Jan 15, 2015 / Beginner

Many Topics, One Blog

Focus, branding, search engine optimization… optimization schmoptimization, we say! Who says you can’t blog on whatever tickles your fancy? The key is to find the focus in your lack of focus.

Header image by Pentocelo, aka dynamosquito [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

We all deal with blogger’s block sometimes. But what about the opposite, when you have dozens of things you want to blog about? Are you going to turn your audience off by blogging on a range of topics? How can you have a focused brand if your posts are all over the map?

You had your focus all along!

Some blogs take a narrow look at a particular subject, because of the blogger’s interests and goals. Others are wide-ranging reflections of their authors’ interests. If that’s you, it doesn’t mean your blog has no focus — it means the focus is, essentially, your point of view.

(Does that sound self-centered? I think about it like this: I blog not because I think the world needs Michelle’s Precious Opinions*, but because telling my stories connects me to other people in a way that makes both our lives richer.)

*They are pretty great opinions, though.

We’re drawn to blogs because of their topics, but also because we enjoy the blogger’s voice and perspective — and that’s what allows multi-topic blogs to be successful. If your perspective is consistent, readers will follow you from idea to idea. Think about it: you’re sitting down to tea with a friend, and they start talking about their newfound love of kayaking. Do you get up and walk away because you’ve never been interested in kayaks? Your readers are no different.

But aside from just being diverse, interesting you, there are a few things you can try to make your multi-topic blog reader-friendly — if you’re feeling a bit jumbled, give one of these a try!

Organize, organize, organize.

Make finding your topics easy — let your fantasy football-loving readers quickly find your weekly reports among your knitting posts:

  • Category pages let you add menu tabs that pull up all the posts in a specific category — and they’re simple to create from the Appearance → Menus tab of your blog’s dashboard. Here they are in action on Girl, Always Interrupted:
By approaching quietly, we are able to observe category pages in their natural habitat.

By approaching quietly, we are able to observe category pages in their natural habitat.

  • LAP screenshotShortcodes allow you tell tell a page to display a particular set of posts. Unlike category pages, which only display single categories, shortcodes let you filter posts in all kinds of tailored ways. Display them by category, tags, combos of tags, date, and more. Show thumbnail images or excerpts alongside the post titles. The possibilities are limited only by your willingness to dive in.
  • Custom image widgets are an eye-catching way to draw readers to particular content. Take a look at the image to the left — those are widgets in the sidebar of humor mag Long Awkward Pause, giving readers an easy way to get to their favorite features and showing off the range of content the magazine offer. (Graphic design degree not required; our tutorial will help anyone create custom pieces.)

Visually distinguish posts.

With small text or graphical touches, you can give different posts a distinct visual style. As with custom image widgets, this serves dual purposes: making it easy for readers to find what they enjoy, and highlighting the fact that your blog is multifaceted.

  • Themed days require no graphics at all — you can just decide that Thursdays are “Sunset Photo Thursdays” or Sundays are book review day. The Book Wars has “Top Ten Tuesdaysl” Studio Moms publishes a new “Creative Intentions” post each Monday. Make it easy for readers to identify these posts by putting the day’s theme in the posts’ titles.

If photography isn’t your thing, no worries! There are many sites where you can get beautiful, free images to use for things like this.

  • Add featured images for different topics; perhaps you can give every parenting post the same featured image of a toybox, and every career-focused post the same photo of papers scattered across a desk. You can do something similar with boilerplate text — put the same short description, perhaps in italics, at the start of all posts of a certain topic.
  • Use post formats creatively to add unique visual touches. If your theme supports post formats, selecting different formats allows you to give posts fun styling add-ons — an icon, a different font size for the title, a bold background color. Experiment with formats, and see what happens when you use particular formats to set off particular posts. Themes that offer post formats with background colors are particularly well-suited for this; take a look at the same blog with and without post formats:
No formats.
Formats!

Take some time to play with the options your theme gives you and to experiment with images, and you’ll soon figure out what works for you.

Be consistent.

Sometimes, starting a second (or third, or fourth) blog is the best way to go. If you’re thinking about branching out, ask yourself these four questions first.

You can house lots of topics on one blog — but if you write each one in very different styles, the lack of focus starts to become an issue. Your point of view is what drew readers to your blog in the first place. If there’s a jarring disconnect between posts — if your voice shifts depending on what you’re blogging about — your blog fragments, your readers lose trust, and all the visual cues in the blogosphere will not create a coherent whole.

