It’s only been a month since Duncan sold the Blog Herald, and what’s changed? Hmmm. Virtually nothing.

And even though Matt & Co from BlogMedia claim that…

“As to the content, the traffic is up significantly since the acquisition, so are advertising sales and just about any other metric that matters.”

… the metrics aren’t the real issue here. Even though I suspect that the increased traffic and ad sales are simply an afterburn of the hype that came from the sale, that growth won’t last another 2 months if you carry on screwing with your brand.

But even that’s not the real issue here, either.

The real, real issue is that right now, the Blog Herald has absolutely no brand to speak of. It doesn’t know what it is, or what it wants to be. Matt probably has some idea of where he wants to take it, but during the course of the last month, we haven’t seen any evidence of that whatsoever.

Like a big fat fish in a little pond, it’s floundering. And if nothing changes soon, it’s going to run out of air. Fast.

Can it be saved? I think so. And here’s my plan…

Decisions, decisions.

I really think that BlogMedia need to nail down exactly what they want the Blog Herald to be.

They need to ask themselves whether they want to create “the news destination of choice for readers seeking technology news & information about blogs, blog networks, and professional blogging.”

In which case, they have a tough job ahead of them. Fantastic opportunity, though. It would be very difficult now to build something similar from scratch. And it would also be a damn shame to waste it – especially after all of Duncan’s hard work over the last 3 years or so.

Or, are Blogmedia simply going to take the easy path and run the Blog Herald as yet another snarky blog about blogs, bloggers, and blogging? In which case, it will sink – no question – because there just won’t be anything to separate it from the rest of the blogs that do *exactly* the same thing.

To be honest, I think it’s gotta be one or the other. But not both. You can’t be all things to all people. That kind of model won’t work – and never has done.

The choice is obvious. Well, at least it is to me.

So, here’s the plan…

A lot of us (yes, me included) want a real, proper, ‘grown-up’ news site about blogging. With TBH in their stable, BlogMedia have the opportunity to create just that. Cut out the snark, the crass opinion, and all of the rest of that shit. Respect the people you’re writing about. Make it intelligent. A credit to the blogosphere. Something that mainstream media will want to quote from every single day. Something that you can show to a non-blogger that will make them go “wow, this is pretty fucking exciting stuff”, instead of “jesus, what a bunch of juvenile fuckwits.”

Essentially, it’s about reporting the blogging news as it happens – fairly, accurately, responsibly, and professionally. And believe me, over the next 6-18 months, there’s going to be plenty of it to keep them busy.

It might mean taking on new writers with jounalistic experience who are mature enough to do the job properly. Finding them won’t be difficult – who wouldn’t want to write for the Blog Herald?!?

But however, they do it, I suggest that they look at bbc.co.uk/news, and at how that whole site works. Because as a news source, it really does work well. It’s on a completely different scale, granted, but the underlying principle is exactly the same.

Now, BlogMedia also say that a lot of people want to keep the snark and the fun. That’s fine. All they need to do is simply separate it from the main site, and probably give it a subdomain off of The Blog Herald. This’ll be the flip side of blogging. The place where experienced bloggers can go for their snark fix, and where everyone can have a bit of fun.

It’s not rocket science. Just separate the editorial from the news. Create a ‘Blog Herald Magazine‘ where just about anything that blogging-related goes. Or at least it’ll be a place where the coverage is a lot lighter than the news on the main site. They could let their readers create the content here, and give something back to the blogosphere.

And because it will be called mag.blogherald.com (or whatever), there’ll be no confusion as to what the message is.

At the end of the day, it’s all about differentiating and segmenting your content. Snark will never mix with serious on the same page. One will always dilute and offset the other, and no matter how hard you try to be a jack of all trades, the cold, hard truth is that you really do end up being master of none.

Just a thought.