I used to play alot of Space Marines-- the epic scale one where thumb-sized tanks would unleash fury vs. alien hordes. I learned then that you need to concentrate fire power. If you injure 50 infantry, you end up with 50 po'ed soldiers who are limping but still capable of shooting back. If you use the wolf pack concept-- lots of concentrated fire power on a small number of targets you can nail the target.
The same is true with marketing. I have alot of blogs and subject specialities: dieting, cooking (funny duet there), technical stuff, angry man rants, short cuts, property histories and on and on. Much of this stuff didn't fit together, so I split it out. The problem is that I was making a lot of wounded soldiers when I should have been wolfpacking down the traffic. My traffic and ad revenue used to be respectable-- much less than I wanted, but more than nothing. Nowadays, there's nothing happening: my traffic and revenue is flat.
I divided content into specialty blogs: the "Way Too Fat" blog because I was, well, way too fat and working to remedy that. I did a Viridian blog because I'm a Viridian. I had all of these specialty areas. None of them got traffic.
I tried to reproduce content to see if that could spark traffic pooling. Big Mistake. I knew it was a mistake, but I was emboldened by a thing at work, where we had pages of lists cut this way or that. Google was crawling these lists like you wouldn't believe and causing some big traffic climbing. Somehow I discovered velcro when I was researching for teflon.
So, now, I am going to do a big about face. Until future notice, www.thosedewolfes.com is down for the count, pending a redesign. I torched it before it could any more damage.
If something has a corporate leaning, it will eventually go into www.thosedewolfes.com. "Corporate" carries two meaning here. If it is for my company, "Those DeWolfes", then the content will go there. If it is something regarding my wife and I (the collective entity that is at the core of Those DeWolfes), then it will go there too.
If something is supposed to have a lot of contribution from others, then it will remain as its own animal. In one example, cooking, I'm going to have it both ways: my site will feature cooking/recipes and it will contribute to a multi-user site, www.clearyourplate.com.
So my commandments / decision tree for where something goes:
- If it's timely: a blog
- If it's mine and semi-timely: my personal site, mike.dewolfe.bc.ca.
- If it's part of the business stuff: www.thosedewolfes.com.
- If it's collective, like Jumping Moose, MediaNook or Clear Your Plate, then it will stay as is.
- If it needs coding (like some dynamic element), then it will not go on a blog.
- If it's experimental and nifty, likely it will go onto Prefab Site.
The goal of this strategic shift: concentrate traffic under a few domains; make dynamic content possible where desireable; make fewer sites more popular (aka don't date 2 fives, go for 1 ten).
Have you had a lot of blog and gone through the die off to aggregate traffic? Have you gone the other way with lots of feeder sites and success from each?
The same is true with marketing. I have alot of blogs and subject specialities: dieting, cooking (funny duet there), technical stuff, angry man rants, short cuts, property histories and on and on. Much of this stuff didn't fit together, so I split it out. The problem is that I was making a lot of wounded soldiers when I should have been wolfpacking down the traffic. My traffic and ad revenue used to be respectable-- much less than I wanted, but more than nothing. Nowadays, there's nothing happening: my traffic and revenue is flat.
I divided content into specialty blogs: the "Way Too Fat" blog because I was, well, way too fat and working to remedy that. I did a Viridian blog because I'm a Viridian. I had all of these specialty areas. None of them got traffic.
I tried to reproduce content to see if that could spark traffic pooling. Big Mistake. I knew it was a mistake, but I was emboldened by a thing at work, where we had pages of lists cut this way or that. Google was crawling these lists like you wouldn't believe and causing some big traffic climbing. Somehow I discovered velcro when I was researching for teflon.
So, now, I am going to do a big about face. Until future notice, www.thosedewolfes.com is down for the count, pending a redesign. I torched it before it could any more damage.
If something has a corporate leaning, it will eventually go into www.thosedewolfes.com. "Corporate" carries two meaning here. If it is for my company, "Those DeWolfes", then the content will go there. If it is something regarding my wife and I (the collective entity that is at the core of Those DeWolfes), then it will go there too.
If something is supposed to have a lot of contribution from others, then it will remain as its own animal. In one example, cooking, I'm going to have it both ways: my site will feature cooking/recipes and it will contribute to a multi-user site, www.clearyourplate.com.
So my commandments / decision tree for where something goes:
- If it's timely: a blog
- If it's mine and semi-timely: my personal site, mike.dewolfe.bc.ca.
- If it's part of the business stuff: www.thosedewolfes.com.
- If it's collective, like Jumping Moose, MediaNook or Clear Your Plate, then it will stay as is.
- If it needs coding (like some dynamic element), then it will not go on a blog.
- If it's experimental and nifty, likely it will go onto Prefab Site.
The goal of this strategic shift: concentrate traffic under a few domains; make dynamic content possible where desireable; make fewer sites more popular (aka don't date 2 fives, go for 1 ten).
Have you had a lot of blog and gone through the die off to aggregate traffic? Have you gone the other way with lots of feeder sites and success from each?
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