Personal / parenting /mummy bloggers and exit strategies?
Last week I had lunch with a fellow blogger and small business owner. Kate* is an incredibly savvy and smart young woman with two young children. At the moment she’s on maternity leave and is working on a new business venture – with a blog attached.
However one thing she said to me in the course of our conversation struck a chord. It was something along the lines of how she did not want to brand herself as a mummy blogger because ‘I won’t be in the space that long’.
This same (or at least similar) sentiment was echoed by a blogger I spoke to at ProBlogger Training Day in Melbourne over a week ago. The blogger said she did not want to be viewed as a mummy blogger as she felt she blogged about much more than that and putting herself solely in that category was limiting and also meant she had a certain shelf life.
It’s something I hadn’t really considered before. What happens to you as a parenting blogger when you decide you no longer want to blog about parenting and child related information? What happens when your child moves from kinder to school and off into high school and you are no longer personally ‘in the zone’ on child development and milestones?
You can’t just sell your blog as it’s not really like a business but on the other hand you can’t just walk away given that you may have spent severeral years of your life building up a loyal readership and perhaps receiving receiving an income from this blog.
Which brings me to the question. Should a personal blogger – a parenting blogger in this case have an exit strategy? Is an exit strategy even needed? Do you have one? Would love to hear your thoughts?
* not real name
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Welcome! My name is Ann Nolan and I work in all things online helping brands make sense of their digital enviroment.
You can find me at www.bricksandclicks.com.au where I am the director & digital strategist of a multidisciplinary agency. Other places to find me are at @annnolan.
You can call this blog my mood board. It's where I document some of the things that are catching my attention be it in digital campaigns, campaigns leading to social good, blogging and even film.
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I’m in the process of rebranding myself from mummy blogger to personal/lifestyle blogger. I don’t have an exit strategy but I think it might be a bit easier for as my blog is self-titled. A blog post or two about the changes I’m making to my blog to let my readers know will hopefully be enough.
That’s interesting Tina. So maybe it should be called not having an ‘exit strategy’ but rather having an ongoing ‘branding strategy’ in general? Would be interested to know what inspired you to make the change from mummy blogger to personal/lifestyle blogger?
Similar to your case study. My children range from 19 to 4 and as they get older, they won’t want me sharing their stories so I felt the need to make TGDM more about me as a person rather than me as a mum. I will still occasionally blog about BEING a mum but not as many blog posts about my children.
Also I’m finding that it’s time to rediscover myself as Tina and what better place to do that than on my blog for the interwebs to see
[...] Personal/Parenting/Mummy Bloggers and exit strategies – this one caught my eye because I’m in the middle of re-branding myself and I think it’s a little easier for me because my blog is self-titled and doesn’t have a “mummy” term in the title. But how will other bloggers handle it? [...]
Hi from a new reader, I’m following from Tina’s blog post today, being a reader of Tina’s blog its been an adventure watching her move categories of blogging from mummy blogger to lifestyle blogger, which she has been able to do successfully!
As a young mum to five, I still consider myself a parenting/mummy blogger and know as my children get older I will need to look at moving into another area when my kids get old enough to not want to be blogged about, but until them I’m enjoying being able to blog about anything and everything!
I have three children and have not finished having babies yet, so my mummy blog will continue for a while, but I like to think that my blog isnt just about my kids, its about my life which is more than parenting so when we leave the mummy blog behind like Tina Im hoping I can evolve it into a lifestyle blog..
Thanks Sarah – I think you’re comment about moving more into a personal / lifestyle blog is probably what a lot of bloggers would say. Guess its really about the love of blogging and writing – whatever the topic is.