What’s happening to this blog?

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In yesterday's post I shared my traffic and advertising stats for this blog over the last six months and set some new goals for the blog for the rest of this year. Those goals are:

1. Establish and maintain a clear focus and purpose
2. Build a loyal base of subscribers
3. Raise my profile and reputation

How am I going to work towards those goals? What changes can you expect to see on this blog in the coming weeks and months? Let's start by looking at each goal separately:

Establish and maintain a clear focus and purpose

To succeed in professional blogging you need a clear content strategy. Readers need to know they can expect to read posts that centre around a certain theme or topic. They come to expect a certain standard, style and frequency of posts. You need to be able to explain clearly in a single sentence what your blog is about.

So far I have been far from clear. I've posted about anything and everything that I thought was interesting, from politics to environmental issues to technology, civil rights, creative industry and odd bits of quirky humour. There's nothing wrong with covering a wide range of topics, indeed some people like the variety, but there needs to be a theme that holds everything together. I have changed themes several times already, looking for the right fit. I believe I have found the answer.

Two blogs.

Yes, two. Let me explain. First and foremost, I make my living by understanding technology and explaining it to other people. In the digital world, I am a native, a tour guide who knows all the sights, the culture and the history and delights in giving newcomers the grand tour to help them get comfortable in their new home.

This is a perfect topic for a book, and indeed I am already writing it. It is also the perfect topic for a blog to accompany it. Thus, I introduce to you The Digital Migrant. It will go live during the next few weeks and will feature regular tutorials for digital migrants, introductions and explanations of various technological concepts, a question and answer series and links to useful resources around the web. It will also be the home of my book by the same name when it launches in early 2009.

The Digital Migrant is a practical blog. Here at DanuPoyner.com there's room to be more philosophical. I enjoy covering lots of different topics. What holds it all together is the idea of raising the level of thought and awareness. Things you may not have heard about. Things that make you think. Different perspectives on paths well travelled. It is a site that aims to lift consciousness.

To that end, you can expect to see a lot more original material on this site. Instead of posting short articles linking to interesting things around the web, I'm more likely to take a more in-depth and philosophical look at things that are happening, hopefully sparking some discussion. There will still be plenty of links to interesting things, but I will package them up and post them together as a digest of things to look at. I'll also use this site to follow my progress as a writer. People often seem to be intrigued by my process and unique way of doing things, so it will be on display more often in posts like this.

As you can see, it makes sense to have two blogs, each with a clear theme and purpose.

Build a loyal base of subscribers

There are two things to do here. One is to build something of value that people will want to keep coming back to. The other is to make it as easy as possible for them to find and keep finding. The first challenge relies on content. The second relies on technology.

As well as writing interesting material, it has to be organised easily and in such a way that it is appealing to newcomers as well as long-time readers. The site itself needs to be well designed and easy on the eye. You'll notice I have already changed the design of this site over the last few days and will continue to tweak it.

The biggest challenge though is to get more traffic. At a current average of 8 visits a day I have a long way to go. Having a clearer focus will help search engine results, as will a good site design and of course having something interesting to say. There are many ways to go about boosting traffic and I intend to experiment a good deal with many of them. At the end of each month until the end of the year I'll post a summary of the site's traffic and discuss what worked and what didn't.

Raise my profile and reputation

In the offline world, this is about letting friends, associates and clients know what I am doing and what my intentions are. In the online world, this is about being a clear and consistent voice with a rising presence. I would like to become better known among other bloggers and online communities. In the offline world I would like to become better known among people who work in the technology industry.

Most of all I would like to finish my book. As far as I can see it will do the most to boost my profile and reputation. It is still several months away from completion, so there's plenty of building to do in the meantime and lining all the pieces up to be in a good position for the start of 2009.

Conclusion

Hopefully that gives you an idea of what to expect from me in the coming weeks and months. I will keep you posted as to the launch of The Digital Migrant blog. And, finally, despite best laid plans, change is the only constant in life and adaptability is the key to survival. If circumstances change, so will my plans.

In the meantime, what do you think of my ideas? What do you like or dislike about this blog? What would you like to see more or less of? Leave a comment below.