Going from an all-topic blog, to a more focused blog

[ses5909]

When I first started ilovecode (http://www.ilovecode.com), it covered anything and everything I wanted to discuss. Eventually though the I realized who the main audience and readers were of the blog and I felt it was time to maybe take some of my personal-related stuff and family info and put it in another blog. My parents could care less about code and they just wanted to know what their grandkids were up to.

So I created that Blog. I have created other more specialize blogs too and am considering another. The tricky part with splitting the content up is trying not to run out of things to post about on other blogs and trying not to lose too much of your original audience.

Obviously if you have a pretty niche blog, this may not be something you run into. But for those blogs that talk about a wide variety of things...when do you think the time is to create a new focused blog?

[t(-.-t)]

If you find yourself talking about a particular topic more often and you feel you can keep up the pace on that topic, split it. If cooking is 50% of your posts and you think you can post new recipes for a long time without getting bored and giving up, then start a cooking blog.

Keeping up the pace is a key determining factor here. If you're writing about a topic a lot, but don't plan on doing it much in the future then leave the content where it is. If you're posting about football every day for 2 weeks before the Superbowl, odds are you're not going to keep up that pace on a football blog in April, in the middle of the off season. In that case, stop writing about it when you feel the need to.

[Golgotha]

Good question Sara. It's a tough question to answer really. I think much of it is a personal choice. For example, Search-This deals with all areas of web. Many will say that we should have narrowed our focus to just focus on one thing, like CSS, or SEO, but you know what, that just isn't me. Who I am is a "jack of all traits, master of none" kind of guy. I like all areas of web and I like talking about all areas of web and so I don't really care if we are a huge niche. Besides it gives us more areas to talk about. I would get bored real fast if we just did CSS or SEO.

So there are trades off you make be widening are narrowing your scope...

[Selkirk]

I also had split out my personal blogging and professional blogging. I don't think its a good idea, for example, to talk politics on a blog unless it is largely about politics. It is hard to know what to post where. You don't want to remove all of the personality from your professional blog. Yet you don't want to bore people with your cat.

[aquariancore]

I also had split out my personal blogging and professional blogging. I don't think its a good idea, for example, to talk politics on a blog unless it is largely about politics. It is hard to know what to post where. You don't want to remove all of the personality from your professional blog. Yet you don't want to bore people with your cat.

Good points that many bloggers don't get. Still as I found there is a time and a place for blogging about you cat because there are people who actually what to read that.