Image courtesy of ijsendoorn
Here’s a sight that I’m starting to see more often around the WoW blogosphere. Bloggers are shifting the focus of their blog onto something else entirely. Incidentally enough, a post on the Blog Azeroth forums asked this very question:
Does anyone have any experience of changing the focus of their blog? I like being the Feather Duster, but would it be a bit dishonest of me to keep going like that, when a large proportion of my posts will be about alts?
Those of you just starting blogging have time to think and to plan ahead. The blogs that are already established have problems doing a 180 shift and writing about other topics on a full time basis.
Why is that?
When you brand your blog, brand it as you
Whether you’re aware of it or not, the moment you start a blog it is considered your image. You have to pick your face and your brand accordingly. Many WoW bloggers blog from the perspective of their class. Some solid examples here are dwarfpriest and resto4life. Instantly by looking at their web addresses, you already know what they’re going to be about.
By that same token, when you look at a blog url like worldofmatticus.com, www.groupsofwords.com or toomanyannas.com, you don’t have that same feeling of knowing what you’re getting yourself into. Heck, you might not even be aware that they’re WoW blogs. But this gives us an advantage further down the road.
ChickGM asked me a good question a while ago:
Why World of Matticus? Why not World of Mallet?
When I started my blog, I did not know how far I wanted to go with it. I didn’t know if I would be changing the focus of my blog in the future. I didn’t know if I would still be playing and writing about my Priest 8 months down the line or if I’d be bored. That’s why the blog is named after me and not any of my toons so that I have the flexibility to change.
Another possibility is if I decided to change servers and the name of the toon was already used. Wouldn’t be cool now, would it?
What’s wrong with changing focus?
Nothing.
Imagine what would happen if:
- Coke stopped selling drinks and sold cars
- Nike stopped selling athletic wear and sold desktop computers
- Amazon became a lingerie and womens wear company instead of being an online shopping powerhouse
It’d be weird at first, right? It would take time to get used to the fact that your favourite companies aren’t selling the products you wanted from them in the first place. The end result is that you turn to their competition to get the stuff that you want.
Let’s apply this perspective to WoW blogs. I have a Shaman kicking around that I use if muscle is needed anywhere. There’s a few select blogs that I go to in order to catch up on Shaman related stuff.
What were to happen if they were to one day stop writing about their Shaman and decide to write about Mages instead?
And this right here is a big pet peeve of mine. If I go to a Shaman blog, I want to read about Shaman stuff. I’m in for a surprise if I go to Warlock blog to read about Warlocks and find out that the author has shifted his focus to Hunters even though everything about the name, the layout, and the posts just scream “WARLOCK STUFF”.
What would happen if Phaelia decided to just write about Rogues one day and switch her mains? It would suck massively :(.
So for all of you potential bloggers out there, keep these ideas in mind when you first start writing. If you pick a brand and a name that’s distinctly associated with a class, you will find it hard to shift later on down the road when you’ve already established yourself as an authority in said class. If you don’t have a problem with that, then by all means feel free to continue.
I just want to repeat myself and say that there is nothing wrong with changing your focus if you can plan for it accordingly.
But if you do plan to change, expect a pretty hefty uphill battle as you may lose some readers. It could take some time to re-establish your audience numbers to what it was before the swap.
