ProBlogger: Weekend Project 2: Success Secrets of 5 Multi-topic Blogs

Weekend Project 2: Success Secrets of 5 Multi-topic Blogs

Posted: 07 Jul 2012 07:01 AM PDT

This guest post is by Natalie Webb of Leave Me to My Projects.

You try telling Martha Stewart she needs to pick a niche.

So why is everyone in the blogosphere telling you that doing just that is the key to achieving any level of success in blogging?

True, it is easier to build and write a popular blog when you stick to one topic. But now more than ever, there is an opening for multi-topic blogs to hit it big, if they do it right. Wait, you don’t see the opening? That’s funny, it has a big flashing sign pointing the way.

That sign says “Pinterest.”

What is Pinterest?

If I need to tell you what Pinterest is, I’d be mildly concerned that you have been in a coma for the last six months. But what is it about?

Pinterest is about collecting. People love to collect things. In the big wide world of the internet, this impulse is no different. As a matter of fact, it can be amplified.

Pinterest is where people collect pretty much everything they like from all around the internet and pin it to categorized and organized virtual pinboards. Each “Pin” is a nice large image with a description, which tickles our visual cortexes ever so nicely.

People … who are totally not me … have been known to spend entire days off getting lost in the inspiration. With Pinterest, you can visually create the life you are planning on living as soon as you get the time and money to do so.

I’m talking about lifestyle, folks.

What is the Pinterest niche?

The Pinterest niche, as this writer seems to have coined it, is the wide-open lifestyle area. Much of Pinterest, and therefore the Pinterest niche, centers around DIY (as in, things you can make).

The most popular topics on Pinterest, and in the niche, are Home, Arts & Crafts, Style/Fashion, and Inspiration/Education, according to Mashable. While those are the most popular, there tons of other topics to choose from as well—the Wedding category is also immensely repinned.

Because there are so many good topics to choose from, Pinterest niche blogs are not difficult to differentiate from each other. All you need is a focus. We walked though how to find your focus for a multi-topic blog yesterday. Now let’s get to some real-life examples.

The blogs selected here were chosen not necessarily because they are the biggest and baddest on the block. Some are run by whole teams of staff, some by one little ol’ person. Some have been established for a number of years, while some are newer on the scene.

What they have in common are all of the elements it takes to make an impact in the Pinterest niche. So what are these elements? Who better to show you than the Grand Dame of the Pinterest blogs, Martha Stewart.

Martha Stewart

A strong personality

A blog centered around a lifestyle, as Pinterest niche blogs are, need a face to associate with that lifestyle.

Martha Stewart has this so wrapped up that when you even think about homemaking, hers is the first face that springs to mind. She may run a media empire, live a life so beautiful it can make one green with envy, and have more prison street cred than some rappers, but when your mind turns to homespun craftiness, you think of Martha.

A strong message

Martha gives her readers and followers tools to simplify and beautify their homes and their lives through the power of DIY.

A super-specific customer avatar

All of Martha Stewart’s work is geared toward moms with kids and pets. They are a little older, settled down, and they own homes.They enjoy entertaining, gardening, cooking, crafting, and simply making their lives more beautiful.

Incredibly helpful and informative

I hardly have to mention how much how-to power Martha Stewart packs into her website, blogs, books and magazines. She has literally written the book(s) on homemaking.

Beautiful photography

Although Martha Stewart’s photography resources are nearly unlimited these days, her photography has always been top notch.

The good news is, with as little as a smartphone, paired with a little creativity and practice, anyone can take beautiful photos these days.

5 Great Pinterest blogs

Now let’s explore five innovative multi-topic Pinterest niche blogs, including those all-important five secrets, the important stats, and what they are doing so well.

1. Hello Giggles

Personality: Founded by Zooey Deschanel and two friends, Hello Giggles has some serious starpower behind it in the indie darling. She is known to have coined the phrase “Adorkable.”
Message: Entertaining and empowering inspiration for young women. Girly feminism, if you will.
Reader: Young women in their “finding themselves” phase of life.
How they help: Hello Giggles features tons of reader-submitted work and guest posts on a huge range of topics and creates a positive, female-friendly environment for reader interaction.
Photography: A combination of professional and reader-submitted photography keeps the look of the site both polished and approachable.
Topics: Entertainment, Treats, Beauty, Cuteness, Home, Social Issues, Opinion, Parenting, Humor and more.
Twitter Followers: 97,492
Facebook Fans: 165,000
Bloglovin’ Followers: 3,138

Secret: Besides the starpower behind the blog, the best thing Hello Giggles has going for it is its feel-good factor. It absolutely oozes “Yes you can,” and that is what keeps its readers coming back.

