< Three simple ideas to make your blogging life easier : What do your readers think? >
I just posted a blog entry regarding cross-promotion. However, it's specific to my site, rather than a blogging or website tip. So why publish it?About off-topic posts.
I have seen various blogs that attempt to focus on a particular topic, but instead of providing content that's relevant to their target audience, they spend more time publishing content along the following lines:
- Linking to other people's blogs just to enter competitions. (Some blogs ask you to link to them in order for you to enter.)
- Talking about blogging communities such as MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, and Entrecard... but without relating it to the subject of the blog.
- Reviewing other blogs regardless of their subject matter.
- Posting links to other blog entries, videos, news stories etc with little more than a comment to "check this out".
Some of the above is fine... but it shouldn't be the only content you publish. I think this is a major reason why a lot of blogs do not take off! How does this kind of content benefit your target audience unless you link it back to your niche somehow?
Can you tailor the content to your target audience?
If not, why post it?
Let's look at the above examples in more detail.
Competition entries are difficult to make relevant to your target audience, but it IS possible to find competitions where you do not have to link to the host's blog just to enter. A great place to find good contests around the web is A.B.C. - About Blog Contests.
Whether you should write about blogging communities really depends on your target audience. For instance, I am planning to review some blogging communities in future blog entries here at Ben Barden dot com, because the whole point of my blog is to provide blogging and website tips. If you have a "make money online" blog then you might approach it from a different angle, e.g. "which blogging communities will help you make money from your blog the fastest?". You have to make it relevant, otherwise your target audience just won't care.
Reviewing blogs is a tricky one. A site like ReviewMe will pay you to review other blogs, but do those reviews actually benefit your target audience? Furthermore, if you review a great site that is trying to do the same thing as you are, there may be a risk of driving traffic away from your site!
As for linking to other blog entries, videos and the like, linking is a good idea, but will your target audience be interested in humourous video clips? You might say "well who doesn't like funny videos?" - but is that why they come to your blog?
Talking about yourself and your blog.
There is a certain amount of this that you can get away with. People who read a money-making blog will probably expect an income report so they can see if you actually make money from your tips.
John Chow's income report for November 2007 is a great example of this. If he didn't make any money from his blog but still wrote about how to make money online, do you think he'd be taken seriously? You need to know what you're talking about, and that kind of post helps for that particular kind of blog.
Some blogs are obsessed with traffic and spend far too much time analysing the number of visitors, their rank of various popular sites such as Alexa and Technorati, and how many subscribers they'd like to get in the next few days. If a site is dedicated to this kind of analysis, such as Heavily Trafficked, then that's fine! But if it's not the topic of your blog, don't write about it all the time.
A couple of simple rules.
If you must write off-topic posts, then I'd suggest that you do the following...
- Follow-up each off-topic post with an on-topic post. If you write daily blog entries and you're going to publish an off-topic post, write an on-topic post on the same day. That's exactly what I have done today.
- Don't overdo it. One off-topic post per week is probably enough. If you only seem to be writing off-topic posts, perhaps it's time for a rethink.
What do you think? How often do you write off-topic posts? What do your readers think about this?
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Tags: off-topic posts, cross-promotion, competitions, blogging communities, mybloglog, blogcatalog, entrecard, reviewme, blog reviews, linking out, traffic analysis, alexa, technorati
Posted by Ben on December 29, 2007 19:37 / Edited: Never
Comments
Ben, when I found myself starting to go off topic more and more, I just started another blog!
Now with 3 main blogs to feed, I have to work a little harder - but it enables me to keep on topic.
Also with those blogs, I end up earning many more dropped EntreCards. :-)
This is one of the reasons I have a few different blogs with a few different focuses. My main blog is just kind of a catch-all -- a personal diary type. I can post just about anything there and it will fit with the theme because there really isn't much of a theme. Then I have other blogs for my work with animal rescue, for reviewing sites and products, and for free online gaming. A few of those don't get updated very often, but they're a great place to put things that I don't necessarily want on my main blog.
gLf - no worries! :)
Contamination and BunGirl - thanks for the comments. :) Seems like you agree that starting a new blog is the way to go. I'd say that this can be a good route as long as you have the time to keep up with all of the blogs. I've seen people who try to do too much and some of the blogs just get neglected.
But if you can do this, then more power to you - I know I couldn't keep up with things if I were to have more than one blog with daily updates. I do have a couple of other blogs but they only get updated with website news or product news.
Ben, I agree that it can be easy to loose energy and neglect additional blogs. But it just depends on the focus..
My main blog is about life in Japan, so I'll never run out of content for that.
My second blog is about things I do to promote my blogs and advice for other bloggers, talking about goals or entering linking competitions.
My Third blog is about jokes, when people email me pictures or jokes - I post them there.
Tempting as it was, I wasn't going to spam this comment with the 3 urls. :-)
I can see that choosing a very narrow focus for a blog makes it more likely that it'll run out of content.
However, I don't think that blogs only die because the author ran out of things to say. Writing a lot of off-topic blog entries can alienate a blog's target audience. This can happen even if the niche is well-chosen, but perhaps the author gets sick of the subject matter or they didn't really know a lot about it in the first place.
Then again, some blogs may do well even though the author goes against the suggested guidelines for running a blog. Some "anything and everything" blogs seem to do quite well. Others do not. I just think it's easier to stand out if you try to stay on-topic as often as possible. If having multiple blogs is the way to do that, then that's fine so long as you can keep up with them all. :)
Thank you very much for mentioning my site!
All the best
ABC