Who Are You? Changing Your Blog Identity

By the time most of us marketers are knee-deep in a blog content management strategy, a definite blog identity has been crafted. Just yesterday, we talked about how a blog’s greatest asset is the personality of both the business and the blogger. This identity is formed with a unique language rich in all the right keywords while staying true to our core beliefs as a brand. But what happens when this identity changes? Does our brand and our blog lose followers or will people stick with us through thick and thin?

We started thinking about matters of blog identity last week. Popular atheist blogger Leah Libresco shocked her readers when she announced she was converting to Christianity. Libresco has led lively discussions about atheism via her blog for faith and spirituality on the Patheos platform for the last two years. Libresco stared blogging about atheism and faith while she was dating a Catholic. But her well-worn image as an atheist blogger disappeared with one blog post.

“I was ready to admit that there were parts of Christianity and Catholicism that seemed like a pretty good match for the bits of my moral system that I was most sure of, while meanwhile my own philosophy was pretty kludged together and not particularly satisfactory,” she wrote last Monday when she announced her blog would now be found on the Catholicism section on Patheos.

Libresco and her blog have made national news. CNN reports her writing receives some 5,000 views a day and the number has bumped up since the announcement.

In some ways, a journey like Libresco’s is a personal one and one most corporate blog writing specialists wouldn’t have to worry about. But in others, her sudden switch is exactly the kind of thing brands face all the time. From image overhauls to mass employee turnovers, companies big and small face major changes in identity on a regular basis. A writer like Libresco would be wise to start pitching her well-read journey to book publishers turning this major change into a goldmine. For brands, changing the blog identity can also be profitable. A well-thought-out blog makeover in both content and style can bring in new readers and infuse new life in your blog.

So, readers, we’ll ask you: When do you know it’s time for a blog makeover? And has a blogger’s identity change ever turned you off as a reader? Sound off below!