When I got started blogging, it wasn't clear how many blogs one person could manage to maintain. I ended up with one main one (Vacuum) and a bunch of tiny little ones on specific subjects that got abandoned when my interest waned.
At one point one of those side interests (libraries from a patron's point of view) got enough traffic and specific readership that I forked a series of posts into their own blog (Superpatron), which now has 4x the subscriber reach of Vacuum but really not much more actual readership traffic. This didn't start from scratch - there was already a bunch of writing and a bunch of readers to go with it.
One big weblog with everything in it, or lots of little narrow ones? It depends on what you are trying to do. If the blog is an outlet for you to get really good at self-expression and writing and capturing what's going on in your surroundings, then by all means do a blog where everything you write is relevant. That's a very standard format with lots of people doing it and it often provides a personal channel into a life that you can take good advantage of.
But, if you're going to be an expert on a topic - pick a topic, narrow it down, and stay on message for that topic for as long as you can. If someone is going to refer to a list of experts in an area, they have a lot easier time of linking to you if you are always saying something that's relevant to that one narrowly defined point of view, and where everything else is either not said or said somewhere else.
You might have to start out broad and then fork off a narrower specialty when you think you have enough material and good enough writing habits to go into more depth, or when the regular readers of your broad focus blog would be bored by dozens of postings on a single topic.
Some great examples of each, for contrast:
Expert, on topic, single focus:
Calendar Swamp - Scott Mace on the sad state of electronic calendars
Dave's Landslide Blog - Dr. David Petley covers the worldwide landslide research community
Urban Chickens - All news about raising chickens in the city, all the time
Hard to classify, all topics are relevant, personal narrative
Four Obsessions - Kate's blog on "reading, writing, cooking and crafting"
Hruminations - "Random comments from John I. Hritz"
Robot Wisdom - Jorn Barger's prototypical link blog
One comment I had on Vacuum from a first time reader was "this looks like part of a project, but I don't know what the project is". If you are going to be an expert (or aspire at least to collect expertise in some field) then make yourself easy to classify.
So, the short answer is I have questions to answer before know which way is right to write.
Why am I writing?
Am I an expert on anything?
Do I want to be?
Should I be?
Can I be?
Will the permanence of what I write play a role in determing what I write, or at least what I share?
Do I care?
Should I care?
Wasn't age 2 supposed to be the one when you ask questions forever?
Posted by: mcwflint | 11/19/2008 at 03:23 PM
So, the short answer is I have questions to answer before know which way is right to write.
Why am I writing?
Am I an expert on anything?
Do I want to be?
Should I be?
Can I be?
Will the permanence of what I write play a role in determing what I write, or at least what I share?
Do I care?
Should I care?
Wasn't age 2 supposed to be the one when you ask questions forever?
Posted by: mcwflint | 11/19/2008 at 03:25 PM