Jun 19, 2014 / Advanced

Is One the Loneliest Number? Starting a Second Blog

You’ve got a lot to say — is it time to start a second blog? Ask yourself these four questions to figure out whether it’s time to expand your blogging empire.

Blogging is addictive — “I’ll take a minute to finish this post” hurtles down the slippery slope past “I’ll skim the Reader for an hour ” before skidding to a halt in front of “I’ll spend two hours commenting, preview 47 themes, start four drafts, and stumble to bed at 2am.” Compounding the problem, blogs are like potato chips and tattoos: many people find it difficult to stop at one.

Is starting a second (or third, or fourth) blog a good idea? You already have an audience, so you’ve got a head start — but you already have an audience, so you might be spreading yourself thin.

If you’re not sure what your next move is, these four questions can help.

1. Do I have content for a second blog?

Maybe you normally blog about your experience moving from a big city to a small town, and are posting about gardening more and more. Does this dilute your blog? Is it time to start a gardening blog?

This depends on whether you simply enjoy talking about gardening or have the focus and passion to build a robust new blog. Think about how an all-gardening blog would be different — or not — than what you publish right now. Take a look at popular gardening blogs; are you excited about a project like these?

Then, take a look at what you’re blogging now. Do your gardening posts feel like clutter? Do your regular readers seem disinterested in your gardening content? Do you have many posts you’d like to write, but are holding back?

If you opt not to announce the new blog, no harm done — now you have a collection of finished posts to weave into your current blog.

Action time! If you think it’s time to become a franchise, test the hypothesis by blogging on your new topic privately for 30 or 60 days.

  • It will give you a sense of how much you have to say about the new topic.
  • It’s a real-world test of whether you can devote energy to two sites.
  • It builds a cache of posts, so you can launch your new blog pre-filled with resources.

2. How much do the audiences overlap?

A big chunk of the audience for a blog on rural life might be excited about gardening. Maybe your audience consists of rural homesteaders, or city friends who live vicariously through your pumpkin patch.

If there’s overlap in the audiences of your current blog and the new one you’re considering, it might not make sense to split them up — you’re just putting an extra step between your readers and the thing they want (more of you). If they’re very different, and your city friends’ eyes glaze over when you write about different kinds of manure, a second blog may be the way to go.

Action time!  If you’re not sure what your audience wants or how they’ll react to change, you’ve got tools:

  • Create a short poll or ask them to leave a comment about what interests them.
  • Test the new content by creating a new weekly feature for your gardening posts. You can gauge your audience’s interest, and readers who aren’t interested can skip those posts.

Chances are, your readers are drawn to your unique voice, and they’re just fine reading the odd post about staking tomato plants mixed with your musings on small-town life. Maybe not, though — so do some digging and find out.

3. Do I want to write a new blog, or do I want something shiny and new?

Some of us just want to write, and the setup is a necessary evil to having a blog. Some of us love creating, designing, and playing with layouts more than actually keeping up a whole new blog. Which one are you? Are you excited about writing the new posts, or about starting something from scratch?

If “new and improved” is what excites you, you can also suggest your setup and design services to other bloggers, like the folks looking for feedback in the Community Pool. Indulge your love of makeovers while giving back to the blogosphere!

Action time! If you just want to write, or the impetus to start a new blog is really about wanting a blog do-over, try:

  • Guest posting on other blogs, or writing one-off posts for other websites — all the blogging, none of the administering!
  • Giving your blog a makeover. Blogs are fluid and flexible in both content and layout; if you want to rebuild, just do it.

4. Do I have time?

The road to an empty, inactive blog is paved with great post ideas. Many of us find it challenging to devote as much time as we’d like to one blog: to crafting great posts, perfecting our design, engaging on other social networks, and reading and commenting on other blogs.

Can you do this for two blogs? If you want your new blog to be separate from your first, can you handle two posting schedules, two communities, and maybe two logins, Twitter handles, and Facebook Fan Pages? Does all this drag down the actual content you want to publish, or do you thrive on the chaos?

Action time! Remember when we suggested blogging private for one or two months? Do that. Really. The best way to see if you can maintain two blogs without either of them suffering, one of which will need more tending to grow, is to write two blogs.

  • If New Blog is going strong at the end of the month, throw open the doors and tell the world.
  • If New Blog shrivels on the vine after a few weeks or Current Blog stagnates, pull down the shades and head back to the drawing board.

There are lots of bloggers who have more than one blog, and all their bloggy gardens thrive. Great ideas aren’t enough, though; they need great execution. That takes time and energy, so be honest about yours.

