PolyBlogging

In Polyblogging: Basic principles I talked about reframe and crosslink as one of the basic principles of polyblogging.

Reframe and crosslink: the basic principle
The basic principle is this:

This is an extension of the write once use many principle - it makes it easier to create meaningful links that add value.

There are two ways that people will find your blog: through a referral (via a search engine or a social networking friend) or through discovery. By crosslinking between your blogs, you are increasing the prospect of people going from one blog to another (and I know that this sounds like a no-brainer - stay with me). When they find a new blog they may subscribe.

Reframing is about taking an idea and looking at it anew while maintaining a semantic link - in blogging terms, there should be at least one point that clearly joins the two posts. Here’s an example: all bloggers run blogs. If they are interested in promoting their blog, they will often seek the advice of metabloggers (that is, people who blog about blogging). It is not hard to reframe a discussion on the art of bioblogging/mommyblogging/business blogging/you name it in a way that justifies a link to a metablog. Similarly, in metablogging, it is not hard to talk about specific examples of what works and what doesn’t from any other blog - so long as the link adds value to the story.

Crosslinking is simply using links to tie the two (or more) posts together. More about that below.

Reframing 101
So how do you reframe? Basically, by looking at one thing in context of another.

In the real world, everything has multiple facets. For example - I am male, Australian, a consultant, over 40, relatively affluent, live in the ACT, drive a car, enjoy good wine, enjoy good food, and practice information architecture. I can relate to any one of these facets of my personality - and while in sum they define me, I will probably read a blog post that relates to any one of them. As I will read a blog post about a good restaurant in the ACT (covering two of my facets), so will many other people, who may or may not be male, consultants, over 40, or practice information architecture. These same people may also be interested (as would I) of reading about a unique dining experience anywhere in the world, or of some other event/location/news around the ACT. Thus the intersection of these two facets serves a wider audience than just the ACT or just dining - it is possible to reframe along these lines and offer additional posts as “other people who have read these also enjoyed…” options a la Amazon.

Crosslinking: the art of the weave
Crosslinking is a science as laid out above: find two things that relate in at least one way and segue neatly between them.

Crosslinking is also an art: the art of seemless crosslinking is this - it is better to weave links into posts, as opposed to writing posts around links. You can tell examples of the latter - the writing just doesn’t flow, it jumps around enough that you notice the discontinuity - in other words, writing posts around links leaves the reader feeling jarred and a bit bruised.

On the other hand, a post that weaves meaningful crosslinks into the main flow of the writing should not jar. Imagine reading the same post without the links - does it still make sense? If not, it is a collection of words wrapped around links, rather than an artful piece of writing.

Dont “stretch the weave”
In Polyblogging: Link Self Love (Don’t be embarrassed, everybody does it!) I talked about not “stretching the weave”. If the art of seemless crosslinking is about weaving links into posts (as opposed to writing posts around links), stretching the weave is when you’ve gone too far - that is, when the segue is not neat enough to be seamless.

A successful segue is hard to spot: two seemingly unrelated topics are joined neatly without the audience noticing - if you notice it, it isn’t successful.