Content marketing is a great way to gain visibility for your business and its products or services. Whether you’re establishing thought leadership or simply calling attention to your offerings with useful posts, a good blog can be great for business.

But one blog isn’t always sufficient. Maybe your business has multiple divisions and you want to keep things separate. Or perhaps you’re interested in blogging individually and on your company website. Whatever the reason, it’s easier than ever to set up multiple accounts and operate them simultaneously.

Managing all that content can be tricky, though, especially when you factor in all your other daily responsibilities. You can easily find yourself neglecting one account while you’re working to build another. As a result, you could lose readers and find yourself having to work to build things back up again.

With the right tools, you’ll not only track and monitor everything, but you can also move effortlessly between accounts. Whether you’re setting up multiple blogs on the same platform or you’re working across a mix of platforms, there are some things you can do to set yourself up for success.

The Problem With Multiple Blogs

One of the most important practices, if you have a blog, is consistent posting. Whether you post every day or once a week, you’ll need to stick with it. Both search engines and readers prefer newer content, so something you wrote months ago likely won’t get the results you want today.

But if you’ve set up multiple blogs, that can be tricky. You have to remember to update all of them consistently, whether they’re for separate divisions of your business or a combination of personal and professional accounts. You might prioritize one over the other when life gets chaotic, but it’s still important to find a way to balance it all.

The more blogs you have, the easier it can be to miss one for a while. If you have urgent things going on with your business that require you to focus on one blog more than others, it can be easy to let your other blogs fall behind. Without a way to stay on top of everything, you could also find yourself dealing with stress as you try to remember which blog needs an update.

If some or all of your blogs are on the same platform, you have an additional issue to worry about. Most of these platforms require you to log out and back in again to move between accounts. For blogs on different platforms, keeping up with all your usernames and passwords can be a challenge.

Managing Multiple Blogs on Medium

In recent years, Medium has become popular with businesses looking to create branding for their blog posts. You have two options as a business user on Medium. You can set up a business account and blog as you would on any platform, or you can create a publication with branding. The latter lets you have contributors, which means you won’t have to be the only one pushing content to your blog.

The thing that makes Medium stand out is customizability. You can make your publication look like a trade magazine, or simply splash your branding across the page. This lets you create a blog that doesn’t simply exist as an extension of your existing website, which can help you stand out.

As with most platforms, you’ll need a separate email address for each Medium account you set up. If you accept payments through your blog, you’ll also need a separate Stripe account for each. You’ll have to sign out and back in again to switch between accounts, which might not be a big deal if you only blog once every week or two, but if you’re moving back and forth daily, it can become a burden.

Managing Multiple Blogs on WordPress

WordPress remains the most popular blogging platform, used on 41 percent of websites. If your site is already set up on WordPress, using it for your blog might come naturally, but you can also set up a WordPress blog and connect it to your site.

Creating multiple WordPress blogs depends on whether it’s connected to a website. If your WordPress blog is connected to separate sites, or operates independently, you’ll just need to set up multiple accounts using a different email address, just as you’d do with any other blogging platform. Separate accounts on WordPress bring the same problem you’ll have with other platforms. To toggle between logins, you’ll need to log out and back in again. 

If, on the other hand, you want multiple blogs on the same site, things get a little more complicated. Experts recommend using custom categories and menus to simply separate your various posts. When customers view your menu, they’ll see the categories and be able to pick which part of your blog they want to read.

Managing Multiple Blogs on Weebly

Weebly is popular in part due to its drag-and-drop interface. You can set up your blog with the look you want in seconds, then easily drag photos in and move them around while you’re creating content.

Another great thing about Weebly is that you can set up multiple blogs for each website. To set up a new blog on your Weebly site, from your admin panel, you’ll create a new page, then choose Blog as the type. You’ll then name the blog, repeating the process with each additional blog you want to create up to a limit of 10.

The best thing about Weebly is that you won’t have to log out and back in again to move between your blogs, which are separate pages on your website. If you set up multiple Weebly websites with associated blogs, though, you’ll need separate logins for each, and you’ll have to log out and back in again to move between those blogs.

How to Manage Multiple Blogs Using an App

One of the easiest ways to manage multiple blogs is to use an app like Shift to add each account as a separate icon. For instance, if you have a Medium blog, you would create an icon for each login that would remain on the taskbar on the left. Throughout the day, you can move between those accounts without having to input a username and password.

