Choosing a blog topic is like choosing a college major. Settling on a plan you feel a mix of emotions: relief, excitement, optimism, motivation, a tinge of self-satisfaction.
But if you’ve chosen the wrong course of study, the work becomes a chore, your performance suffers, and you soon realize that you will be miserable if you continue. The same thing can happen with blogging.
Blogging is hard enough without having to start from scratch because you didn’t think long enough about your topic before you started. It’s a mistake that can cost you time and money.
While you can’t know for sure that the topic you’ve chosen will ultimately work out, there are steps you can take to help you make a more informed decision.
Step 1: Identify Your Strengths and Interests
Write what you care about. Growing a blog is a long-term commitment, and if you don’t love your topic, your online work will eventually begin to drain your energy. When times are low and you haven’t reached as many people as you imagined, you will feel like quitting. On the other hand, if you’ve chosen a topic you care about so much that you will write about it no matter how minimal your impact has been, you will have a chance of breaking through and finding success—even if success means feeling proud about the body of work you’ve published online.
But beware of a couple of things.
First, we sometimes think we like something more than we actually do. It’s not until we delve deeper into the topic that we realize we don’t care about the minutiae; we find it drier and more pedantic than we imagined.
The second trap falls along the same lines: sometimes we mistake our passion for competence. Just because we like consuming content about a topic doesn’t mean we are suited to producing content about that topic.
I learned this valuable lesson after deciding I was going to blog about Elvis Presley. Yes, I said Elvis Presley. I’ve loved Elvis music since I was a kid. For my 10th birthday I received a box set of Elvis CD’s, an Elvis hat, and a set of limited edition Elvis U.S. postal stamps—not the typical gift list for a 10 year old. I knew all the words to obscure Elvis songs, had seen all the concerts dozens of times, and as I got older I became fascinated by the iconography of a person who had been dead for decades. My blog was going to include all sorts of smart analysis and critical critique of America’s (the world’s) obsession with Elvis. I would research and include interesting biographical details. I would do a rhetorical analysis of Elvis lunchboxes, Elvis trading cards, Elvis whatever. I’d even have reviews of new or quirky Elvis merchandise (maybe a post entitled “The Elvis Lover’s Christmas List”). I guess I was planning to do for Elvis blogs what Murray from Don Dellilo’s White Noise was planning to do for Elvis Studies at College-on-the-Hill.
There were just a few problems.
The first problem was that I wasn’t as interested in writing about Elvis as I was in listening to his music. When I started brainstorming possible blog post topics, I was surprised by how uninspired I was.
The second problem was that there was a clear gap between my interest in Elvis and my knowledge of Elvis. The only thing on Elvis I had ever read was Peter Guralnick’s two-volume biography, which I labored through. (Hint: if you’ve read only one or two books on your potential blog topic, you might not be ready to start a blog centered around it). I would therefore not be able to offer much value to audiences beyond what other Elvis bloggers had already been giving. While this feeling is sometimes the result of imposture syndrome, in this case, I had to be honest with myself and accept that most of my target audience would be more knowledgeable than I. (You don’t need to be an expert on a topic to create a valuable blog, but it helps to be at least a few steps ahead of your audience, capable of helping them learn from your or with you).
The third problem—and this was a big one—was that I wasn’t really a part of the audience I was planning to reach. I didn’t spend my time on Elvis sites or forums, sharing memories or favorite songs or participating in any debates important to the Elvis community. If you are not (or haven’t been) a part of your target audience—part of that discourse community—it will be much more difficult to understand how to appeal to them.
These problems were just three of many, but you get the point. They seem obvious to me now, but at the time I was oblivious to them. It’s easy to get carried away with an idea for a blog, so before you get too far make sure you’ve done some sober self-analysis of your passions and your skills.
Remember, getting silly ideas out of your system is part of the process. To test your idea for a blog you might start blogging on a free platform like WordPress.com, rather than buying a domain name and paying for hosting. This will let you see if you enjoy writing about the topic. It’s is also a good way to find out if an audience responds to your writing. If your blog gets some interaction, it’s a good sign that a market exists, which is the focus of the next section.
Step 2: Make Sure That a Market Exists for Your Content
For your blog to succeed there needs to be a market for what you will be writing about. A market for your topic means that people will find value in the content you are providing, that they will exchange their time and attention for what you have to say or teach. Identifying a market allows you to consider your strategies for participating in that market.
It’s important to keep in mind what it means to participate in a market?
Participating in a market from a blogging perspective means presenting solutions to a defined group of people with a specific problem. For example, there are people who need guidance, tips, and commiseration when caring for elderly parents. A blogger who wants to engage in this market might offer weekly in-depth tips via blog posts, videos, or podcast episodes. He might regularly answer questions to visitors via email. He may post his own experiences caring for his aging parents, helping the audience feel better about not being alone in dealing with their challenges, while also encouraging them by sharing all the benefits of having this responsibility.
In another market, the problem might be the lack of good information available to use a complex software product. In response we see websites and blogs devoted exclusively to helping people use these products more efficiently and effectively (e.g., sites that teach Excel, Photoshop, Scrivener, etc.)
Your success in your chosen market will depend on the value your audience places on your proposed solutions to their problem (your solution should be both efficient and ethical).
If there is no market for your topic—if people don’t find value in what you’re blogging about—you can’t grow an audience. And unless you’re treating your blog as a journal for self-expression, you’ll likely be unsatisfied with your efforts. Just like an argument without an exigence, a blog that does not address real audience needs becomes nothing more than a writing exercise.