If you maintain multiple blogs, we’d love to hear what prompted that decision, how it’s going, and any tips for managing more than one site.

Show Comments

105 Comments

Comments are closed.

Close Comments

Comments

  1. haha oh em gee. I keep 3 blogs. I didn’t create them all in one time. It’s just that one day, i seemed to be in a feel for a different genre which didn’t seem to fit the other and so on. But in the end i think i forget which ones which for which topic/feel/genre i end up getting them mixed. I find that funny, shocking and annoying at the same time ,, i can just laugh at my own indecisiveness.

    Someday i plan to look into the writeups and maybe put them in one blog and categorize better. i don’t know where to fit in my photography though. Meanwhile, this facebook link makes up for it for now. Shameless plug: please do feel free to visit and like the page.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Haha, it comes in handy when you go by how you feel each day and what yo would like to write about.

      Like

  3. Having had a blog years ago but found it distracting and taking away from my focus at university, I’d decided to discontinue. But here I am 3 years later feeling more settled and balanced, I’ve decided to start a new blog. I contemplated going back to my old one but somehow a fresh start seemed more wise.

    Like

  6. Some great ideas in there. I started blogging a couple of years ago but wasn’t regular. Until recently over past 2 months or so I have started to blog regularly.

    I have interests in history, politics, music, movies and sports. As I am getting regular, hope to setup multiple blogs soon.

    Like

  7. I have written only 3 blogs but don’t have an audience. I don’t know where to find an audience, maybe I am in denial of my blogging altogether. Its going to be hard to click post after I make this comment.

    Like

  8. I loved this post, except wish I’d read it a month sooner so I’d know what I’m doing! I just added a third blog, Still Writing. However, I’m shutting down one old blog, Bookbuster, which never got very popular, and streamlining Dirty Laundry, which does better. That’s a blog of general writing. My new one is focussed more on my books and editing and promotion plus writing on relevant topics only. I’ve loved doing it, all of it! I love WP!

    Like

  10. Good point about the audience, I write a blog about emigrating to the US and I have the people who are interested in the visa process and my friends/family who want to follow my progress. Sometimes hard to interest both groups at once!

    Like

  11. I have just recently started writing here on this site. Am still a bit lost as to which direction to take as mine is not a totally blog style approach. Any suggestions.

    Like

    1. Blogging is amazingly flexible. I don’t think there is one blog-style approach. Some of my blog posts are mini-essays, others are anecdotal, still others are mostly pictures. Experiment! See what works for you, your content, and your readers.

      Like

      1. Thanks Susanna for your advice and suggestions.
        I enjoyed reading your posts and will go through them. Currently, my few blogs have not fetched much readership so will have to look into it and see how my writings can get more exposure and some feedback or comments if not Facebook sharing.

        Like

  12. Oh dear – as someone new to blogging I set up more than 1 blog – I set up 6. One for travel writing, one about gardening, one for photography, one for poetry, one just for odd and weird things that carch my eye or amuse me and this my main blog where I share my writing. With the others I only share if I want to. I will keep them running for now and see which I don’t use or can close – I assume you can close blogs?

    Like

    1. Vintage 1956 was originally set up to chart my metamorphosis from wage slave, through the next three years as a very mature student to my eventual emergence as a writer. So that blog has a specific purpose – the others are for fun.

      Like

    2. You can, or you can keep them open but inactive. If six blogs seems unmanageable, think about consolidating them. WordPress’s categories can help: for instance, you could have one blog with categories for travel, gardening, and photography. You’d have to pick one theme that would work for all, but many of the WP themes (even the free ones!) are very flexible. Focusing each blog on one topic may get you more followers, but it won’t necessarily get you more readers. And it might force you to fragment your interests: where do you post about the gardens you photographed on your travels? 🙂 In a combined blog, you could assign one post to Travel, Gardening, and Photography, and your followers will find it more easily.

      Like

  13. They always give such good advice – having only recently begun my first blog I wouldn’t have an idea what to write about in another one, but I would definitely consider it in the future

    Like

  14. Being new to the blogging world i found this to be very informational. I personally am working on a continuing series, so I am not sure how you would classify that. I do enjoy looking through other blogs for inspiration.

    Like

  15. These were all great ideas. I also loved your analogy about how blogging is like potatoes chips and tattoos. I’m generally going back and forth between my real life and my phone checking out blogs, and mostly updating my own. I honestly don’t think I’m in the place to start a second blog since I’m just getting my first one off the ground.

    Thanks 🙂

    Like