This is a guest post from my good friend Carrie at Careful Cents. Visit Carrie’s site to read about her adventures as the most driven and motivated freelancer I’ve ever met!

Once you’ve been bitten by the online entrepreneur bug (like I have), it’s hard to resist the urge to start multiple online endeavors at the same time. Between all the hobbies and interests I’m passionate about, I could have a dozen or so blogs and corresponding social media accounts.

This is probably something you’ve thought about before too. Should you streamline your interests or create multiple sites to display your skills? Andrea recently did this when she combined her blogging website with her social media site. So before making the decision to start a(nother) new site, consider the benefits to combining all your interests to one cohesive platform.

Your brand will stand out amidst all the noise

If you’re the person behind your brand, what you’re promoting is YOU and everything that goes along with that. This will give you the opportunity to promote your brand even more. Because when you’re promoting the brand of YOU, people want to hear what YOU have to say. There’s already so much noise on the internet today, that splitting your interests instead of creating a cohesive brand means you’re just adding to the noise.

If you have interesting ideas and helpful advice, people will want to hear your thoughts and your opinions. Think of it this way: your brand’s voice will stand out much more clearly when you combine your efforts. Because having several smaller and fragmented voices makes it much harder for you to pierce the internet noise.

You can build a larger, more cohesive following

If you’re anything like me, your daily life is already pulling you in a thousand directions, so having one cohesive blog will keep you and your audience from being too fragmented. At first, on my personal finance and lifestyle blog, I exclusively blogged about topics like finances and taxes. But I recently did an experiment where added in other subjects I’m passionate about - like traveling, motivation in life and career advice.

At first I thought I’d lose some readers, or that people wouldn’t be interested in what I had to say - but I was wrong. Not only has my audience quickly grown, so has my presence and interaction on social media.

After my experiment I noticed that having several social media accounts and multiple websites, might actually cause people to lose followers and readers. Why? Because when someone is loyal to you (and your brand) they won’t want to follow three Twitter accounts, sign up for multiple newsletters or click on all of your websites every day (unless of course you’re a rockstar like Corbett Barr).

Not everyone has time to chase down your interests all over the blogosphere, so make it simple for them to find you. You’re a multi-faceted human being, made up of many different parts. Likewise your interests are made up of lots of different passions, but they all add up to one big picture - you!

You create a better resume with more job opportunities

Another benefit to combining your efforts to one blog, is because it looks better on your resume - your online resume that is. Your blog (or portfolio) is living, breathing proof of your work and your skills. If your services and skills are combined onto one site, it’s creates a bigger impact when potential clients or companies look at your work.

For instance: If you wanted to hire me to do personal finance coaching and I responded with these two scenarios below, which one would entice you more?

Response 1. “Please take a moment to look at a the examples of my portfolio on my Personal Finance site, my Speaking & Coaching site, or my Community and Lifestyle site. I’m using multiple strategies to reach a larger audience.”

Response 2. “Please take a quick look at my portfolio on my Personal Finance Coaching and Community blog, where I use a combined method to integrate my skills into one power-packed life coaching strategy.”

You probably chose response #2 because no one wants to sift through three or four different links and profiles to see if you have the skills they’re looking for. Wouldn’t it be easier to view one profile to learn everything about that person?

In my opinion, there are many benefits to streamlining your interests into one online presence. Yes, of course there are times when having multiple niche sites is better (like separating your personal interests from your professional ones, or when you collaborate with other online entrepreneurs). But for the most part having all your interests in one place is more beneficial.

So, take a moment to assess if having multiple sites is helping or hurting you. Do you feel overwhelmed, like your focus is spread too thin? Are your efforts more effective collectively or separately? If you can find a common thread to combine your interests, maybe it’s time you merge your social media accounts, migrate all your blogs to one main site and streamline your life.

Do you think it’s smarter to combine your interests to one site? Why or why not?

Andrea’s note: This post is very timely and interesting for me since I recently rebranded this blog (for many of the reasons that Carrie discussed). However, I still own 4 others, so I need to figure out a cohesive strategy for what will happen with them in the future. My interests are very diverse and I feel like combining them all would be disastrous in my case. However, I recognize the need for consistency, thus the recent change to my personal Twitter account and my business Facebook page instead of the hodgepodge I had before. It’s a hard decision to make - I’d love to know what you think and how you decide whether to have one blog or many.