So you’re super smart and know a lot about a lot. You want to tell everyone about everything, but you keep hearing about the importance of finding a target audience and choosing a niche.
Yes, it’s true that being an expert or someone who is very well-versed and focused on one topic helps you to gain better traction on building an audience your blog. Establishing yourself as an expert creates a trust and consistency because people know what to expect when they visit your site. There’s a misconception that if you can offer a bunch of things to a bunch of people your blog/business/idea will be more likeable, but it can actually be confusing. If you’re a frequent MayaEious.com reader, you know you won’t find anything about health, beauty, finance, fitness, food, or anything that doesn’t have to do with personal development and building a profitable blog/business.
So what do you do when you want to discuss multiple topics? You could build multiple blogs for multiple topics, but before considering running multiple websites, there’s some ways to combine your topics to make them cohesive.
Here are 3 things you can do when you want to blog about more than one topic.
1. Find a way to combine the topics in a way that makes sense.
A good friend of mine wanted to start a blog that catered towards female college students and their professional development. She also enjoyed talking about fashion/style and beauty. The two topics aren’t related, but I offered a suggestion on how she could make them relatable with the blog posts like:
- Five pieces every young professional should have in her closet.
- Three lipsticks that are appropriate for your first day of work.
- How to dress for the interview of your dream job.
- These two hair styles that exude confidence for your next big meeting.
Combining the topics in this manner eliminate confusion for your readers while allowing you to talk about the things you love at the same time.
[Tweet “Multi-topic blogs don’t have to be so confusing. Here’s how: “]
2. Find a core purpose of your blog that each topic will relate to.
Finding your core purpose is really the easiest way to decide what to blog about. If the overall goal/purpose of your blog is to help single moms find ways to feel more confident and energized in their everyday life, you could blog about food, beauty, fitness, finance, and more. If the the topic is structured to help your audience with your specific goal, it will make sense. You could write about foods that boost energy to make them feel good for the day. You can write about beauty tips that make them look more energized. You can write about how fitness helps them more alert during the day. You can write about ways for them to save money and feel confident growing their retirement fund. That way the topics are different but the interest is the same. LifeHack is a really good example of a multi-topic blog. They offer “hacks” and tips to make your life better in all areas.
Doing this allows you to write about multiple topics while keeping the same interest.
[Tweet “Multi-topic blogs work best when the overall purpose is clear.”]
3. Make your blog similar to a magazine set up with different contributors.
The Nectar Collective is a great example of a multi-topic cohesive blog. She discusses blogging, business, self-development, travel, food, social media, technology and more, but she has a group of contributors to help run the blog. Having contributors keeps an even level of consistency so there’s not 5 posts on technology and 1 post on travel in one week. There’s generally an equal amount of topics posted in the same week. Another pro to having contributors is your readers will have the option to read posts from specific contributors based on their topic.
In order to run a blog like this, you need to have a sense of community. If you’re going to have multiple categories you need to be EXTREMELY specific on your audience. If you want to talk about travel, beauty, health, food and business, it needs to be travel etc for male college graduates that are single. The broader the topic, the more specific the audience needs to be.
[Tweet “If your blog topic is broad, your audience needs to be specific.”]
While I suggest sticking to one or two topics for your blog, if you done correctly, you can blog about multiple topics. How do you make your multi-topic blog cohesive?
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This is incredibly timely Maya! I’m in the midst of making a business plan for my blog but I’m having a hard time finding my niche. Because I am many things, it makes it difficult not to share certain aspects of my life throughout the blog. Christian, artist, wife, mama, homemaker, missionary.
Some days I’ve narrowed it down to artist and homemaker, but I also want to be able to encourage creatives of all kinds, whether they’re single, married, have children or not. However I don’t want the topic to be relevant to some readers (ex: DIY crib mobile) and then completely unappealing to others (those single with no kiddies).
Then I’m thinking about just focusing on the art and our innate desire to create, and focus the blog on encouraging, empowering, and inspiring artists to create, whatever their medium. And to dare to dream their biggest dreams, and helping them on their road to success, because the callings of our heart are not random!
