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| Grumpy Old Genie |
I read quite a number of posts and shared a couple to my GeniAus Facebook page . Something I saw annoyed this Grumpy Old Girl. One blogger who has three blogs had posted exactly the same article to those three blogs. Each of these blogs is targetted at a different family group so I guess the blogger thought the message important enough to share to the three different audiences...but what of people like me who follow all three blogs?
The purpose of each of those blogs appears to be to share and record stories from a branch of the bloggers family. The blogger struck a problem when she had something general to say.
Was it really necessary to post the same article in those three places? Would it be a better strategy to use other social media channels to share the message widely?
That blogger could have one blog for all posts and label and categorize them carefully so that her different audiences could find articles of interest to them. This could even bring more readers to the blog as readers would be exposed to articles outside their area of interest. Such a blog could have a broader purpose - ie to share the stories of my ancestors, connect with cousins and discuss issues in genealogy.
Another alternative would be to have multiple blogs - one for each family line plus a general general genealogy blog for discussion of news, issues, resources etc. This would benefit those readers who are only interested in hearing stories of one family line.
Another approach is to have a general blog and then other blogs for niche subjects. Prominent Australian bloggers who take this approach are Alona Tester and Pauleen Cass.
So what I am really thinking about today is recognising your audience and having a clear purpose for your blog/s.
Which approach do you take?
8 comments:
I've taken the approach of one genealogy blog and careful categorization of posts. I also have an author's blog for my other writing. Occasionally, I'll want to write about something that coukd be relevant to both, but I'll post to one or the other, not both.
Posting the same thing on multiple blogs seems a waste of time and effort, as I see putting it on one makes it more of a reason to follow you. And as you wrote Jill, just use categories for people to find what's of interest to them. But another reason is that Google will penalise your blogs (meaning less people will find them) because of the exact same content being replicated in multiple places.
Good point about the Google penalising Alona. Didn't think of that.
Whew, glad I was on the right side of the Grumpy Genie today.😃
Another strategy is just to put a one-liner with the link on two and the full story on just one.
I have just the one blog, because when I first set up my blog, I didn't think I'd have enough to write about to set up multiple blogs. I use both Categories and Tags, so that people can find posts relevant for them - I use tags for the surnames, and I have Categories for the general topics I write about.
I started with one blog which was a way for me to write about my research. It evolved and is now a general comment blog. Here I talk about events that I attend or topics I am studying. My other blogs that are for family,One Name Study and a software discussion forum have been set up to target different audiences. When I need to I put in a link to another blog. I would not repeat anything. I moved some old posts over to a new blog with a note on each (at the top) stating that they were not new posts. Readers will move on if you duplicate posts.
One blog to rule them all. That’s how I’m doing it. Most people will skip over information that doesn’t apply to them. You can make it easier for them with categories and a decent first paragraph.
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