I have had this struggle for some time now. The problem of having too many blogs. As much as I love a good niche website, I feel somehow fragmented, and it frustrates me. All of these pieces are a part of ME, of who I am. I have an idea of what is the best decision, but then I realized – this isn’t all about me. It is about YOU too, the people that READ my blog. So here it goes.
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I have the following blogs:
- BigPinkCookie.com – 12 years old, my personal blog, my original personal brand, and the reason my twitter name is ChristineBPC. You are HERE.
- HotMamaBoudoir.com – not quite 2 years old, I set this site up as my boudoir business to complement my wedding photography business. I wanted to keep the brands separate, but the site was never completely finished because of my overall change in my business.
- Christine Tremoulet – 5 years old, my former wedding photography brand (I now only take weddings by referral) and now my primary focus for my glamour, boudoir & beauty photography. My wedding archives live there as well, but I’ve set it up so that in the main portion of the site you see glamour & boudoir work only. At this moment, this is the URL that gets the most traffic daily, mainly because I was neglecting BPC.
- Two other sites – Business of Awesome and my future New Orleans boudoir photography – have very niche purposes. Business of Awesome is all about writing about being in the creative business world. My personal feelings, but not “brand me” so I want it to live in its own space. The New Orleans boudoir site is because I want to get to where I am going there quarterly for sessions, and I want a place where people can go just to get information on those.
The problem is, I am Christine Tremoulet the BigPinkCookie Hot Mama photographer. It is all ME. Spread out across 2.5 sites. And it isn’t working. When I write a post in one place, I don’t know what to do with it anywhere else.
It makes me want to beat my head on my laptop keyboard. So I keep turning my options over and over. I need some outside perspective.
Here are some of my options — and I’m open to considering any you want to add!
- I was thinking of just pointing HotMamaBoudoir.com to ChristineTremoulet.com. Type in either URL, and you get the Christine Tremoulet site.
- But … the “Hot Mama” thing is catchy! People call me “Hot Mama!” now. All the time. I love it! So I could keep the site alive and post only boudoir work there, exclusively.
- BUT!!! I am my brand, and I want to post everything under my name. Christine Tremoulet, the Hot Mama Photographer. As I add more Glamour & Flirt Sessions to what I offer, I don’t want to be limited by the word boudoir.
- Then there is the BigPinkCookie issue. Again, brand ME would mean posting it ALL on ChristineTremoulet.com — so should I move even my personal posts there? Everything? Point all URLs there?
- OR … do I keep BPC as my personal brand, and ChristineTremoulet.com just shows off my portfolio work + is that “landing site” type of place where you go to find everything about me.
SIGH. So hard to choose. In part because choosing means giving some things up.
As easy as it would be to post everything under ChristineTremoulet.com and be done, it would mean giving up this site that is 12 years old. And as I’ve written recently, this site is a lot of ME.
As I attended ALT Design Summit back in January, the question was posed, “Do you want to be a photographer who is a blogger, or a blogger who is a photographer?” I immediately identified with wanting to be a blogger who is a photographer. Because of that, plus countless hours of pondering this, I think what I should do is this:
- ChristineTremoulet.com is my professional, portfolio site. Go here to see my work. Hot Mama Boudoir points to the same URL, so either URL pulls up the site. It has a link in the navigation for my personal blog, and once a week, I also post a “weekly roundup” on Sundays of my other posts online. The site is completely focused on my goal of helping Hot Mamas grow their confidence and rediscover their beauty, and shows off my work with Hot Mamas.
- BigPinkCookie.com is my everything else site: my personal brand, where I write about whatever randomness I want (I can be random) and post vacation photos, personal life updates, recipes we made at home, whatever goodness I want to share. Photography, Houston & The Heights, Travel, Food & Recipes, Design. When I post new work on the professional Christine Tremoulet site, I would post here an image or two and an note about the session, so you would know to go there to check it out.
Now it is your turn — what do you think? What would you want to see, where would you go to read? What do YOU want to see?
18 replies on “Where, Oh Where Should I Blog? YOUR Feedback Needed!”
Point them all to the domain HotMamaPhotographer.com (assuming the URL is available). By the way, pointing to a new URL might not be the best thing from a SEO point of view, but the name sounds great.
Leave everything at BPC!
I say point all the photography business related stuff to ChristineTremoulet.com for now and keep all the personal stuff here at BPC … for me, because I hardly ever mention my personal site on the biz site, I like having a separate place for posting stuff that clients may not want to see/need to see. That and with my day job, I don’t want the clients I work with to *know* I have said personal site …
If you want ChristineTremoulet.com to be your main portfolio and booking site, I would keep HotMamaBoudior.com as a gateway to that. Have a splash page there with a rotating gallery of your best and favorites, but when they click through, they end up on ChristineTremoulet.com. It provides with a slightly separate identity still, without requiring you to constantly update two sites (I don’t know what it does to SEO, though, that’s not my forte). I would keep BPC as your personal blog — that there is some old school blogging, you can’t give it up! — and keep the two separate. Don’t post too much about your photography here, except the occasional link back to the main portfolio site. Still 2.5 sites, but more focussed, on driving and building content on the main site. You can use BPC to drive traffic to CT.com if you must talk pictures here.