Shift doesn’t just help you with your various blogs, though. You can use the tool to set up icons for all the apps you use throughout the day. Best of all, you can create separate logins for many of today’s most popular apps. You can have your personal and work Gmail accounts as separate icons, for instance, and also set up icons for each of your Trello or Zoom accounts.

To get started with Shift, simply download the app and click the Plus sign in the bottom-left corner. You’ll add each account login and password, assigning it a color and name that will make it easily identifiable in the toolbar. You’ll only have to input this information once. From that point on, you can use the dashboard to access all your apps every day, all day.

Manage Posts on Multiple Blogs

Moving between blog accounts is only part of the problem when it comes to managing multiple blogs. Your biggest challenge will likely be the content itself. You’ll have to come up with something original and brand-related for each platform on a regular basis, along with tracking which post goes where.

The right tool can help you stay on top of everything. Some marketing professionals use a content calendar, which you can set up using any calendar. On this, you’ll input the title of the article, any notes to go with it, and the person who will be assigned to write it, if applicable. You can also come up with color coding that helps you easily identify which post goes with which blog.

Project management tools can also be a handy way of keeping track of everything. You can use these in combination with your content calendar to come up with post ideas, add cards and notes to those ideas, and move them from one status to the next as you complete them. If you’re working with a team on your content, this is a great way to help each team member track their own assignments.

For many businesses, blogging is only part of an overall content marketing strategy. Project management tools and content calendars can also help you map out your upcoming social media posts, including video live streams and podcasts, if those are part of your plan.

Here are a few applications that can help you plan your content marketing efforts:

• Trello – This app takes a Kanban approach to task and project management. Each task gets a card, which you can then assign to team members and monitor throughout its lifecycle. There are some templates specific to marketing to get you started.
• Asana – If you prefer a list-based approach to task management, Asana is a great option. You can use Asana to create a content calendar, then track your team’s work from there.
• Monday – Another list-based project management tool is Monday, which has content marketing templates to give you a big headstart. Your projects and tasks are color coded to make it easy to keep things organized.
• Basecamp – Those looking for an all-in-one tool should consider Basecamp. This tool not only helps you keep things organized, but you can also chat with your team and post updates to ongoing projects directly within the app.
• Evernote – Generating content ideas can be the biggest challenge, and that’s where Evernote can help. As you think of ideas while you’re out and about, you can jot them down in this app and check back there later. You can also save articles and videos to your dashboard to consume them when you have time.
• OneNote – Microsoft Office users might prefer OneNote as a note keeper, but you can also download OneNote outside of Office. You’ll also want to grab the Web Clipper to be able to save items you see while browsing the internet.

Blog Fact and Fiction

Q: Has the blogging trend come and gone?

A: Fiction. Blogging as a pastime could arguably have been replaced by shorter-form methods like social media posts and video snippets. But for businesses, blogging is more relevant than ever. When you post a blog, Google’s algorithms capture the content and use it to rank your site by relevance. Most importantly, though, readers who find your content are more likely to see you as a thought leader in your field, which is a great way to get them to check out the products or services you offer.

Q: Do I need to share my blog posts on social media?

A: Fact. As great as blogging is for search engine optimization, the truth is, there’s a lot of competition out there. The more people read and share your content, the more relevant your posts will look to search algorithms. Make sure your content calendar includes plans to share your latest blog posts.

Q: Do I have to be a professional writer to maintain a blog?

A: Fiction. Good content is all about sharing useful information with your readers. While you may want to have your work edited and cleaned up, writing from your heart in a voice that’s unique to you can go a long way.

Q: Can’t I just post the same content on multiple platforms and get the same results?

A: Fiction. While you can boost visibility by duplicating your posts on social media platforms like LinkedIn, original content will stretch your own website’s reach in search results. If you’re creating blog posts for different businesses or to reach separate audiences, original content for each is important, too.

Manage Multiple Blogs with Ease

Managing multiple blogs isn’t without its challenges, but there are plenty of tools that can help. Whether you’re coming up with ideas for posts or you’re simply trying to keep up with when you’ll post, the right apps can make all the difference. Shift can help you easily toggle between all your blogging accounts, along with your other favorite apps. Click here to see the full list of apps that work with Shift.