Multiple Blogs can Make You Struggle

Should I create multiple blogs?

As a blogging expert and coach, I hear this question more than almost any other. Why? Because people are creative and have many interests and passions.

And if they choose blogging as a way to express their creativity, interests and passion, they want to blog about them all.

They’ve also heard this advice:

Every website or blog should be focused on one topic so readers—and Google—know exactly what it’s about.

That’s good advice.

Except when it comes to implementing a regular and consistent blogging strategy.

You Need to Publish Posts Often and Consistently

Creating blog is different than blogging. Just as having a blog and being a blogger are not necessarily the same thing.

You can create or have a blog, but if you rarely publish a blog post, you aren’t a blogger. Nor are you blogging…at least not effectively.

For your blog to succeed—get found—and your posts to succeed—get read—you need to blog often and consistently.

Blogging is not an easy path to expert status or authorship or even income. It’s work.

The best way to generate traffic to a blog—especially a new blog—is to publish posts frequently and consistently. Once a month does not cut it, nor will it help drive readers to your site. Once a week might, but two or there or more posts published per weekly will, over time, generate the traffic you desire.

Even if you never shared a post on social media, with this approach, Google would find you and your content. Your site would begin to move up in the Search Engine Results Pages. And readers would discover you when they searched for keywords related to your content.

Single-Topic Blogs Win the Traffic

That’s why a single-topic blog wins traffic over multiple-topic blogs. Google “gets it” and so do visitors. They understand what you write about.

If you write about gardening, books, your kids, and—oh, yeah—how to become a life coach, Google starts to wonder who would want to visit your site. Not only that, readers show up and question if your site will provide them any benefit.

When they click on a link to your site expecting to read about life coaching, but they find ten posts in a row on gardening, your kids, and the books you read recently, they’ll scratch their heads (for all of about six seconds), and then close the browser tab…never to return.

If, however, you write only about life coaching, Google will know this is your topic and send traffic your way. The visitors who show up will look at your posts and say, “This is what I need!” Then they will bookmark your site or subscribe to your post feed.

That’s the benefit of having one site on one topic.

Keep Up with Multiple Blogs

But there’s another benefit to having one single topic blog, one that is more important. When you have one blog that covers one topic, you only need to write posts for that one site.

If you have multiple blogs, for example, three sites on three topics, you need to write one post per week on each one (at a minimum). That’s three posts per week.

And if it’s a new site, you need to write more often to make any headway with Google. To gain discoverability for one new site fast, you’ll need to write two or three (or more) posts per week.

But you can’t forget about the other sites. They still need to be fed a weekly meal of posts.

That’s where having multiple blog sites becomes problematic. Most bloggers just can’t keep up, and so their sites fail to attract readers. They stop feeding the sites the required posts to keep them alive and healthy. And, eventually, they let the sites starve.

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

I speak from experience. I began a blog about my passion—personal development and practical spirituality. And I wrote on it fairly consistently until…

I started a blog about nonfiction writing, because my business was freelance writing, nonfiction book proposal and manuscript editing, and coaching nonfiction writers. I thought I might build a business around this blog more quickly.

But then I had a bright idea. I should blog a book. And so I created this blog.

Along the way, I had another bright idea. One day I will write a book to mentor boys who want to become professional dancers. And I started a fourth blog to build platform for that book.

At one time, I had five blogs…but that’s another story.

Till this day, I struggle to keep up with my multiple blogs. In fact, the boys-who-dance blog rarely gets fed any longer. I throw it a post just often enough to keep it alive.)

Managing Multiple Blogs is Tough

And I now use a few guest bloggers to free up my time a bit. I’m even considering hiring a few writers.

Managing multiple blogs takes planning and dedication. Even so, it’s not easy

I struggle with the amount of work entailed to keep these sites alive. I have to write a post and publish it every week, and one of my sites has multiple posts per week. (I scaled back to once per week on two sites when their traffic grew large enough to sustain with fewer posts, and I geared up on the personal development and practical spirituality blog when I decided to increase its traffic after several years of infrequent posting.) That means I produce five posts per week.

Yikes.

I don’t want you to struggle. I want you to put all your time and attention into one site—and succeed with it.

If all my focus had been on one blog, its traffic would be through the roof right now. And if all my traffic from the three sites were combined, wowza.

Who the Heck are You and What Benefit do You Provide?

You’ll also find, as I did, that it’s difficult to build a recognizable and logical brand when you do too many things and have too many sites. It took me a long time to come up with a brand that worked. And I still have too much going on, which makes it hard to succeed at any one of them.

And my sites suffer.

So decide who you are or how you want to be known. Get clear about what benefit you provide to your readers. And then create a site based on that.

If you must blog about different topics, at least create a brand that includes them all.

I will always say that a one-topic blog will serve your best, but I will scream from the rooftops that having multiple blogs is usually not a good choice unless you have a ton of time and energy to keep up with them all.

If you want to learn more about blogging, pick up a copy of How to Blog a Book (revised edition).

 

Photo courtesy of geralt / pixabay.com