I would think BPC for personal. ChristineTremoulet for prof & photog blogging.
BPC readers are interested in the photography & professional, so an update post that summarizes activity on Christine Temoulet would not be out of the question.
Not sure if Photog & professional only are looking for more of the personal stuff.
You have a bright energetic active creative mind, along with lots of motivation….a self starter. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have the problem of multiple blogs….so the problem is a good sign. Sorry I don’t have any suggestions, but I have great confidence that you will sort it out.
Ok leave BPCookie alone. Keep doing what you are doing on that. You’ve had it 12 years and that’s a following.
The Professional Organizer in me says let’s organize your thinking so that when you deal with your sites and blogs, you can think clearly and easily reach your objective which is to share and connect and then it’s also less scattered for your visitors. Your visitors just want to connect with you, and you with them. Do it in a way that makes sense for both and it will be mutually beneficial.
So my suggestion is…how about you have ChristineTremoulet.com which is your BRAND above all else. It’s YOU. You’re the idea maker and photographer. That site with a page titled for each service you offer and ONE blog?
Like this:
Christine Tremoulet
Page—Hot Mama Boudoir or Hot mama photography
Page—New Orleans Boudoir
Page—Wedding Photography (if you still want that there)
Page—Business of Awesome
Blog—tag each post with each service offered
Contact— etc.
Blogs about Hot mama, are tagged as hot mama and whatever else you discuss., Blogs about New Orleans are tagged as NLB and so and so forth.
That is what I would do. And perhaps because I have 3 blogs, I might have to take my own advice? God help us! :)))
Hope this was helpful!
<3
Great points, Sofia! I should have added — the Christine Tremoulet site is just for my one & only specialty – being the Hot Mama photographer. So it is already simplified down really well. I was just being wimpy about not wanting to give up the Hot Mama URL. I just need to decide if it is going to live on as a separate site (with nearly identical content.) Weddings are already in their own section on the CT site, so we are on the same page there!
Business of Awesome is not a part of that site at all, and has to be left standing all alone to serve the plans for it. It has nothing to do with my Hot Mama clients, so I don’t want to merge it in with that.
Gretchen, you’re right – it is mostly a good problem to have! I just have to watch myself and make sure I don’t start too much! Or that I don’t start things and abandon others that I haven’t finished yet! 🙂
Brett, I’ll have to check … I may own HotMamaPhotographer.com already. I bought a LOT of Hot Mama domains when I first set them up!
Can you just forward the hot mama url to that specific page I was talking about?
I would think redirect all to Christine Tremoulet except BPC which should remain separate and personal. Your business is BOTH photography and blogging, so why have to choose. Sofia’s outline works for me, just use redirected URL’s to bring people either to the main entry or to the entry they are seeking which would in turn have navigation across all domains. Simple, but also very complex.
But keep BPC on it’s own. I mean, where else can you blog about work sucking?
I think you had a pretty good idea to put all your work under ChristineTremoulet.com and keep BPC for your personal/fun/whatever blogging. 🙂
I agree with your assessment. Go with your gut. I like the idea of keeping this site as your personal space so that you don’t always feel pressured to be “on brand”. Redirecting everything to Christine Tremoulet also gives you future flexibility, in case some day you decide to morph your business into something else entirely.
Possibly — I’ll look and see. Right now, it really is just the whole blog.
Heehee! But FKC – work doesn’t suck when you work for yourself! I love what I do more than I can put in to words!
When you make a decision, don’t look at it as giving up something. Look at it as saying YES to something far better for you. Let me ask: What is your main, overarching focus and purpose for what you are doing? It seems to be Photography, wedding and boudoir. You are “Christine Tremoulet the BigPinkCookie Hot Mama photographer.” A few questions: What is the true driver of the sites? Is it audience driven or is it you thinking that you have different audiences for the different sites? Do you think that people who read one site will not read the other sites? If they like you, they like you, right?
What about having one website that is your hub and let those other sites be your spokes on the hub. Give people one central place to go and then if they choose, can branch out to the other areas of interest but lead it all back to your hub. http://www.christinetremoulet.com/.
I guess the question to really ask is: Is your audience the same for all sites, honestly? If they are, then have one power-packed blog and categorize your postings under the different names: Hot Mama Boudoir, Business of Awesome, BPC. Where it says blog on christinetremoulet.com, have it go to the blog name that more closely represents you and have all the content there and then you can blog once. They may not really need to be all separate sites.
They ought to stay closely to http://www.christinetremoulet.com/ since you are YOUR brand and YOU are the originator of all the content and work. I read some of the comments here. some other thoughts: Is BOA is a totally separate site and audience, then it should stand alone. if BPC is your personal site, it should stand alone, I suppose but all of your photography sites can be together as one but I still think they should provide some kind of linkback to your hub site, which is your brand. There is no pressure when you are being the authentic you. 🙂
I agree with KFC about redirecting everything except BigPinkCookie to Christine Tremoulet because your name is a strong unifying element that is also unique. In this way you’ll be separating your private and business personas which I think would be more professional from a business marketing point of view. One more thing, how about adding the word photography to CT because then you are telling people what you do as well.