Brad Marley recently asked me the following question:
I read a lot of advice blogs that say it’s necessary that your blog has a specific focus to drive readership.
My blog, which I began five months ago, has a PR/social media slant to it, but I cannot write about that topic 24/7.
Should I stick to one topic? Or, does the fact that I’m writing about different topics show my true “voice” and, thus, I should stick to what I’m writing?
Let me answer that through the analogy of Jake Halpern, author of Fame Junkies, who I met at a function last year. The book traces his experience as a journalist and explores the American obsession with fame.
But Jake previously wrote a collection of travel essays–and his newest piece is a children’s fantasy yarn called Dormia.
I recall someone asked Jake a question whether he felt pressure to focus his writing to one niche or if his agent and publishers were OK with his diverse writing. Jake smiled and said if he’s not writing what he wants to write, what’s the point?
Brad, the moment you pigeonhole your blog into a specific niche is the moment you stop being yourself. I don’t write about strategies and tips all the time–here’s a piece from last winter on why I donated to Wikipedia, for instance–but the bulk of my blog posts are centered around sharing ideas with you.
While some folks may suggest you to own multiple blogs for multiple topics, I favor one over many. Write about as many topics as you want–as long as your blog title or subtitle supports your output–but keep to one blog site. Unless if you’re very prolific; Jeff Cutler manages over a dozen unique blogs, but he’s the exception.
One idea to consider is the use of blog categories and tags. If you want to deviate off-topic than what you usually write about, add a category and call it “Sports” or “Misc” or such. You can see my blog’s most frequent tags listed in the sidebar, and the categories are up on the archive page. And, Brad, I don’t categorize or tag every post.
It’s OK to be like Jake Halpern and write whatever you want because you want to write it.
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I agree. My interests are more than a single topic. Some people read a single blog post of mine on a specific topic, agree or disagree, and move on to the next source on that topic. Others want to read what I write and don’t necessarily mind when I post the odd recipe or something they aren’t as interested in.
I think this also brings me full circle to the brief discussion I had on Twitter with @dirkmshaw. I have several circles of folks I interact with through Twitter: legal, Web/Office/Etc. 2.0, foodies, beeries, ECM, records management, and others. I probably post a lot of stuff that’s only of direct interest to some of them, but that’s for them to decide. And don’t most of us travel in multiple circles anyway?
I’d rather be posting stuff, even if it means some of it is irrelevant to some of my followers (OK, most and most), instead of trying to remember which accounts have which followers.
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Agree, it’s your blog, write whatever the hell you want to write about. Sure your blog may be a specific niche and that’s what you write about, but nothing wrong with straying on occasion, I actually think readers would appreciate the spontaneous random posts from time to time.
I write a variety of topics. I got bored with one or two and I personally don’t have the time to maintain more then one blog.
I am happy I have found blogger that agree.
I am trying to publish posts according to the popular actual trends.
I check Google Trends and I write about the stuff which sooms to be serached by by a lot of people.
I’m new to blogging and when I wanted to create one, I was told to find my niche and write about that, which I did. However, I also find things on the net, good videos, music, and many other things that I want to share, and thought it wouldn’t be good for my blog, since it wasn’t my ‘niche’ area. I subsequently have 2 blogs: one for my main subject and one for just random stuff. I worried that people would be turned off by a blog that had more than one subject, so I was really glad to read this article. It vindicates my original position that I should blog about whatever I see fit!
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Finally something that doesn’t say “go start a niche blog and make millions”.
If you are blogging to make money, most recommend creating a blog focused on a single niche. ie. Wordpress or Blogging. But there are exceptions like zenhabbits, boingboing, and lifehacker.
If your blogging for personal reasons, you can be diverse.
But that is what the “pros” say…the ones that make all that money!
I tend to disagree a little. I don’t like the idea of creating quick niche sites. I like long term sites not based entirely upon niche but on TARGET AUDIENCE.
Lifehacker has many categories but their target audience gobbles it all up.
So with weighing out all this information, I decided to just focus on one blog I just created. I love talking about Web Design, Social Media, and Blogging and I think the topics are all fairly closely related.
So I started http://onebiginternet.com. I would appreciate any feedback on it! Again great post, thanks for sharing!
In which way?
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