Focusing and branding blog networks – what they do wrong
A lot of blog networks need to do a bit of cleaning up to get their focus going – something John Evans over at Syntagma posted about today. He has a whole bunch of points, although most are swiped from Odeo-buybacker and Blogger creator Evan Williams. Still, it’s valid and it touches one of the problems with blog networks: They are too wide, too unfocused, and too unbranded.
So they evolve, as they should. Do it over, do it right.
Instablogs, who has an interesting social 2.0 iteration coming up, are doing it right by launching very niched blogs in various categories. What you call these categories and how you package them does matter, but besides your overall branding it isn’t necessary what will make your network work or not.
That being said, when I’m building Bloggertalks and what’s coming next I have a plan for the overall brand, how sites are linking together and the steps to get there. I’ll not be doing a 50 site big network or anything like that, although I’d be a fool if I didn’t realize that things sometimes evolve. Anyway, that’s not my intention.
But yes, I’m building a series of sites, they’re (mostly) blogs and I’ll network ‘em since that makes it easier to get in new readers and users, as well as helps boost the all important pagerank n’ all. It can be very lonely out there, just your site in the dark, dark binary waves of the Internet, so linking stuff together is a solution to catch more people.
Some blog networks are huge, b5media is one. I’m not pointing a finger at them or anything, they recently took funding and probably has a grand master plan and all, but they do have a whole bunch of blogs under their wings. Yes, you can reach a lot of people that way – by stretching your jaw you’ll be able to engulf more, and we all love food don’t we? You do, however, have to handle some issues if you do it this way, one being your very own identity. Just being a linkdump of blogs – good or bad doesn’t matter – can of course be successful, but without an identity you’ll have a problem with the outer worlds’ view on your product. What is it, really, but a set of links?
Now, brand it and package it nicely, serve it up on a plate and you have something people can relate to, more easily remember and, last but not certainly least, believe is bigger and more important than it actually is. However, having 30+ (or whatever large number of members you might have) blogs in various categories spread across the bloggers’ interest scope will make it hard for you to brand the network. It can be done, certainly, but it isn’t easy I’ll tell you that.
Syntagma-John talks about his Web Network Magazine (or what you’ve chosen to call it this month, ever changing in the header at least) an although I think he’s underestimating peoples’ understanding and acceptance of blog networks per se, I do get what he’s doing. By branding and packaging his blogs as a series of linked “magazines” you give people something they’re used to in terms of actual wording, as well as focusing the content into niches that can be branded individually as well. If this is done right it’ll work, definitely, but John really needs to get the actual branding done right. That means no more rainbow headers, no more hacked Kubrick templates and a serious logo.
John, get in touch.
Seriously, most blog networks look like a bunch of blogs thrown together. They might look good, even be good, but you don’t get the feeling that they’re connected. 9rules comes to mind but to me that’s more of a social network that started with the blogs – at least I hope so since Mike Rundle & Co. are succeeding in building a hyped brand around the 9rules leaf, but failing in delivering the branded network feel when I visit the member blogs.
My take is, as you might know by now, niching. My future blog network, if you’d call it that (it’s not all blogs), won’t be big since I want to maintain a certain feel to it as well as a closeness amongst the blogs, and I want to be able to string them together with branding. The various planned ventures here span several niches, but none are more than one and it should be a nice mix all in all, with obvious trademarks and all.
I think niching is one way to go when we’re talking the evolution of blog network. Focus your content, brand it and make it great. Another might be the social path that 9rules are threading, and Instablogs are aiming at. Of course, what’s working today will also work tomorrow – but I think blog networks without an identity might have a problem in the future. Because you do want your visitors to browse your network, and if a visitor lands on one site in the network s/he should feel comforted since the brand is loaded in a positive way.
That’s very hard to do without a brand.