: Re: Mixing topics in a blog I was reading this Jakob Nielsen Alertbox about the top 10 weblog design mistakes. Mistake #8 was: Mixing Topics If you publish on many different topics,

@Samaraweera193

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I agree that narrowly focused blogs will attract a wider audience, however I don't think it's because broadly focused blogs require more mental RAM (at least in these days of tagging and RSS feeds). A blog that covers a wide range of topics is mostly interesting to people at the intersection of all, or at least most, of those interests. For example, I've stopped reading tech blogs that were overtly Christian in a way that disturbed me, or business blogs that were very authoritarian and closed-source oriented when it came to technology.

One blog that mixes topics well is that of Eric S. Raymond, where you'll find martial arts, social commentary, open source software, tech sector analysis (currently a preoccupation with the smartphone market), libertarian politics, science fiction, and a whole lot more. Despite the author's total failure to use tagging to allow readers to cherry-pick content of interest, this blog works well. There is a lot of crossover in these interests, the writing is of unusually high quality for a blog, and is internally consistent.

Is mixing topics the "right thing to do"? It depends a lot on the goals the blog aims to achieve. I tend to use mine as a dumping ground for any thoughts i want to document, especially things I want to be able to refer others to, rather than explaining repeatedly. Mixed content works fine there. If you are trying to write a profitable blog, gain visibility in a particular niche, or raise awareness of some issue/cause, then a more focused approach would probably work better.

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