No matter what you write about, write as you. When your enthusiasm shines through a post, readers will follow you to all kinds of topical nooks and crannies.

(In the end, if you’re doing that, you probably don’t need organizational bells and whistles. Author Caitlin Kelly writes on a vast variety of subjects on Broadside, but all her posts have her signature clarity and wit — and readers love them, no matter the topic. Ditto for Alec Nevala-Lee, who blogs on everything from television to science to writing. But the bells and whistles are still nice options to have.)

There are plenty of good reasons to have separate, focused blogs to address different issues, but identify those reasons and blog accordingly — don’t do it because an article somewhere told you it was good for SEO. How you define your online space is up to you.

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  2. I’ve just started blogging, and my organization has been all over the place. I began with talking about my life and all that, but it didn’t really feel right inside. So, I’ve switched over to another topic. Which is actually pretty messy now that I think about it. But, I really like the idea that you use the featured image to show the readers what is what. Thanks.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. Really useful – thank you. I need to play around with the category functions more.
    Are categories list on the home page restricted? Last time I tried I only had the option to have 2.
    At this stage I am struggling with keeping one main category on my blog.
    I suppose we can just call it a “lifestyle” blog.

    Liked by 3 people

  4. Michelle, thanks for this post. I’ve seen other blogs with the menu categories and just didn’t know how to accomplish it before reading this. You’ve inspired me to differentiate between the fiction and non-fiction pieces that I post. I am starting a “Fiction Friday” so that readers know what to expect.

    Liked by 3 people

  5. This is so me. I blog about our full time traveling, my photography, and my husbands art. Oh, and the dogs too. I started Artsy Fartsy Tuesday about 3 1/2 years ago and people have always loved that. People love to travel with us and see where we are. My photos help bring everything to life for my readers. In fact, I had a comment the other day from a reader that felt she got an intimate look at our life, and that is one thing she loves about my blog. If I had to narrow my focus to one thing, I would quickly run out of interesting things to say.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. A great question to tackle, especially as your blog evolves. I used to grapple with this topic too – I even posted separate content types on separate blogs, but I found that wasn’t sustainable or practical. It works better to just be organised and authentic on your home hub. In the end the most important person who must love the blog is you!

    Liked by 2 people

  7. WERE YOU READING MY MIND!? This topic is exactly what’s been on my mind lately. I haven’t had “broken pencil syndrome.” I just haven’t gotten a handle on how to blog and stay true to my basic theme when I want to write on so many topics on one blog. Thanks for this timely helper.

    Liked by 3 people

  9. great read. i thought by creating 4 different blogs then i would avoid the ‘randomization’ factor and draw a stronger audience. I will play around a bit more on formats.
    My main blog was borne out of my trip to outback australia. I then created one for my poetry,short stories, then came one for photos 90% and then i crated one that was a mix mash of everybodiy elses that i loved and reblog. But they all link to one another.. I think that is good???

    Liked by 2 people

  14. Im new to blogging and so far I have made 3 post. I certainly understand how you can focus on too many things i always feel like I have so much to say lol.. anyway please check out my blog everyone and provide some feedback! Thanks

    Liked by 3 people

    1. There’s a post that goes up here each Monday specifically for bloggers looking for feedback; you might try your request there. And note: if you can be more specific — what would you like feedback on — you’re much more likely to get a response.

      Liked by 4 people

  15. Wouldn’t it work better to set up different blogs…on these different topics. Each topic probably has sub-topics. This is what I have begun; a 2nd Blog and now I want a blog just for the random things that cross my mind

    Liked by 3 people

  17. I have a question. Is there a point where you just give up on the veiws and just write! My question is bascically do you blog for views or for yourself? ( I am using my phone sorry for the spelling and grammer. )

    Liked by 3 people

    1. My personal opinion on this is that people write for interaction with other people. If you are just writing for yourself and don’t care about views or interaction then you may as well write it on a word document and save it to your hard drive for no-one to see. Surely the very nature of posting to places like wordpress is that you want to interact with others, although the amount of spam followers that are out there does make this process a little annoying at times.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. I think we all want people to read what we publish, or else, as moi notes, we’d just keep personal journals. That said, I think we need to do both — if you write *only* for yourself, you risk being so navel-gazing that no one else will care; if you write only for others, you often come across and fake/forced and lose the personality that makes blogs appealing in the first place. As you blog and start to understand your voice and how others react to it, you’ll come closer and closer to the happy medium.

