The question is: "Do you think it's harmful for a writer to go off in different directions with their writing? Is this what you meant by branding?"
Yes,s that is a consideration when you veer from one kind of writing but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Steven King veered from horro to a lovely little literary book on writing itself. Just be prepared that when you take off in a different direction, your fans may not like it much (John Grisham had lots of unhappy fants when he moved from the courtroom to his childhood in Oklahoma!) But it was his name, his quality, that was branded, not courtrooms. He wouldn't have a site decorated with gavels and law books. This might illustrate what I mean. You want to brand the "whole" you. If you have a site with a theme of "Screams in the Night" and then move from there into pastoral poems, your will need another site or need to fragment the site you have.