10 steps to blogging heaven: 1. Do one thing well

I recently gave a talk to a great bunch of journalism students at the London College of Communications.  I promised I would do them some notes on the presentation I gave them: 10 steps to blogging heaven. Here is the first of them.

Step 1: Do one thing well

I admit I like to experiment. My philosophy is: why do one thing when you can try out a bunch of things all at the same time and see what works? For blogging this can be a mistake. Read on to find out why.


The advice in this step is: Make like a hedgehog.  The hedgehog is fantastically good at one thing - protecting itself by curling into a ball.

Your blog should also concentrate on being good at one thing. If you spread your efforts or try to cater for multiple tastes - then you'll end up pleasing no-one.

Your blog might cover Sherlock Holmes books or Beyonce's bump but never both. It is very unlikely that people fascinated by one of those topics will be interested in both.  So while one set of readers is going "That's great!" - the other is like "WTF?"

If you really want to blog about both of these - set up two blogs.

You want more? Of course, you do. Check out the Hedgehog Concept chapter in Good to Great by Jim Collins.

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