      Liked by 2 people

  18. This is exactly why I’ve decided to write what I called “a holiday-post”, “post-vacanza” in Italian, in order to be free, at leader sometimes to go completely off topic and chat around what I want. Cos I strongly believe that, essentially, a blog MUST be a pleasure and not a duty. I noticed that, after some time, I was dangerously missing that point. I love your phrase “telling my stories connects me to other people in a way that makes both our lives richer. Thank you for this very useful post!:)

    Liked by 3 people

  20. Good advice. I was interested in the shortcodes as I have not heard of that before although I don’t think that my theme (Eventbrite multi) supports that, at least not the free version and buying a theme is not something I particularly want to do, Are you aware of any free themes that offer this functionality?

    Liked by 2 people

  21. Thanks so much for this post, Michelle. I started my blog in May , did Writing 101, and never stopped writing long enough to organize. My blog has “grown like Topsy”. I have learned to assign posts to categories but they could use some streamlining. I write from one point of view in prose and poetry – particularly haiku – about life as it touches me. I feel affirmed by your positive words about my sort of blogger and blog. And I see how I can improve my blog with better organization.

    Liked by 2 people

  22. I’m totally in love with this article. Although it speaks about something foreign to me, because I have always been a resource-type blogger generally, it presents both points of view as to choice of either a single-topic blog or a multiple-topic one (i.e.presenting to the world your various opinions in one package, blogging as you on varied topics in one branded blog).

    I just love reading it over and over again because you, Michelle, are able to convey both intentions for choosing either blogging style.

    It’s also very useful for single-topic bloggers because we could all tweak the menu/categories/shortcodes features to further organize our blog’s topics; not that I would experiment on that anytime soon but it’s always great to know we have these options (and it just might come in handy later on).

    Thank you for a delightful article!

    Liked by 2 people

  23. My blog uses cycling as a connecting metaphor and also as transportation mode for exploring physical and intellectual worlds on: travel, culture, art, history.

    If my blog was just a cycling journal, it be a very boring and restrictive blog. Who cares about my cycling achievements? Besides my body changes over time.

    More interesting, is what one sees and conversations with others.

    Liked by 1 person

  24. Thanks for this helpful information. Part of my problem is that I am new to blogging. Another issue is time—I’m in such a rush to get my words out there that I don’t often take the time to consider layout, visibility, etc. But I have begun to create categories. I will definitely explore your suggestions, such as Category pages and visually distinguishing posts. I want to refer to your post again as I develop my new venture.

    Liked by 2 people

  25. Thank you for posting this. I’ve been trying to create category pages since I started blogging four months ago, with no success. I’ll try again now that I’ve got a word to call them.

    Liked by 2 people

  26. I signed up for the Blogging101 course which i’m finding very useful. One assignment was to write your About Me page and this sealed it for me re topics. I post with my work head on in the week as a leadership/team facilitator and conference speaker and then my social street photographer head at weekends. Be interested to hear if this works.

    Liked by 3 people

  28. Excellent material…everything that you say is starting to make sense. I think the most difficult part is how to figure how just who you are on the blog…the focus. This article brings some of the possibilities to light. Thanks so much!

    Liked by 2 people

  29. This is very useful information which is good to re-read from time to time, regardless of how long we’ve all been blogging for.

    I have been wondering lately if I’m being too self-centred with my blog but this post puts into perspective for me – “telling my stories with my photos connects me to other people in a way that makes both our lives richer”. It also helps me to express my creative self as opposed to my buttoned down, serious, professional work ‘me’. My blog is ‘The world according to Debbie’ when all’s said and done and that means many topics…

    The tips on organising are great and I’ve been trying to do this along the way. Nice to read all the comments here, it is a very helpful community 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

  30. I was actually thinking in this direction for some time now. I started it as a recipe blog. I normally have 2 paragraphs of family and recipe story. Plus My blog is about cooking with my son. So I write about that. But sometimes there recipes which are quick or I don’t have enough time. So I was thinking to add a page about quick recipes.
    And after taking blogging courses now I have 2 strong parenting posts too. So kind of thinking about adding a page about that too.
    Learned a great deal from this post.

    Liked by 2 people