Multibloggery: How many blogs do I need?
June 11, 2009 by cynthia
Is it better to have one blog that talks about everything, or to float a new blog every time you have a major topic to cover?
Professionally–when I’m advising corporations and non-profits on blog strategy–I often suggest that they split blogs by topic/function, but give everything the same look and feel, heavily cross-linked. Bunch of advantages in doing it that way, primarily from the back end: You can keep contributors out of areas where their permission levels could possibly damage things, you can add/subtract critical functions and plugins to make the site as usable and powerful as needed, which both speeds performance and again, providers contributors with just the tools they need to do their jobs. You can also turn one section off pretty easily, and that method can sometimes be very helpful from a search engine optimization perspective.
To visitors, a bunch of strung-together blogs still looks like one site; they can’t tell the difference as they move from blog to blog. Properly designed, a series of blogs becomes the website and is a heckuva lot easier (and cheaper) to maintain, upgrade and scale. And with plugins, today’s blog software can provide everything from an online catalog/store to photo galleries to contact forms to collaboration centers to discussion forums in maybe a tenth the time of conventional web development.
Somewhat hypocritically, my own blog is a single, monolithic grab-bag (you’ve probably noticed). While I really only discuss five things–glass/art, web/tech, restaurants, people studies and current events–they are kinda crammed into the same small space.
So…I’m wondering if it would make sense to pull the blogs apart, establish a blog just for art and glass, another that’s only restaurant reviews, another on tech, still another on photography or maybe and then my put personal observations on a fifth. Cross-link them, feed them all into a central blog home page. And then link in a new blog everytime my interests change…?
And yeah, I’m thinking about redesigning the site and moving to a new host. Again. Apparently I’m a technomasochist.
Naw… one blog. I like the eclectic nature of it all…
(And I’m gonna need your help as The Examiner tries to move its website into the 19th century!).
and in your spare time you ….. ?
…don’t sleep?
None of us are one single person wearing one single hat and I love your eclectic mix of art/restaurants/people/photography etc etc. Please don’t change a thing!
Well, thankee, ma’am. Newcomers complain (sometimes very loudly and angrily) that the site is too busy and too confusing, so I’m casting around for a solution. Not much will happen until the garage remodel and a couple more sculptures are done, in any case…
Cynthia,
I have taken your comments on blogging to heart, but am a bit of a novice in this (as in many areas). I would like to include a catalogue-like listing. Can you point me to likely places to download such software. I am using blogspot if that is of relevance.
Steve
Hi, Steve;
Hosted blog services like Blogspot and WordPress.com are a little more limited in the ways they can be customized, so it’s a bit more difficult to develop a catalogue or gallery. It can be done in blogspot, though, primarily because it’s owned by Google, and Google has a pretty extensive photo gallery system to begin with.
There are several places online that can show you how to do this–one I like is http://www.blogdoctor.me/search/label/Photo?max-results=100
No question, though, you’ll have the most customizability if you install blog software on your own web domain. That’s what I do–I’ve installed the free WordPress software on morganica.com, and it’s a very powerful system that way.
–cynthia
Thanks. I will look at the things that seem relevant at the blogdoctor site.
steve