This blog started out, by 4 years ago, as my personal blog. At the day, my business blog was SEO Scoop, and I needed someplace to talk about the weird things that happened in my regular life, so I created that blog to cover that.
Deciding To Change
Over moment, my interests changed, and I subsequently sold Search Engine Optimization Scoop. I’d decided that I wanted to center my work days around the more general topic of making a living online, and I came to the conclusion that that was the place to discuss that topic. The problem was, I wasn’t certain how to move from posting about punks who knock down mailboxes, and momma birds attacking me when I got too close to her babies, to the conglomeration it has become – how to form money online.
I didn’t want to turn off all my regular visitors, but I knew that at least some of them came here considering they enjoyed my take on everyday life. (Most of those were extended family members and I knew they wouldn’t really be interested in hearing what I have to say about ebusiness). On the other hand, I plus knew that many of my regular visitors were public who had found that site considering they had been regular visitors of Search Engine Optimization Scoop, or knew me from the Search Engine Optimization world somehow. I assumed at least some of those visitors would be happy to assemble out my thoughts on ebusiness.
Where To Engage Those Loyal Visitors
Around that same duration, social networks were starting to reach the point where even my not-so-technical family members were starting to participate. That’s when I realized that I could continue to share my daily oddities with the public who wanted to know those kinds of things by simply participating in the social networks where they hung out. (I’m plus considering using something like Tumblr for a mini-personal blog but I haven’t done that yet).
So, knowing that it was inevitable to lose some of my visitors, but that I could still keep in touch with them elsewhere, I began the transition here from a personal blog about my life, to one that is focused on ebusiness. How did I actually produce the transition?
The Actual Process
- I changed my template from a more laid back one to a more professional one.
- I slowly started making more blog posts about ebusiness and less about my personal life
- I began creating more and more ebusiness-related categories, and started consolidating the personal categories into a new parent category called Life.
If you really believe you’ll lose most of your regular followers, and don’t want to engage with them elsewhere instead, next it’s duration to have some one-on-one conversations with them. Ask them whether they would stick around even whether your posts became less personal. whether they say yes, try to come up with a compromise solution. perhaps you can have a private section of the blog devoted to the personal side of your life. Perhaps you can blog once a week in that private section, and only those visitors that you’ve made arrangements with ahead of date, are allowed into that private section. That would be what I would personally do in that situation. Your regular visitors would probably appreciate being a part of a private community like that. I’m not certain what the best way would be to actually create a private section, but I assume there’s some kind of plugin out there to handle that.
My Ideas, Your Ideas
So interacting with users on other social networks is one notion to keep that connection with regular visitors after such a major transition, and a private area of the blog just for those visitors is another concept. Of course, you could always just start a new blog, but that’s the obvious choice, and isn’t really the point of that post. I’ll bet there are other great solutions out there that I haven’t thought of. Do you have any ideas to share with those who are thinking of transitioning a personal blog to a business blog? whether so, please share in the comments below.
This post is part of the Big Girl Branding / Blogs With Wings carnival created to find out “how to best go about taking a simple blog and turning it into a business blog without it being a turnoff to the readers. What would you do to turn a blog into a business platform without alienating the readers and maintaining your blog’s integrity?” Since others will be responding that same question, they’ll be adding to the ideas, so go get their solutions as well. amoung all those participating, the right solution is probably out there.
© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. |
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Original post by Donna
