In the Moment: Simplify

The Thanksgiving holiday is always a nice break for us. It typically means catching up with family and friends, lazy days hanging out together watching TV show marathons, and analyzing and maintaining my blogs. This year was no exception. What's going to happen as a result of analyzing my blogs is an exception.

Did you have a good Thanksgiving?
How did you spend the holiday?

Thanksgiving Day started with both cubes and I in the kitchen. While cubes made mashed potatoes for our Thanksgiving potluck celebration, I served up dairy- and refined sugar-free pancakes. We then headed to the East Bay to share a meal with my parents and grandmother at Skate's on the Bay. Dessert was my mom's pumpkin pie - a treat I hadn't had in years! Then, it was back to our place to reheat the mashed potatoes and head down the peninsula to our friends' potluck celebration.

When we weren't eating (or preparing our apartment for the baby), we indulged in a marathon of The Walking Dead and I started the process of simplifying my online presence.

After careful thought and analysis, I decided that the benefits of multiple blogs and Twitter accounts didn't outweigh the overhead. Writing and consistently publishing original content for each was becoming a challenge. Quality, frequency, or both suffered. My initial assumption that different people would follow each was wrong. The basic lesson is keep it simple. Pick something you love and do it well. The readers will come. Yes you'll lose some because they won't like the variety of topics, but you'll gain others who do.

Over the next month, the multiple blogs are going to roll back into this one - my original blog. To start, this blog moved to a new domain and got a little bit of a face lift. There's a new header and footer that incorporates design elements from the other three blogs. If you read this blog on a mobile device, you'll also appreciate the new simplified template.

I'll share with you the consequences (SEO hits, readership dips, impact to Klout and PeerIndex scores, etc.) of my decision to simplify my online presence. This project can be looked at as rebranding/repositioning. The same consequences happen to companies and products when they change their messaging and/or approach. Although most would never reveal what's beneath the kimono.

Ciao Bella!

Eden

 

Credits: All food images taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein. Dress detail image taken by Daniel Silverstein. Collage created by Eden Hensley Silverstein for The Road to the Good Life.