2. A Beautiful Mess

Personality: Perhaps it is no coincidence that the force behind A Beautiful Mess looks so much like Zooey Deschanel. Elsie, however, is more vintage indie than cute and dorky indie. She is always incredibly positive and upbeat, and lets you inside her life, home and business in such a way that readers powerfully connect with her.
Message: Pretty things that you can make and wear.
Reader: 20-somethings living in apartments or other semi-temporary residences who love to make things themselves.
How they help: Loads of tutorials and inspiration, as well as comprehensive ecourses.
Photography: Elsie is a fantastic photographer, and uses everything from Instagram to vintage cameras to fancier photo-takers.
Topics: Projects, Outfits, Treats, Beauty, Photography, Decor and more.
Page Views Per Day: 170,859
Page Views Per Month: 5 million
Twitter Followers: 29,412
Facebook Fans: 35,399
Pinterest Followers: 23,312
Bloglovin’ Followers: 32,600

Secret: Elsie (and her sister Emma) over at A Beautiful Mess own a vintage clothing boutique called Red Velvet. While their business may be clothing, the blog is all about inspiration for the vintage, indie lifestyle. Elsie lives and displays the beautiful life her readers aspire to, and shows them how to create it.

3. Cupcakes and Cashmere

Personality: Emily is a girl who makes chic style look easy.
Message: A guide for defining your style, reinventing your space, and entertaining with ease.
Reader: The late 20s-early 30s married professional woman with no kids.
How they help: Cupcakes and Cashmere is about personal lifestyle refinement with plenty of written and video tutorials featuring both Emily and industry pros.
Photography: The photography here is spacious, simple, and beautiful.
About: Outfits, Recipes, How To, Decor
Twitter Followers: 56,769
Facebook Fans: 61,439
Pinterest Followers: 22,945
Bloglovin’ Followers: 8,1505

Secret: Although Emily is sweet as pie, she brings a serious sense of authority to her style mentoring. She more than walks the walk herself, and she brings in the pros to truly help you up your game.

4. The Dainty Squid

Personality: Brightly colored hair does have a certain draw, and Kaylah the thrifting queen, amateur mycologist, cat lady, and collector of many many things goes through so many shades. She also has a cat named Dr. Octopus that lets her dress him up. Full of personality, this one.
Message: Explore and be colorful.
Reader: Shy, quirky, quiet, studious 20-somethings with insatiable curiosities and a love of multi-colored things. And they also love cats.
How she helps: Inspired style inspiration, lots of laughs, detailed tutorials, and thought-provoking explorations.
Photography: Kaylah is a photography fiend. Her style is whimsical, creative, and curious, and it always makes you think of her skipping around in the woods and fields with multiple cameras swinging around her neck.
About: Beauty, Cats, Crafts, Fashion, Food, Hair, Photography
Google Friend Connect: 6,104
Twitter Followers: 5,278
Tumblr Followers: 28,400
Facebook Fans: 5,241
Bloglovin’ Followers: 3,350

Secret: It is all about the personality. Kaylah is a shy girl (she even says so on her about page), and that is the kind of reader she attracts. The fact that she is so bright and colorful and outgoing on her blog is an inspiration to her readers, and she shows them step by step how to bring her carefully curated aesthetic into their lives.

5. Sincerely, Kinsey

Personality: Kinsey is a wedding photographer who exudes and air of calm and tranquility that you can feel in every aspect of her blog.
Message: Inspiration and exploration of the small, simple sweetness of life.
Reader: Festival-going flower children that live with a camera in their giant hobo bags.
How they help: Inspirations and tutorials for a creative life.
Photography: There is a dreamy quality to all of Kinsey’s photography. She weaves magic with morning sunlight.
About: Fashion, DIY, Photography
Page Views Per Month: 265,000
Google Friend Connect Followers: 2,434
Facebook Fans: 1,077
Pinterest Followers: 2,647
Bloglovin’ Followers: 2,662

Secret: Kinsey makes this beautiful life look effortless. Her style, crafts and tutorials are presented in a way that makes them incredibly accessible and doable. On top of it all, her light, energy and passion shine through on every single page.

Have it all

Whether you already run a multi-topic blog or are thinking about starting one, you really can have it all, if you do it right.

If you can identify and focus your personality, message, and reader, provide them with real, concrete help and back it up with beautiful images, you will have a lifestyle blog that readers yearn to emulate and will come back to again and again. Why? Because it feels like home.

What are your favorite multi-topic blogs, and what keeps you coming back as a reader? What are your secrets to multi-topic success? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Natalie is a truly Edward Scissorhands living in a Martha Stewart world. A Chicago-based writer, barber and obsessive DIYer, she blogs over at Leave Me to My Projects about her adventures in the DIY lifestyle with loads of how-tos and inspiration. She also spends way too much time on Pinterest.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger