Blog about different things - does it work?

[BloggingAboutTediousThings]

Hello everybody! I blog for around a year now. I don't want to blog for profit, it is more or less a modern diary for me. I blog about travel, fashion, interior design, random stuff, a few reviews and 'London for Children' as i tend to go out a lot and do a lot of things with my LO. I have just recently started the children part of it and I was wondering if I should start a new blog only about it or do you think it is okay to 'mix' it with the other things.

What do you think?

[JerryLeadbetter]

Hi my blog is (the tongue in cheek!) www.younghipandhomely.com

[CircusQueen]

I started my blog as a diary but after my daughter was born found that it had become mainly about "natural parenting". I've been thinking about this a lot recently and realising that I don't want to be pinned down to just one thing. So I'm making the effort to diversify, through care to the wind and just see what happens. After all, the name Circus Queen in no way restricts me.

[YoungDebbie]

The biggest difference with general blogs and specific themed ones, to my mind, is SEO related. A blog on a single theme will get a lot more hits on its topic, because it will inevitably repeat the same keywords over and over.

I run a couple of blogs and treat them very differently. One is specifically about self-publishing and book promotions (my work-from-home job) and is called Off The Shelf Book Promotions www.otsbp.com. The other is just about any old product of my butterfly mind, and labelled with the one thing that I think/hope is going to remain constant - my name! YoungByName - and also slightly tongue-in-cheek because I started it at the time of a significant birthday!

While the search strings that bring people to my book promotion blog are pretty obvious, bizarre ones bring people to YoungByName, presumably because they don't have much competition elsewhere.

I'm happy to field lower stats for YoungByName because it is what I like writing best and I love blogging about whatever intrigues me most on any given day. While there are some common themes in there e.g. travel, it would just be too exhausting to try to run separate blogs on each of these, and so I don't. Using "categories" marshalls my thoughts to a certain degree.

[BloggingAboutTediousThings]

Jerry can I have the link to your blog please? Always looking for new blogs to read.

I don't want to blog for profit as well. For me it's an exercise to write in English. English is my second language.

[JerryLeadbetter]

My blog is similar to yours so obviously I am biased that combining all these things sounds like a wonderful idea

Mine is fashion, London life, recipes, crafts, crafts with pre-schoolers, trips away, nights out, and having 2 children close together. Not bothered about blogging for profit (at the moment), just love the diary aspect of blogging. Obviously it might evolve and i'll choose to focus on a certain topic(s), we'll see how it goes I guess.

I'd say just explain what your blog is about in your 'about me' section, then people know what to expect.

I personally love reading blogs combining interests/family life, as well as blogs covering specific subjects. It really is horses for courses!

[MmeLindor]

I love love Salted Caramels (as you may have guessed)

Yes, good idea to have a tag line that explains what the blog is about.

[fcknits]

Slightly off topic but I loooove your blog name, MmeLindor! :D Tbh, salt and caramel is making me drool slightly, right now. ;) lol Mmm... salt and caramel chocolates...

Back on topic, SolidGoldBrass and MmeLindor both have explanatory sub-headers that instantly tell you what the general theme of their blogs are. That helps set the reader's expectations and provides the central theme that draws the blog posts together.

You could do the same thing, with a sub-header to explain your blog's... randomness? I think random stuff jars way more when you're not expecting it. Like, if you were reading a blog that was mostly about travels with a child and suddenly the 4th post was a political rant that had nothing to do with kids. If you were told in advance to expect that sort of thing then it would feel more like a normal inclusion for that blog.

[MmeLindor]

It depends on the name of the blog. I always advise to use a neutralish blog name, unless you are very sure that you are happy to be pinned down to one topic.

When I started blogging about life as an expat in Switzerland, I chose ladouceviesuisse - the sweet Swiss life. As I went on, this got too confining, and I knew I wanted to blog after we left the country, so I needed a new name.

I blog about loads of different things - I am sure that I could make money out of sticking to one thing, but I don't want to do that. It is a reflection of who I am and what I do.

My blog name now reflects that - the sweet and the bitter side of life. SaltandCaramel. //www.saltandcaramel.com

[SolidGoldBrass]

I've never been able to make my mind up on this, either. I started off intending to post about my work with a few little asides, but keep getting sidetracked by what's going on in the world

[fcknits]

I think it depends on whether you can tie it together with a central theme or not. Like... if your articles revolved around how these different topics fit with your LO - travelling with a child, fashionable moms, child-proof interior design (or pointing out how no interior design is child-proof!), etc.

My main blog is about knitting and crochet and I try to incorporate some reference to that in every article. Even if it's just "something to do while taking a break from knitting..." Like, I recently blogged about my Kindle (which I love) but all the free Kindle books I linked to were knitting or crochet related.

On the other hand... if your blog is really just a personal diary and you're not interested in blogging for profit, then does it really matter what anyone else thinks about it? Unless you're writing to benefit a target audience then there is a very good argument that you can just write to please yourself as the main audience is, in fact, you! ;) And there's nothing wrong with that. Many people get a great deal of pleasure and benefit from diaries and personal writing projects, and that is a perfectly worthwhile and valid thing to do. :)