How To Manage Multiple Blogs

Brandon Cox writes a fairly good article at Fuel Your Blogging called Tips for Managing Multiple Blogs. The post talks about manage several blogs.

I think firsthand that anyone can agree that you should know what you can do in the time that you have available. Life happens and as I have always said – Blogging should NEVER be a chore. Managing multiple blogs might have that effect.

You do not have to have a team to blog on your site and guest posts are optional, but allow fresh material every so often. But if it is your site, you should be the one doing the work at your own pace. This extends to managing multiple sites. There is no need for a schedule.

Here are my tips:

1. Like any basic web design student, always brainstorm the focus of your website. Who do you want the site to target? What topics are you going to cover?

2. Be clear with your site’s focus. Do you already cover certain topics on another website of yours? STOP!!! Make a clean break and make sure the material you write stays on one site or the next one. Cross-posting does not necessarily hurt a website, but webmasters should not practice it too often. You want to drive traffic to your site – insert a small section for a feed from your other site on your sidebar.

3. Be prepared to do the work in engaging people in conversation. If you want your site to survive, you need to step into the conversations too. This also goes for making an effort to return comments.

4. Never set your blogging schedule in stone. Things happen that you have no control over.

5. Know when you need help or it is too much to handle. Having a website means work and it is multiplied with each extra blog you create.If you cannot handle it, look for people who might want to join in and contribute.

6. Do NOT blog solely because you want to make money. You have to have traffic for that in order to make money. This also means you have to have some type of good content to attract traffic. Blog because you want to share your knowledge in something interesting that another person never knew about. There have been so many websites that have gone down the hole because of money.

7. Get the basic handling down with one site before trying another. If you cannot create one successful site, then why start another one?

8. Do not do things in halves. Be committed to each of your blogs. You will have to divide your time, and surely one of them is your favorite, but it is important to dedicate enough time to update and allow your visitors to stay interested.

A lot of the above I have blogged about for the past few years. And by the way, you should check out Fuel My Blogging too. It is a great site.

Do you manage more than one website? What are your suggestions for others looking to run multiple blogs?