How do I Separate my brands as a Polymathic Creator?

A challenge I think every multi-passionate person deals with. Do you keep everything together, and stay more true to yourself. OR do you separate your interests into little sub-brands, bubbles, or websites?

The bigger creators always tell you to "niche down", but then when you look more deeply. There are plenty of creators who do MANY things, I've even interviewed some of them, and this question gets raised again. Should you separate or combine?

This is something I've talked about a number of times in video, or in this post:

Why am I making this post, what made it come up?

Today I was thinking about my "content ecosystem", which includes all of my channels, blogs/websites, social profiles. Etc. How do I want to go about it, how do I want to grow, and more.

I made this current version of the PolyInnovator website to do a better job at showcasing the blog, tags, newsletters, and 👾 PolyPRO membership.

Which I think it does well, and I had to completely rebuild the menu to make sense too now. As the last version had drop down menus, however this side panel menu works in a unique way for my purposes.

Note: I have it currently set up based on Content Types: Written, Video, and Audio. However I could pretty simply change it over to brands too, and have a section for each brand.

I've been wanting to make certain tags, like the Swimming, and previously the PolyTools (before I moved it); A certain color theme on that tag page, which I did on the old version of the site right before I updated everything. However this new theme doesn't play well with that yet.

I'm strongly thinking about moving the PolyInnovator Gaming site over to the main hub website (this site).

Benefits of Separating

Narrow down your focus or scope, and let your YT channel, blog, or podcast be about ONE TOPIC or one thing. Well that isn't for everybody, but let's play the devils advocate in this case. When you focus on one topic, then the algorithms will know more on how to show you to people who have the same interest.

That is what search engine optimization is all about, and it was all the rage in the 2000's. However it has evolved a ton over the decades, and really you can do whatever you want on your site. You just may or may not grow.

I also found it useful to separate

Benefits of Combining

Firstly, so many people find me for one of my many brands. However they don't always know that I have a HUGE website of content here. With over 700+ blog posts on a variety of topics, and then let alone know that I have a membership too. That membership is improving every month, as I add more to it, which if I had more brands on here. It could be like I have separate channels on the same TV if you will. Each one bringing their own course, book, or private content to the singular membership.

By having it all in one place it sort of strengthens the site even more. Yes in an SEO sense it sort of weakens the site, as Google may or may not know how to put me in a box. However I've also gotten some posts going mega-viral simply due to being really good posts, like this one How to Go OmniChannel.

Regardless, you can still gain traffic in other ways like social media, or even through your YouTube driving traffic back to your site.

I don't have the answer yet...

To be honest no one does, and if you look at bigger creators they're all doing different things. Frankly, a lot of them I feel like actually FAIL at their websites. However here are a few that I think are on my level of content creation.

Gary Vaynerchuk

Obviously Gary Vee comes to mind, and he's beyond my level of course. However when you look at his site its a different story.

Very plain, and it isn't clear that if you click the Gary Vee item for example a drop down will show, which then leads to blog or youtube.

I've seen a dozen iterations of his site. Each with their own benefits. Again though there isn't a way to properly showcase all that you do as a creator.

This is more of a limitation of content management systems which is why I made this idea: OmniContent Content Management System (Concept). About making a new CMS for omnichannel creators.

The Bioneer Adam

Next in line is The Bioneer, which in my opinion is the closest creator to PolyInnovator out there. His YT and Blog both are very polymathic, and he did a pretty decent job at consolidating the tags to make it easier to organize. However his site leaves a lot to be desired.

Following a Wordpress 2012 design, and I'm pretty sure this is a semi-default wordpress theme. His content deserves better, and Adam if you're reading this. I love you bro, but this needs to be improved.

Seth Godin

Another goat in the creator world. He's one of the only people I know of that has so many blog posts. I think he's sitting somewhere like 8000 or something.

HOWEVER big caveat is that some of his posts are just like tweets...

Granted at his level he can do whatever he wants, and his minimalist site design I think works for him.

My issue is that he does so much more than blogging now, and I feel like he could improve his blogging quality. Perhaps having done it for so long he's burned out, who knows. I don't think he does it daily anymore.

The Reason I compare myself to them

Is that even though all three are far bigger creators than I am, currently, I do think that my output is similar to their level in a lot of ways.

More importantly they are the type of people the complexity of what I am talking about matters. If you want to make a blog with just two topics, then that isn't a real problem. Just make a double-helix type brand, and call it a day.

However when you get into the many different topics that we all do, and the many different content types. Let alone the multiplication of YT channels, podcasts, sites, etc. Then it becomes an information architecture nightmare.

I can see the minimalist aspect of Seth and Adam being an intentional one.

Its easier to manage complexity when the site itself is more minimalist. Hence why platforms like https://bearblog.dev/ exist.

What conclusion have I come to?

I started writing this post due to my stress about making separate sites for my sub brands. I.e. the gaming site on Paragraph, or I had the Swimming brand on Substack for a while, and now I want to start a travel brand on Substack. Perhaps I should, but the swimming and gaming content aren't that divergent. As in I'm not making them that often, and the swimming phase will end with the release of the book for the most part.

Thus depending on how big or intricate the phase/brand is, that will make a difference. Like as much as I'd love to just have PolyTools on this site again, as the content is still on here anyways. The complexity of making a tools directory within the ghost ecosystem barely works on the individual site alone. It wouldn't work as a sub-site. Maybe if I made it a subdomain or something.

I think with the platform changes of Paragraph, that inspired me to make this post with how frustrated I was, then I have made the subconscious choice to move the Gaming site over to this domain.

I just need to figure out the color scheme issues, making a menu on that page, etc.