There are many reasons people and companies may change their blogs: 
- Reader comments for more or different information
- Reader suggestions for future content
- Business model has changed
- Business focus has changed
- Blog isn’t gaining in readership
- No measurable increase in business related to blog posts
If you’re considering changing your blog to something very different from what it is today, I’d suggest doing it over a period of days or weeks rather than overnight.
Changing the focus, intent, or purpose of a blog isn’t a bad thing. The trouble comes when the change occurs without warning, without reason, or without a plan.
If a blog is changed overnight, with a new focus and a new look, this may cause readership to drop. Then your focus will be on convincing readers to come back, rather than convincing them that the change is good.
In general, if a blog has been active for more than a year, making small changes will have the greatest impact.
After deciding what the new blog will be focused on, there are a couple of things you can do to retain current readership and gain new visitors:
- The first thing to do is write a post telling your readers why a change will be happening and what to expect in the next post. Follow this with a news release via PRweb.com combined with submitting the release to as many social bookmarking channels as possible, i.e. Delicious, Technorati, Digg, etc. You may decide to fully disclose what you have planned for the blog to end up looking like. Either way, prepare your readers.
- The second thing you do is to begin writing posts that reflect the new focus.
Why do it this way? Because your readers are people and by giving them respect they will give you loyalty – and what better thing can a blogger ask for?
Retaining loyal readers and gaining new ones is always a good thing!
