Should I Create An Umbrella/Tree Trunk Blog?

by AnthonyNewmanEnterprises

Posted: 13 years ago 6 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

I hope I'm posting this in the right place. I thought there might be a forum specifically about blogging, but I couldn't find it.

Anyway, I recently started a blog. My intention is to chronicle my journey through personal development, becoming healthier/happier, into the online business world and beyond. Recently, a series of posts I was doing began going off on a tangent that I didn't intend. This caused me to stray from the core mission for my blog, and I started wondering if I should start a whole new blog about the "tangent topic."

This experience led me to consider possibilities for many other auxiliary topics for blogs. These auxiliary topics have much more potential for money-making than my initial blog, which has started basically as a "diary" about me. Originally, I thought of creating a "www (dot) example (dot) com (slash) subsection" on my blog for the side-topic, thereby removing the off-topic posts from my main site, but leaving them visible to those who want to read them.

Long story short (yeah, right), my question is this: What are your thoughts about creating a central blog-the "tree trunk" for my business-and then branching off with other blogs? In my example, the diary blog would be the trunk, and I could create a blog about music, one about TV, one about movies, and one about books. Basically, should I attribute them all to myself, connect them all and cross-promote for myself? Or should I treat them all as separate entities and keep them at a distance from each other?

I'm not really sure what my endgame vision is here, and that's part of my problem. I'm not sure how I feel about branding ME, versus branding my companies. If I did it this way, I suppose I would be the main catalyst through which all my traffic flows to the other blogs (at least in the beginning).

If anyone would be willing to chat with me one-on-one about this, please PM me. It's a difficult conversation to have this way, but I'm desperate to get these issues worked out in my head so I can move forward with my project(s).

Thanks for reading!

#blog #create #tree trunk #trunk #umbrella #umbrella or tree

Jeremy Banks 13 years ago

If you have a blog about tv movies and books then sure make a separate section for each and host them all on the same domain. This will give you ONE domain that has a lot of great content vs three not so big blogs. Also tv, movie, books are all media related so it isn't too off topic

If you made a site about recipes, remodeling your home, and training dogs then I would suggest three separate sites.
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AnthonyNewmanEnterprises 13 years ago

Thanks for your reply, Jeremy. I don't see it as a question of domain, though. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it wrong, but I'm not really asking about a "hub" for all things media.

Right now, I have a journal-type blog. As I was writing it recently, I saw potential for it to inadvertently morph into a music blog. Even though it would have been temporary, it seemed like it was the wrong place for me to talk about things like that. I thought about creating a "/music" heading on my blog, so people could read my thoughts about music, and those who didn't care what I wrote about music could avoid it.

So, I thought I'd do that, and then if it took off and I committed to writing to the "/music" section regularly, I would move it to it's own home. But I don't really want to do this wrong, because I'll lose who-knows-how-much work and effort if I end up re-vamping the setup someday. So, in a way it's a question of potential marketing viability in the future, but really it's a question of logistics, structural integrity and sensible progression.
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- genhorrall 13 years ago
  
  Sent you a pm with how to get in touch with me. Hope to talk to you more about this soon.
  
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  AnthonyNewmanEnterprises 13 years ago
  
  Thanks, genhorrall. I sent you an email, and I definitely look forward to chatting with you.
  
  To everyone else who might read this: The way I see it, my options are as follows. 1) I could create several different blogs and keep them separate from each other, possibly using completely different identities for each and then promoting them on my personal blog, 2) I could continue with my one blog, talk about these subjects briefly, and then create subsections to talk about them more, 3) I could keep the idea of starting another (or many more) blog(s) on the back burner for now, and focus on putting all my best efforts into the one blog, or 4) you fill in the blank.
  
  Since this is such a wonderful place filled with the most knowledgeable IM pros on the 'net, I was hoping to learn from you. I feel like this is the biggest decision in my young online-business life since I picked a domain name for my first site, and I'm deathly afraid of getting it wrong. One theory is to just decide and take an action; if it's the wrong action, so be it.
  
  But really, I want to hear your best advice on this very confusing strategic step.
  
  Thanks
  
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  CDarklock 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by AnthonyNewmanEnterprises
  
  But really, I want to hear your best advice on this very confusing strategic step.
  
  Do you know why it's confusing?
  
  Because you think it matters.
  
  Nobody cares if you have one blog or fifty blogs. They only care if you are blogging about stuff they want to read. Stop worrying about how it's organised and just go blog.
  
  You can spend MONTHS trying to figure out the best way to do this, and you'll never be 100% sure so you'll just sit on your arse and do jack squat.
  
  I'll give you three guesses how successful you're going to be doing jack squat.
  
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  "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
  
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  AnthonyNewmanEnterprises 13 years ago
  
  Okay, Darklock. I completely understand what you're saying; there is definitely a bit of analysis paralysis happening here. But someday, it will really matter, won't it? I mean, maybe it won't, but if/when I become "larger than the average blogger," I'll inevitably consider branding myself. Taking care of this issue now will allow me to get a jump start on the branding process.
  
  Don't get me wrong, lots of people have started multiple blogs without worrying about this issue. Darren Rowse, the ProBlogger himself, has a handful of different blogs, and to my knowledge, they're not interconnected at all. And to be perfectly honest, I'm not exactly sure HOW I would interconnect them other than cross-posting once in awhile and cross-advertising.
  
  Perhaps I just answered my own question. Either way, I understand your point. None of this matters if it consumes me to the point where I don't blog at all, and if I let it get any worse, that's exactly what will happen.
  
  Thanks
  
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