I’m torn, but this post definitely helps assert that a blog can have more an one or two topics, but now I have a better idea of how to do it well! Thank you!
Amber, I am right there with you! This post was definitely helpful in fine tuning things for me as I am many things as well. I think I need to hit the pen and paper and map out my ideas to figure out what I want to focus on. I’m glad I’m not the only one struggling to narrow things down 🙂
So glad this was a timely post for you, Amber! it sounds like you have a bunch of great ideas but need help choosing which one to run with. Decide who would benefit MOST from your posts. Maybe a married mom with kids who wants to pursue art would benefit better from your advice than the single college girl who has more free time. There’s a specific audience out there who needs your help. Don’t be afraid to “leave anyone out”. Rather, decide who could use help the MOST. I like the idea of inspiring artists to create regardless of their medium. I think whether you’re a painter or musician or graphic designer, creatives/artists have something that inspires them to create. Maybe you can find a common ground with that as well. I hope this was helpful instead of more confusing, ha! Best of luck. 🙂
Maya, since I’ve written to you I’ve made the dive into building a creative hub that also guides busy creatives/artists through improved organization (of time, and more). So without me saying it, its targeted at busy people with lots on their daily to-do lists!
Thank you for your reply, very helpful too.
“Don’t worry about leaving anyone out” 🙂
Hey, Amber! Hope your hub is still going strong! xx
Thanks for this Maya. I currently have a blog that’s been up for a year but still I’m really struggling about my niche because I blog about my life and the things that I love. I have topics that range from Lifestyle, finance, travel, food, fashion, beauty, books, movies, and blogging tips. And I just went and reviewed which topics should I eliminate from my blog but I didn’t want to delete any of them. I guess my main goal is to inspire people to enjoy life but when I do product reviews, or book review or movie reviews, they no longer get in the mix. I have tried creating different blogs but it’s so hard to maintain more than one blog especially with my schedule of full time engineer, working 12 hours a day. So I’m wondering how I’m going to combine all of those so my readers and myself isn’t so confused.
Stay Wonderful Always,
Heide
Kintsugi of Life
Hey, Heide! If you have a lot of categories with a main goal to inspire “people” to enjoy life, you have to be clear on who your people are. It’s really important that you define your audience (the “people”) so you can know what they consider “enjoying life” is. Enjoying life to one group of people will be different for another group of people.
That’s a great point to start with. I actually want to inspire women or girls like me. Currently checking out how Lifehack mix all their topics. I think I’m kind of getting it. I’m going to write posts in a way that they inspire me because I want to inspire people who are just like me. Ha!
You’re so wonderful. Thank you so much.
PS. Currently your new fan and looking forward to reading more posts from your blog.
Thank you so much, Heide! I really appreciate you visiting my blog and leaving a comment! I look forward to hearing/seeing more of your growth. 🙂
This post was right on time for me. I just switched to the magazine layout style. I’m working on the other kinks. Your site is full all types of info. Love it! Keep it up.
Ok! Your article is the last and most distinctive I’ve read on this agonizing subject! So… Combining my work ( wine sales, tasting) with my hobby ( audio equipment and music reproduction , equipment reviews). I want advertisers ( hopefully!).
I say; it can’t be even remotely mixed in one blog. Your opinion would be appreciated
Thanks
I agree with you. I don’t think you should try forcing them into on blog. Decide which on you have more time to turn into a blog topic or business idea.
This has been haunting me for a few months! Passion and knowledge on audio , music sound reproduction and reviews and my business ( semi retired) ; wine and wine tasting. They seem irreconcilable in one blog..??? But can they be combined and how??
Howard
Hey Howard,
Not every passion/talent has to be monetized or turned into a blog or business. Keep one as a hobby and turn one into a business. If you’ve semi retired from wine, maybe start looking into growing your music hobby into something more. I wouldn’t try to combine the two.
So in effect you’re saying , make TWO blogs and monetize one… Lots of work there!
