Just stumbled over Know More Media, a new (launched mid December, I must have missed it in the end of year frenzy) blog network that has quickly launched quite a few blogs – all focussing upon business. I’m yet to get through all of their blogs yet but some of them seem to be doing pretty well – and they are covering a large range of topics within their niche.
I think we’ll see more and more niche-networks emerge in 2006.
My only unsolicited advice/feedback/observations to Know More Media is (hoping I’m not overstepping the mark here – it’s really just my initial impressions):
- As I surfed through the blogs, on quite a few of them I had little idea what they were about until I really searched around them. While having titles that don’t explicitly say what the blog is about is fine – I think it’s important to have make it very clear to readers from the moment they arrive on the blog what it is about. This can be communicated in a number of ways from the title itself, to using images, to using a statement/description/tagline that spells it out. Blog readers stay at blogs on average for just a few seconds so first impressions and clear communication are essential.
- My own preference is not to publicly launch empty blogs (they are currently seeking writers on 32 of their 65 blogs). While I can see some reasons why it might be good to do (it gets them indexed in Search Engines and perhaps creates some interest in recruiting bloggers) I think there are also some costs. For starters it make the network seem a little inactive and ghost town-ish and secondly I wonder if defining a blog without knowing the blogger might be the wrong way around. My own preference is to find bloggers and then design a blog around them (subtle difference). Of course this is just my own approach and I wouldn’t impose it upon anyone – there is ‘more than one way to skin’ a cat as they say.
The blogs that are currently active have some really great bloggers on them and I suspect this will be a pretty active and worthwhile network to keep an eye on. As I say – dominating a niche with a network is something I’m seeing quite a bit of at present.
Update: Tim from Know More Media has responded to my post here and gives some insight into why they’ve started with empty blogs – along similar lines to what I thought.
I really appreciate the response from Tim – I was a touch worried that this post would be taken in the wrong way – my intention is definately just to give honest encouraging feedback and it seems it was taken that way – phew.
