Blog Struggles: Changing Your Blog’s Focus

Last week, I covered the definition and benefits of having a focus on your blog, and then gave you some tips on discovering your blog’s focus by examining and studying the clues your blog currently contains. Today, I want to cover how to change your blog’s focus now that you’ve found it, as part of this ongoing series on Blog Struggles.

There are several ways to change your blog focus. You can do it suddenly, or slowly. It’s up to you, and the amount of shock you want to put your readers through.

You also have to be prepared for consequences.

The consequences of changing your blog’s focus are:

• Your readers might not like the “new you”, or at least, the new subject matter.
• You will lose readers.
• You might anger some readers.
• It will take time for readers to adapt.
• You will attract new readers.
• It will take time for search engines to find and re-index your blog posts.
• Your page ranking may change.
• The change may not be fast enough for you.

While changes to your blog may happen overnight, the response to that change may or may not happen as fast. It takes time to recover when you make changes to your blog. Word has to spread. Search engines have to index. Searchers need to search. Just be patient.

Another unexpected consequence of changing the focus of your blog will happen within you. You will feel a lot of fear, anxiety, even a little paranoia. It’s normal. All are energy caused by change. In time, the energy will also change and you will begin to be excited, energized, and even a bit euphoric with the positive feelings toward your blog and your subject matter.

It’s just part of the process.

Changing Your Blog to Match Your New Blog Focus

Here are some things to consider changing on your blog as your blog focus shifts.

• What Are Your New Keywords? To help searchers find your blog and its new specific content focus, create a list of keywords and search terms used to describe your new content. Add these to your blog however and wherever you can to help it get found.
• Blog Title: Does it still identify your blog’s content? What would be a better, more descriptive, blog title? Does it say what you now want it to say? If not, change it.
• Post Categories: Go through your categories and change them to better reflect your changes. Use recognizable and easily identifiable keywords that match your new blog content and focus.
• Blog Design: Does your blog’s design and Theme need changes to better improve its recognizability? The changes could be as simple as changing colors, or could be more involved and require changing graphics and layout. Research other blogs that cover your subject and see what they look like. You don’t want to look like them, but you want to resemble them, as they are the ones with the answers and you want your blog to look like you now have the answers.
• Post Titles: Start writing new post titles with good keywords and search terms, but also go through your past blog post titles and consider changing them to better match your new blog’s focus keywords and descriptions.
• Post Content: Go through your past posts and consider changing them to better match your new post content. Don’t throw them away. Edit them to match the new focus for your blog. Even posts about unrelated subjects might be reworded in their content as well as in the title towards the new subject. If you can’t make them match, put them in a category separate from the rest of your new categories. They still might bring in traffic, and you could pick up a reader or two. You never know.
• Start Writing From Your Heart: Make every new blog post be filled with the passion you have for the subject, as well as keywords that help your blog be found. Be sincere in your content presentation, and make the content yours, not just quotes and references from others. Your sincerity and passion for your subject will show naturally. Let it happen.

For the most part, make this a natural transition. Since the odds are that you have already been blogging about your passion, now that you are conscious of it, you may find most of your comments and highest traffic came to the posts that dealt with your blog focus. Since readers are already attracted to what you want to blog about, why shock them? Just keep giving them what they want.

If you need to make changes to your blog’s format and style, then do so slowly, maybe one change a week, so your readers will grow accustomed, or might not even notice, the changes.

How to Announce Your Blog Changes?

I’m often asked if the blogger should make a public announcement about the changes in their blog when they change their blog’s focus. I have several answers.

1. If you’ve already been blogging about the subject, even unconsciously, do not make an announcement. Just keep blogging, sticking to your new narrow focus.
2. If you feel inclined to warn your readers of the changes, don’t make a big public announcement. Tell them in a story that matches the form and style of your old blogging style.
3. If your change involves drastic changes to your blog’s look and form, warn your readers at least a week in advance. The changes may interfere with their navigation and familiarity with your blog which can be upsetting and bring a lot of questions, questions that need to be answered in a blog post announcement which describes the changes to the content and navigation.

Maintaining Your Blogging Focus

Your blogging focus and passion may shift and ebb with time. It’s natural as you hone your blogging skills and expertise in the subject.

You may also make a mistake, and you may fail. Don’t judge yourself a failure too soon.

I’ve met many bloggers who were ready to give up after a year of blogging, when suddenly someone noticed their blog and linked to it. Traffic shot up. Three months later, she is still the talk of the town, so to speak, and her traffic numbers keep going up.

I’ve also met those who thought they were doing the right thing, went out and bragged about it to everyone, got a lot of traffic and a lot of attention by beating their own drum, only to find out after six months that they were bored with themselves and their blog’s content. They couldn’t find the enthusiasm nor energy to keep up the blog’s new focus. Their readers keep wanting what they had to offer, but they didn’t want to hand it out any more.

I recommend that you start slowly to see if this is what you really want to put your energy into. It’s like turning coal into a diamond. It’s one chip cut away at a time.

Blog Struggles: Blog Focus Series

• Blog Struggles: The Blog Focus
• Blog Struggles: Why Should Your Blog Have a Focus
• Blog Struggles: Finding Your Blog Focus
• Blog Struggles: Changing Your Blog’s Focus

Related Articles

• Learning About Blogging and How to Blog
• How People Search the Web and How They Can Find Your Blog
• 10 Things You Need to Know Before You Blog
• How is Blogging Like Stand-up Comedy
• Writing a Blog and Engaging Readers
• Are You Writing Well for the Living Web?
• Do You Ever Think About What You Write About?
• Hook, Line and Sinker: Luring Blog Traffic to Stay
• 20 Answers to the Question: What Does It Take to Blog?
• You Got To Earn Your Reputation
• Blog Challenge: Who is Writing Your Blog?
• How Do You Know If a Blog Has Integrity?
• One Year Anniversary Review: Blog Writing
• Echo Chamber: 10 Tips on Blogging Original Thoughts Originally
• How to Know When to Stop Blogging
• Copy Copy Copy: You Can’t Write My Post. I Can’t Write Yours.
• Your Blog is Your Unedited Version of Yourself
• A Blog Anniversary: Learning From Your Past Mistakes
• Don’t Guest Blog Until You Have Content
• Blog Success: It’s the Linkable Content, Folks
• Nine Years Writing: How I Generate Writing Concepts, Tools, and Strategies I Use

---

Site Search Tags: blog struggles, blog content, blog focus, narrow niche, blogging topics, blog writing, how to write a blog, blogging tips, blog tips, writing tips, writing help, blog writing help, blog writing advice, successful blog, blog success
Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email

Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.