No. You don’t have to make two blogs. Make a blog for the one you want to monetize and enjoy the other one for what it is. What I’m saying is not every passion has to be a blog/business/monetized.
Hi Maya,
This has been a very interesting and thoughtful post for me but then again I still seem to be insecure about what my instincts are telling me. I would like to ask for 3-4 minutes of your time to read this comment and your sincere opinion. Thanks in advance. So:
My target demographic as to say are young adults(preferably men, but not necessarily) who are already too tired of their corporate jobs, sedentary life and seeing the same four walls every single day and cannot do this for the rest of their life. They need to get back in shape, leave their job and go see the world.
My only niches/topics are 3 which are:
1. Bodyweight training – allowing people to get in shape and workout wherever they want, helps with the traveling
2. How to make money online – helping them make money online from the comfort of their laptops becoming location independent
3. Travel – the office walls and the sedentary life has made them long for the world and they want to see what it offers though some physical endurance would be needed)
I see a lot of discussion about multi-topic blogs but most of the examples are for blogs with 5+ categories(topics) like photography, fashion, DIY, food etc. The blog I want to create is consisted of only those 3 niches I wrote above.
As you said above I think all of my topics relate to each other so do you think I should go for it? Do those 3 topics fall into a 1 big topic? I cannot discard any of those since my message to the reader won’t be the same without them.
Sorry for the long comment and I am hoping the hear your opinion.
Best regards,
Georgi
Hey Georgi,
Thanks so much for taking the time to read my blog.
The best way to make all of these work together is to have a core focus. My mind thinks “freedom lifestyle.” But YOU have to brand & define what a freedom lifestyle looks like. For example “Freedom is about restriction-free health, travel, and career.” And everything you talk about regarding health (bodyweight training), travel, and business has to follow a set of principles that are in line with a “Freedom Lifestyle”.
Hope this helps and makes sense. In short, basically to establish yourself as a expert in these areas, you want to be able to DEFINE certain things (based on your actual experience of course).
Maya
Im really struggling with this. I started a beauty blog taking about makeup and hair. Then I want sure cause I think started talking about the struggles of being a mom. Now I don’t wasn’t to talk about any of these topics. Because Im not getting any traffic that i like to have. So I thought I know about traveling and how to do it on a budget. But i also like to take photos for my blog and enjoy photos. I don’t know what to do.
LOL! I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because I understand. Don’t switch topics just because you’re not getting traffic. Especially if you haven’t been doing it long enough and consistently enough to measure actual results.
So glad I found your blog! While I know my core purpose (helping moms grow from life experiences), I am still having trouble marrying my two topics together: coparenting and raising tween girls. I get good amount of traction from both topics but still feel like I need to somehow tie them together. I feel like I am almost there but a nagging feeling that it doesn’t convey well on the blog.
Thanks so much for your comment! I love your topics! I mean you could just talk about coparenting from your perspective. 🙂 I don’t think it needs to be coparenting AND raising tween girls. You will always be coparenting but your girls will not always be tweens – I think coparenting is the dominant topic.
The ‘only’ reason I would think to keep raising tween girls as a standalone is if you specifically have a passion about talking about raising up young women.
Hi, Maya! Thank you for the wonderful article! I’ve been STRUGGLING a lot lately trying to define my blog’s main focus! But the thing is that I have three: feminine fashion, simple, natural skincare and healthy recipes. The message I am trying to communicate is that any woman can be beautiful if she gives herself (both her body/skin and her mind) a bit of TLC. If you put a little effort into your health and do little things to be happy – you will be beautiful despite all odds! But… is it too broad? Should I become an “expert” instead in skincare/ feminine style or nutrition? Or do all three work? I’d REALLY appreciate your feedback!!!!!!!
Hey, Liza!
It depends what your goals are from a business perspective. If blogging is something you do as a hobby or “for fun” for right now, I would blog consistently about health/style/beauty and then allow your audience to define how they see your expertise.
Thank you, Maya! But… what if I’m looking to actually run this blog as a business (i.e. as a source of income)? Would it be better to split it to two blogs: one for just the food, and another one for style and beauty? THANKS!!!