One Blog - One Major Topic

What makes any blog popular and successful?

High quality posts, interesting comments, frequent updates ... those are obvious qualities which finally, with time, will pay off. But is it that enough to attract people to subscribe your blog? One good post is usually not enough to convince people to your blog - you need more then that and for some blogs that is a problem. People keep posting about way too many different topics on one blog. What I found surprising is that, as you can find in State of the Blogosphere, the average number of topics blogged about is five.

Is five topics per blog to much?

If topics are related to each other then it is fine ... if your blog is about more general things like building web applications then it makes sense to write about JQuery, Domain Driven Design and NHibernate. Those are different topics but all related to building web applications. Personally, I like blogs talking about wide spectrum of things, it is easier to see the big picture. Problem with very specialized blogs is that you have a feeling that you read a product(s) specification ... it can be useful on many occasions, it can help you to solve some problems but it's no longer fun and it's not though-provoking.

On the other hand, if you find a blog which is a total mix of random, completely unrelated stuff like ASP.NET MVC and pictures from someone's trip to Africa then you start to think if filtering out those less interesting post is worth your time. Two or three unrelated topics might be enough to forget about the blog.

So my advice is to clearly define what is your blog about and stick to it! It's a simple rule - if you write about building web application then avoid posting videos from your holidays. Don't confuse your subscribers unless you write your blog only for your personal satisfaction and other things don't matter.