that teaches coding, web design, etc.) and working at Monroe High School.

From personal experience, I can tell you that he is a smart, genuine and all-around great guy.

First, the facts:

Twitter handle: @crowntownguy

Hails from: Born in Raleigh with most of his childhood in Boone

Favorite local CLT beer: Olde Meck’s Captain Jack Pilsner and Sugar Creek’s Witbier

The Questions

Q. Tell me about CrownTownSoccer.com and how you got involved?

I’ve been a soccer fan since my roommate got me hooked freshman year of college. And I’ve always loved writing. I created Crown Town Soccer in July 2014 to have one place to write about the new professional soccer team in the Queen City – the Charlotte Independence. (The pro soccer team hosts the Harrisburg City Islanders, 7:30 p.m. at UNCC’s Transamerica Field.)

I half expected to … quit three months later, but it turns out there are some passionate soccer fans in the Charlotte area. I saw enough traffic, comments and social media engagement to keep me going. Almost 10 months later and the site has grown to include a podcast and merchandise. I even have multiple folks helping me cover the team.

Q. What are your roles on the site?

I write game previews, do interviews, run our social media account and write opinion pieces. I also take on more of an editor role – assigning tasks to the rest of the volunteer writer team, helping transcribe interviews and editing their incredible work.

Most of my day, though, is simply interacting with other fans, usually on Twitter. We’ve built a great little community around this soccer team, and I have a lot of fun talking transfers, tactics and exchanging GIFs.

Q. What’s your favorite social network and why?

Hands down Twitter. I’m on it constantly, both for personal and professional reasons. Tweetdeck is pinned to my browser. The soccer world really does revolve around Twitter – breaking news is no longer emailed or seen on a ticker somewhere, it’s Tweeted.

Q. Do you have any tips for bloggers?

Write about something you love. You can never tell when something you write will stick or get popular, and you don’t want the stuff you don’t like making you famous.

It also helps if you can stand in a gap that you think needs to be filled. If you wish there was more being written about something you’re passionate about, then you’re the best person to write about it.

Q. How has learning (and then teaching) technology changed your career skills?

Being able to interview someone well and knowing how to write a quick 500-word article are the basics. Folks in the amateur journalism feed also need to know how to lay out and design a website for the best user experience, how to set up an online newsletter and how to harness that newsletter into more traffic.

People that can write are great, but people who can write, edit, code a quick webpage in HTML/CSS and know how to move around the WordPress CMS can be game changers. The best news coverage is now online, and you have to know how to do a little bit of everything in order to do it really well.

Q. How do you recommend one gets those mad web skills?

If you’re at all interested in learning more about the web, I highly recommend signing up for an account on Meetup and joining the Tech Talent South group. TTS is constantly setting up awesome lectures and even some one-off classes that people can easily get their feet wet.

We also do open house meet-and-greets at local coffeehouses and breweries every month so folks can just come in, grab a drink and say hello.

Abby Miressi

This story was originally published April 23, 2015 at 2:51 PM with the headline "#FollowFriday: Zach Hall. Are you ready for some futbol tonight?."

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