I'm sorry Andrew,

  I've been watching this post all day and hoping to find out the answer myself. But it looks like we the same answer as to the question "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?" I guess we will never know.

Todd

I like reading blogs and commenting although I have posted some here on occasion.  But I have two others that I totally neglect.  It just eats up too much of my time.  

Andrew I have 4 blogs.  One of which is on Activerain and I no longer use.  I only made a few posts on it, and no longer use it.  I do however keep up with the other 3.  One on blogger, one on Point2 and the one here at REliberation.  I find it hard enough to keep up with those 3.  

I think you should concentrate on a few that you have posted a lot on and maintain those.  It's easy to forget about one blog and not post on it for a while, but when your readers see you aren't posting very often, they will start to stray away.  I think if you keep if to maybe 3 or 4 that you can really concentrate on, it'll be better for you in the long run.

Great question Andrew. Comes up a lot and I don't think there is one simple answer.

I used to be very active on ActiveRain. It's a great place to learn to blog. I rarely post there anymore, though I usually read it daily. It's just a time thing...

I try to focus most of my effort on our main site, and my main blog. I want to (and will) post more on my P2 based blog as it will, without doubt, help the main site rank better. (My main blog is not on the P2 platform as it was started long before P2 had a blog option and it's too established to abandon and too large to move over to the P2 platform).

Here's my feeling on multiple blogs:

Blogging (effectively) is a lot of work. Some (like me) enjoy it. Some find it painful. If it's painful, or overwhelming, to support more than one blog, then don't. Have one blog, and devote your time resources to it (and your main web site).

AR / Localism is a great platform. It won't help your main sites search engine rankings though. My blog, since it's not on P2, doesn't directly help my P2 site rankings either. But it complements them. There are several great search terms where BOTH our site AND our blog rank well. Google "Power Ranch Real Estate" and our main site comes up #1 and #2 and our blog comes up #7 and #8. A blog directory pointing to us comes up #10. So we own 5 of the top 10 search results in Google for that term.  That's pretty powerful stuff....

Bottom line (in my humble opinion) is if you can post original content to multiple blogs, go for it. If not, focus on 1, maybe 2. "Cross posting" -- putting a similar post on multiple blogs -- really doesn't do much, and could raise a duplicate content flag in the SEs.

Hello Jay and or Francy,

I have had similar results with my websites and main blog taking several top spots in Google's results, also with directories pointing to both my website and blog.  I think the best that I had for a while was 7 out of 10.  I have been thinking of increasing my main sites blog activity, on P2A, but I have find that the P2A blog system is more difficult to "spread the word".  

I never re-post the exact posting although I believe my main blog now feeds an RSS feed to my P2A blogs.  If I use the same topic on multiple sites I always type it from scratch so that it is significantly different in structure if not overall message.

I think that I like the Active Rain blog because there is more interactivity and if you ask a questions you tend to get at least a few response, and I get emailed any update, where as here on RELiberation I have no clue when a comment is posted and I only find out if I go out of my way to check.  Seeing as this post is about how hard it can be to find all of the time required, I do not end up looking at this site nearly as much. (sorry for the delayed response)

Anyways, thank you all for your input, but the clock is ticking. gtg  :)