Shooting Thoughts: Expanding Your Blog

Posted August 1, 2014 by shooting in Uncategorized / 22 Comments

I figured it was about time for another discussion post! Today’s topic is all about expanding your blog. I’ve been blogging for about seven years now, I’d say, and I’ve gone from doing just music to focusing on all sorts of topics. My main focus is entertainment, but I also like to mix things up and include products and other types of posts. It keeps things fresh for myself, and hopefully for those of you that read my blog on a regular basis.

So my question for you all this weekend: How do you keep your blog fresh and/or if you could expand your blog, what would you want to include?

A lot of the people I follow are strictly book blogs, but I know people have other interests. It’s fun to see the blogs that try and mix those in, such as using music (Novel Sounds, etc) or food (Caffeinated Book Reviewer, etc.) I love books, but I also like music, movies, plays, crafts, and more, so I do what I can to keep things different and hopefully exciting.

I’m sure many bloggers have a main topic for their blog and I’m sure they are worried about changing things up, because they don’t want to alienate readers. However, I think you have to remember that blogging should first and foremost be for you. If you aren’t happy, or feel stuck in a rut, then you should try and mix things up. I’m not saying change your book blog to a beauty blog or vice versa, but how about mixing the two? You’re sure to keep old readers with similar posts and hopefully interest them in your new posts too…as well as garner more interest from others! It might not work for every reader, but overall, it’s a win-win situation I think.

22 responses to “Shooting Thoughts: Expanding Your Blog

  1. Although I have a book blog, I think it'd be fun to eventually incorporate book-related recipes into some of my posts! I haven't had the time to do it yet, but I'm hoping to do it sometime this year. That's not a huge change of anything, but I'm excited for it 🙂 I love the variety of posts on your blog and if bloggers bring in different content than what they usually post, I think that it can work really well!

  2. As you know, books are pretty much my only topic, and I love staying focused, but I do bookish events with my fellow bloggers at least twice a year to keep things fresh. I'd love to have more guest posts by other readers, but that will come eventually. So far, so good.

  3. I never thought about changing what I'm doing with my blog but it's true that it's always interesting to read about other topics as well. Maybe if I could change I would add food or clothes but I wouldn't know what to do I confess. Maybe one day but for now I'm happy with my books, it's already a lot of work lol.

  4. Great advice. After all they say variety is the spice of life so its good to feature new topics every now and then even if they don't become permanent fixtures.

  5. I am good reading blogs with mixed interests, although don't really have anything that I would say about much besides books. I already do a seperate blog for my girls, but mostly family reads

  6. Like Maja I try to do events once or twice a year to hopefully drive new followers/viewers to my blog. I think it helps but honestly I am not sure, it does however add something new and fresh each month I do them so at least I can imagine in my head I am ding something fun and fresh LOL!

  7. While the focus of my blog is reviews, I have like you mentioned slowly incorporated some of the other things I love ..like food, discussions and in January I have a new Sat. feature to add to the mix. My blog grows with me.

  8. I like adding guest posts, giveaways, and other discussion-related book posts into my blog to keep it fresh. It's been working so far and I'm enjoying blogging, so that's the most important I feel.

  9. My blog only focuses on books, but I'm definitely trying to think of ways to incorporate some of my other passions into it as well (theatre, web design, gymnastics, etc); but, unfortunately, I'm not very creative – LOL! Thanks for sharing Lauren, and wonderful post! <3

    ~ Zoe @ The Infinite To-Read Shelf

  10. I think I'm good with our blog revolving around all things books because that's where my focus seems to be. We also do event recaps because both Jasprit and I love attending author events. I wouldn't mind incorporating more movie reviews that are based on the book. We'll see. I hardly ever get to the movies anymore and more often than not I'm disappointed with the movie version. Great post! 🙂

  11. I have often thought about doing a vlog for my blog. But I am lazy. Most of the time by the time I sit down and blog my make-up is off and my hair is a mess. I feel like I would have to go out of my way to get ready to make a video and I am just too lazy. I have been thinking lately though about adding TV shows to my blog. I love TV and I watch a lot of it.. but not sure if that would really match my blog's audience.

  12. For the moment I only focus on reviews. I'm not a fan of interviews or promos, so I just post a review of a book. I may, at some point, add something to the mix, but I'm not sure what. I hate to cook, but don't mind baking. Maybe I could add nommy nom recipes to the review. For now I just try to do theme posts. I'll be starting a Monster Porn Monday feature once a month (tomorrow is my first post). Maybe I'll add more of things like that.

  13. A good post and food for thought. I set up my blog as somewhere to put my reviews and at the moment I want to continue with that, not because I think others wouldn't want it mixed up (because I love blogs that have a variety) but because it suits me at the moment. I don't know whether that will change in the future though.

    http://cleopatralovesbooks.wordpress.com

  14. I think adding other interests is good. Especially if it can be combined. I had debated whether I should combine my travel blog with my book blog and decided not to because I want my travel blog to do well in the travel blog groups and so I decided just to start a separate one. But I don't mind seeing a variety of content on blogs!

  15. I have actually been debating adding some other interests into my blog. Like you mentioned we all enjoy many things and keeping up with separate blogs is a lot of work. I like reading posts that mix things up and I'm glad to see that others enjoy that as well. You've inspired me to add some new things into the mix. I love crafts, sewing, organizing, and anything inspirational so I'm going to add those things in a little over the next couple of months.

  16. I actually started out blogging about gaming first before deciding it wasn't for me and went into book blogging. :3 But then later I sort of decided that maybe I could combine the two… instead of keeping up with 2 blogs (trust me. It's hard).

    Personally I think I'm less robotic now, lol. Most of the time I think I'm more of the entertainment category, specifically books.

  17. I started my blog and picked the name as a way to talk about a lot of different things. Somehow it became a book only blog but I'm trying to go back to mixing things up.

    Just books gets kind of boring and leads to burnout for me.

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