How many blogs is too many?
Like a lot of my peers, I'm interested in talking aimlessly and ad nauseam* on more than one subject.
Right, ok so why should that be a topic for an entire blog post? This has already been well established.
For some exposition, I already partitioned off my posts pertaining to musicianship and have placed them here, and that has turned out to be a good thing because it seems that as much as people like the idea of musicians, they don't care to hear about what it's like to be a musician -- or maybe more specifically, they don't care to hear me talk about it. Moving my musicianship posts to a sub-blog has worked out for me surprisingly well, in that my online world got more organized but also it turns out there were listeners who didn't care to sort through my daily life to find what music I've written.
I'll probably reference musicianship here like I do since that actually is a part of my everyday life, but that's not necessarily the point of this blog. Besides, the more that I stuck with writing in this blog about life in general, or the internet in general, or general life on the internet, the more people were inclined to stick around.
Hypothesis: Talking about musicianship is niche, and writing entries that are more general can engage more people because slice-of-life stories are far more identifiable for the average blog reader than talking about how it took me hours to find a snare drum.
Moving on to talking about work: When I talk about the industry in which I work (interwebs - or specifically, social media), it sometimes interrupts the momentum of anecdotal story-telling, even if that is by and large a string of reminders to myself of what has happened in my social life amidst the fucking craziness of agency life (the kind of life where work follows you home).
The thing is, the anecdotes about working on the internet is its own set of stories, too. I chose social media as a career because it is, in fact, another thing about which I can rattle on and on for hours. However, I didn't need that to take over my entire personality, and in the same way, I probably shouldn't let it overrun this blog.
Enter the Research & Development Clippings blog.
Ah, that feels good to get out of the way. All of my career-related musings can now be found there unless I'll call it universal enough to drop in this main blog.
But this brings up a question I'd like to ask my fellow bloggers:
Do you try to keep life facets distinct from each other or do you mash it all up into one destination? And what are the other things in your life you do with enough passion to start another blog / site for it?
*Yes, that's how you spell it.
That's CPVC piping. It's rated for higher temperatures than PVC, which is perfect because Internet packets run hot.
you know this, but i finally put up a separate music space for myself. i used to have a music blog and a personal blog, and then i tried combining them, and then i tried separating them again, but for the longest time i've really only used my personal blog. this new music blog is taking a different direction than the others have, though, and while i'm still feeling out the real direction i'd like it to take, i like having that spot for those thoughts and for the shameless self-promotion i tend to do now and again…
I have a separate blog for my Etsy obsession. At first, I was trying to combine the whole handmade and indie designer thing with my regular blog but it became too overwhelming. I felt like there was just too much going on and so I made my second blog.
I love that you recognize these things too because while I love talking GenY and Social Media and all that good stuff, I don't want that to become EVERYTHING. Which is kind of why I love 20SB, I love the personal aspects of it and getting to know people on a personal level. But I appreciate that when I when to talk shop, I have a folder full of content in my reader or whatever that is strictly SM. And when those two things can intersect in the right way, it's even better.
So yeah, I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't always like to mix business with pleasure, even though business can be pleasure too. Does that even make sense? No? Well it did in my head haha
working on a music blog right now actually. it's taking me more time to get started than it's going to take to actually run it. but i need separate venues.
I think I may be close to having too many blogs. Mostly because I finally jumped on the tumblr bandwagon and am loving it.
I've got my personal blog, my comic blog, I contribute (or had attempted to) on a geek blog, and now I've got a review blog and one for my little film business. There might be a few others floating around the interwebs….
You are inspiring with how much you get done!
Since my blog is more personal wah wah stuff I tend to lump everything together. But my passion for libraries did inspire me to start my second blog.
I do like separating them tho kinda for the same reason: most people don't want to hear me go on and on about libraries, but other librarians do. :)
Depends how you write it. You could easily reference anything in your musical life if you say “I spent all day looking for a snare drum, which was more frustrating than when these aren't the droids you're looking for!”
I don't know. Depends on your audience, but that would work for me.
I'm lucky enough that there's just me and my writing, and the two are pretty inseparable. I can't really summarize my day or thoughts without mentioning writing, particularly now that I'm in school for it. It seems like everyone has or ought to have a unique facet like that, music or writing, that helps set them apart from the rest of the blogging world.
Having run many blogs at one time, it's best if you are passionate about what you are writing about. The only problem is this – if you get writers block when it comes to one topic, you can hit up another blog and crunch something out. But what happens when you are completely blank in all aspects of life? Lets face it, bad days happen. When running a collection of blogs though, it's a day to day battle to come up with content just a few blogs, but when you can't come up with any content for any blogs for over a week, it's terrible. I've found myself getting burnt out really quickly when trying to come up with content over a spectrum of topics, no matter how much my love for the topic.