Bill Cammack

My fellow MIT alum, Liz Burr doesn’t care about my pictures. :( She doesn’t care if The Kid drinks a bunch of alcohol and hangs out with a bunch of chicks. :(

(L to R) Oz Sultan, Florence Holdeman, Bill Cammack, James Im, Michelle DeForest & Whitney Hess @ TechSet NYC
Photo by Brett Petersel

This is what I’ve learned since consolidating my blogs into one stream, which is BillCammack.com. Consolidation has gotten me a ton of hits/traffic/whatever, but the end result hasn’t been a crossover by “fans” of any particular aspect/section/category of my blog/life.

For instance, even though my “Brass Rat” is in a ton of pictures, people I’ve known for months are like “I didn’t know you graduated from MIT!”.

Limor Fried, Bill Cammack & Phil Torrone

Or people that happen to know that I’ve been page 1 on Google for “Bill” for the last 8 months apparently never clicked through, because they ask stuff like “So… What do you do?”, indicating that they’ve never been to my ABOUT or CLIENTS/PROJECTS pages, which are clearly marked at the top of my site. :/

I also mentioned in “How many people read my blog?” that 88% of my hits are “single-serving friends” (ref: Fight Club), so there can’t possibly be any crossover if people are only accessing ONE PAGE on my site. :D

So now that I don’t care anymore, I’m splitting my feeds. I used to be interested in people finding out several things about me, but that’s not how this game works. :) The way it works is that people look for what they’re interested in at that moment, and then they move on. IMO.. There’s no point in showing people OTHER STUFF that has nothing to do with what they’re currently interested in. If they came to my site to see pictures, they’re not interested in editing. If they came to research video editors, they’re not interested in my video blog. If they’re interested in my video blog, they’re not interested in my dating advice, etc etc… So now, I’ve created a feed for each particular interest:

Bill Cammack
RockStar
DatingGenius
Video
Social Media
Photos

I didn’t want to do this before, because I was attempting to gather people with different interests into one location. Forget that. :D If people want to read about Social Media and not wacky dating advice, more power to them. I feel they should have a way to get ONLY what they want from my site, instead of what I’m trying to offer them while they’re here.

This also solves an issue I was discussing with Liz Burr about my new “Rock Star” series:

“Rock Star” is partially a standalone series, but it’s actually not. It’s a lifestyle blog at the same time that it’s a music blog. In one way, it should have its own site, and in another, it’s actually a part of my usual video blog. Splitting Feeds solves that issue for me, entirely. Also, if I decided to make a different iTunes feed just for the show, all I have to do is link to the new, standalone “Rock Star” feed.

The “downside” to separation is that BillCammack.com becomes invisible, and just the “host” for whatever people are really looking at. However, the way I see it, my site was invisible to begin with, as most people were Googling stuff and ending up here and then skating immediately. At least this way, if they can subscribe to one particular aspect that they like, they’re more likely to receive an update in their reader that they might actually be interested in, instead of a random picture of The Kid posing with his bike.

--

Follow Bill on Google+