[EDIT] I want to preface this by saying that I am in no way criticizing anyone who chooses to have different blogs for different topics. This is more a think piece for new bloggers and others who may be considering multi-blogging.
Fellow blogger Pasduil has two blogs, Thinking Play and Planet Pasduil. The second one only came to my attention because he mentioned it in a post where he also mentioned me. Apparently he had nominated me for a Liebster (I intend to answer his questions but have not as yet done so) but I missed it. Plenty of other people do the same. Syp blogs about games at Bio Break, and also has a Bible study blog floating around somewhere.
When is it a good idea to start new blog? That is, if you already have one, why and when should you start another? Multiple blogs can compound an already time-consuming hobby (on top of all that gaming, right?), but might be necessary if you have radically different things you want to talk about. Mixing MMO gaming with general politics or religion may appeal to very few readers. On the other hand, maybe folks want to to read about the travails of a antidisestablishmentarian Banjoist gamer. While it can be hard to be sure what your audience will enjoy reading, it might be better to group generally geeky interests under one roof and then categorize/tag them. I occasionally do movie reviews; in fact, my review of Cloud Atlas was far my most popular post for a very long time. But rather than have a separate blog for my movie reviews (which are few and far between), I just post them here and tag them as such. Same with my occasional travelogues.
I started IHTtS as a STO blog not long after I had started another WoW-centric blog. but I quickly consolidated them and IHTtS has evolved ever since. Jaedia also used to have multiple blogs, but consolidated them into Dragons and Whimsy a few months ago. The Aggronaut's stream of consciousness style of posting means that sometimes what he's posted doesn't interest me. But that's OK. Not every post has to appeal to every person.
You may decide that your ideas are so disparate that you need to have different venues to share them. But realize, when you do, that you're also fragmenting your audience in a way that may be unnecessary.
~~~ Fellow blogger Pasduil has two blogs, Thinking Play and Planet Pasduil. The second one only came to my attention because he mentioned it in a post where he also mentioned me. Apparently he had nominated me for a Liebster (I intend to answer his questions but have not as yet done so) but I missed it. Plenty of other people do the same. Syp blogs about games at Bio Break, and also has a Bible study blog floating around somewhere.
You may decide that your ideas are so disparate that you need to have different venues to share them. But realize, when you do, that you're also fragmenting your audience in a way that may be unnecessary.
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Technically, I have six blogs, though four of them are long lapsed at this point. (Good luck finding them. Actually, there might be seven.)
ReplyDeleteBut I have managed to keep two blogs going regularly for seven years now. They key, for me, is that they are essentially different formats. My main blog, the one most people who know me know about, is the words blog. The other one, EVE Online Pictures, is a screen shot blog. I sometimes have to fight myself not to write words on that second blog. That is what TAGN is for, and writing words elsewhere just dilutes my work there.
Thanks for your input. So why do you keep the screenshot blog separate instead of just tagging or categorizing the screens post on TAGN? For that matter, what made you decide to discontinue the other blogs rather than tweaking their formats/content?
DeleteIn hindsight, I could have just done screenshot posts on TAGN. The whole thing started as experiment. After two years with TAGN I wanted to start a different blog to see how that went.
DeleteShort version: screen shots generate about 5% of the traffic that words do.
But it is a dedicated EVE Online blog and I managed to qualify for their fan site program, for which I get a free account. I literally take screen shots to pay my subscription fee. So I have that going for me. (I think the fact that I write a lot about EVE on my other blog helped on that front.)
As for the other blogs, one was a Star Trek Online version of the picture blog, but then I ended up not liking STO. The rest had specific gimmicks that turned out to not be all that amusing after a few posts. For example, Things MMO Bloggers Like was probably too self referential to be amusing to anybody besides myself.
When I started blogging, I wanted something very niche, but then my interests quickly changed and what I wanted to write about soon did too. I found it very liberating to move onto my current format. Even if I stick to some similar stuff, I can always go out of the box with it.
ReplyDeleteUnless you are absolute huge for that one thing you do, I don't see an issue starting over or branching out further.
But in branching out, do you start new blog or do you simply starting posting about the new topic on the existing blog?
DeleteDepends on how you want to theme it. I made a new one when I did it, but others can succeed with their current names.
DeleteI'd really love to have a music-oriented blog, a book-oriented blog and a movie-oriented blog just to name three. I often toy with the idea of starting one or more but the reason I don't is that it would simply take up too much of my time. The MMO blog already takes 6-12 hours most weeks. Imagine that double or trebled - and I am pretty sure I'd write at least as much about any of the other three topics than I do about MMOs.
ReplyDeleteI definitely wouldn't do specific pieces on any of those things on Inventory Full. I started it as an MMO blog and MMOs are all I plan on writing about there - I do, naturally, feed in plenty of references to other interests within the framework but whole posts on anything but MMOs are very, very rare.
If I ever run out of things to write about MMOs then I might swap the time I gained onto another blog on a different theme but so far I see no sign of that happening.
That's why you'll see occasional posts about "Geeky" things other than MMOs on here. If I feel strongly enough about a movie or book, here is where I will talk about it.
DeleteI look at someones blog as an extension of their personality. In that regard, i like it when everything is consolidated into one. That way you never know who you may interest from one aspect to the next.
ReplyDeleteI definitely feel that's the case with blogsthat are not narrowly focused. I feel like I know people who write about more varied topics better than I do those that only talk about a specific game or genre.
DeleteStarting a new blog is always fun. Keeping them updated is the challenge. The game blog is fun because it seems like storytelling in many ways, and you're in the tale and in the accompanying pictures.
ReplyDeleteMy "kitchen sink" blog is my little corner of the universe. I think sometimes that the readers might wish for separate blogs on books, movies, crafts, gardening, cooking/baking but nah.
You're right, not everyone will be interested in every post. But as I said in the post, that's OK too. They'll keep for the ones that do interest them.
DeleteI have a separate blog for theological musings as well. The funny thing is that I have some members who read both my blogs, and I sometimes get scolded for updating the gaming one more often. (-:
ReplyDeleteDepending on how you write your sermons, you could have a theological blog post at least once a week. :)
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