ANSWER: Just like the Pizza Burger BBQ Chicken, the format is not any one thing in particular, but instead all things all at the same time.
Its common knowledge that one is typically recommended to blog about a single particular subject of interest, but why? One of the top reasons as i understand it, is so that you can align yourself as a blogger/authority on your chosen subject matter. Another is so that you may have a way to monetise your content as you develop your voice within your chosen space i.e “influencer marketing”.
But what are the potential drawbacks of such narrowing down of ones blog? what if you simply do not want to narrow down your online content offering to just one single topic or subject?
From my observations it seems the bloggers that get away without zooming in on a single subject, typically themselves become the subject matter – think youtube celebrity types such as Casey Neistat. Perhaps they started out with a niche subject but eventually they themselves became bigger than the subject they set out to cover, when this happens, the audience has indicated to the blogger – or in the case of Casey Neistat ‘vlogger’ – and likely due to their interpretation of their channels youtube or facebook analytics, that they (the blogger) should share more of their personal life.
Those who typically enter down that path become very much a celebrity, and begin to develop their personal brand within that space. In doing this they are able to branch out in to almost any sub-genre they like, as they themself are now the reason people watch – no longer are people watching because the blogger is an authority on a specific subject.
A problem i have had, and as you can tell; continue to have, is that i have many interests, and they all tend to overlap. My very first blog was the MMMDo blog, where i would simply make things (typically furniture) film or photograph what i made, then attempt to stitch some sort of useful blog post together, i was surprised recently when i checked up on my blogs associated youtube channel to find one of my videos has nearly 25K views. to bad i had not monetised the video as i had used some third party content which i had forgotten to remove.
My second blog was bitjoin.me where i took what i had learned about video production on the MMMDo blog and attempted to apply it to the subject of digital currency, i stuck mainly to interviews with people working in the space and also some ‘How To’ videos this blog helped me learn more about the technology used in digital currencies as well as improving my video production skills. From the very start my mind was on producing a documentary in this space, due to the unique and fascinating subject matter and the fact that those early days were so all over the place (thanks to the ongoing scaling debate, to some extent they still are)
As part of thebitjoin.me blog i also published video diary entries from the early days of starting a company, the video series originally entitled Starting Up loosely documented my progress as an entrepreneur just when i had begun doing entrepreneurial things, the concept went through several adaptations as i tried to find the best format, but eventually i put the concept to bed on a youtube channel called Start Up Slam.
I went on to start blogging for Qwids, a startup company i founded with a group of amazing people all working to develop a service that lives at the crossroads between (old world) loyalty points and (new world) digital currency. Blogging for a corporation proved rather demanding, and i know i know – one must blog regularly; but the research involved for this subject is very demanding, and although really fun as i learned a lot about the subject matter – in a startup there is only so much time to go around. The last post i made was in March, I do intend to pick this blog up again as soon as we have made the necessary changes to our UX and gotten the traction we need in the market; hopefully by August 2017 : )
This brings us to now, and here, this blog. What’s the format Rich? What’s the niche? Who’s your target Rich? Truth is, i don’t have any of those things. I am just writing about stuff i do, linking to past blog posts and sometimes writing about stuff i am interested in, but not so knowledgeable on. That’s all.