Signs That a Market Exists for Your Topic
So how do you know whether a market exists for your blog topic? You can start by looking for a few telltale signs:
There are many websites or products associated with your topic
It’s tempting to think that you will succeed because the topic you’ve chosen is so different and nobody is doing what you are about to do. But it’s generally a bad sign if you look around and don’t see any other bloggers trying to solve the problem that you’ve identified. If you see no websites or products available, it’s likely that not many people care enough to exchange their time and attention to engage with the topic or issue.
Other bloggers have large followings
Social proof is one way to gauge the value an audience places in a given blog. You can look at a blogger’s number of email subscribers (assuming the blogger shares this information) and followers on social media to get an idea of how many people engage with the topic. If bloggers in your niche have few followers, it’s likely that you will also have a difficult time growing an audience.
You might use free trials for tools like Alexa and SEMrush to get estimates on how many visitors the blogs in your niche are getting.
Your topic has shelf space at a bookstore
While the books available at Amazon continue to grow far into the long tail, the amount of physical space at bookstores has remained limited. To see if there is a market for your topic, you might visit a Barnes & Noble or other large bookstore and check for a designated section on your topic. If there is enough demand for stores to sacrifice shelf space, chances are you can reach this market online.
Step 3: Niche Down by Identifying Your Target Audience
It’s not enough to know that a market exists for your topic. Most markets are too broad for individual bloggers to serve. You’ll have far more success by choosing a niche within the broader market so that you can tailor your solutions to their specific interests and needs.
Let’s look at an obvious example of how a blogger can narrow her focus and target audience: the very broad writing market.
It hardly means anything to say that I will start a blog that helps writers. Writers are a huge, diverse and complex group whose needs and interests are shaped by their personal and professional contexts. For example, technical writers and fiction writers have very different professional concerns. A writing blog that focuses on creating character arcs and crisp dialogue will have less appeal to a tech writer than a blog that shares best practices for writing documentation and insights on how writers can convey their value to organizations.
A person who wants to blog about writing should list the needs and preferences of the specific type of writer they are targeting. The following list is just a sample of the niches and sub-niches that writer-audiences can be broken down into:
- Academic writers
- First-year college writers
- ESL Writers
- Graduate writers
- Comp and Rhetoric writers
- Fiction Writers
- Short-story writers
- Poets
- Flash fiction writers
- Novel Writers
- Crime fiction writers
- Science Fiction Writers
- Romance Writers
- Literary Writers
- Screenwriters
- Video game writers
- Professional Writers
- Technical writers
- Professional editors
- Content writers
- Copywriters
- Freelance writers
- Bloggers
- Journalists
- Science writers
- Writers in the workplace
The list could go on, but you get the point.
Try listing as many related audiences as you can think of in your niche. Looking at the similar, but different, audiences in your market allows you to identify the one you are most trying to help. It also allows you to identify secondary audiences for your content.
Once you have a clear idea of your primary and secondary audiences you can better decide what topics to cover and which ones to exclude. You will have a better idea of what language to use. Your style and delivery will be better informed, and you will know what counts as proof when supporting your claims.
After doing a thorough audience analysis, you will have a much clearer sense of what to include in your blog, but it’s still too soon to know if you’ve chosen a strong blog topic. In addition to having clarity about your topic, you need to decide whether you can present that topic in way that differentiates your blog from others.
Step 4: Determine Whether You Can Differentiate Your Blog
To succeed at capturing attention, a blog must differentiate itself from others in the same niche.
Of course it must be similar enough to other blogs that it appeals to the fundamental needs of the audience, but it should be different enough that the audience feels the blog offers something of value that other blogs do not.
To know how to differentiate your blog, you must first be familiar with what other blogs are doing. This means analyzing others blogs for their content, delivery, and style.
The content of other blogs will vary in depth and quality, depending on the needs and experience of the audience. You should decide whether you are writing to a novice audience or an experienced one, or if dividing your blog into sections based on audience experience level makes more sense.
Consider what the blogs in your niche are doing. If you find that other blogs are overlooking beginners and paying more attention to intermediate and advanced audiences, you might start your blog by paying extra attention to those neglected audiences who might feel intimidated by the topic.
Blogs are also distinguished by how they deliver content. Some blogs rely almost exclusively on text. For others, video is the main source of content delivery. Still others concentrate mostly on publishing high quality podcasts. And depending on the niche, it’s not uncommon to see all of these publishing channels. This again depends on your skills and the needs of your audience, but you should also look at what others blogs are missing in their content delivery. For example, if most of the bloggers in your niche are producing high quality podcasts, you might focus on building a better YouTube channel than what you see being published by others.
Style will also vary across the blogs in your niche. Style in terms of blogging is probably best described as the blogger’s stance in relation to the audience. For example, a blogger might present herself as an expert, teaching her audience what she has worked hard to learn, the blog centered around her personal brand. Another blogger might position himself as learning with the audience, sharing his mistakes and serving as a guide to knowledge rather than as an expert. The stance you adopt in relation to your audience will affect all aspects of your blog, from the visual design of your site to the structure and voice that manifests in your sentences.
Style choices are decisions about how you organize and hold your audience’s attention. The style of your blog therefore should be consistent and purposeful to create a unique experience for your audience.
Having clarity about your relationship to your audience, and focusing on the role you’ve assumed, will help you be consistent in designing and delivering your content. Consistency in these areas allow audiences to see your positioning and make an informed choice about the relevance of your content to their needs.
Step 5: Think About How Your Interests Might Expand in the Future
While it’s important to start with a narrow focus, give some thought to the ways your blog might expand in the future. For example, a blog might start by teaching audiences how to use Scrivener, before expanding to include content and courses on other writing and productivity software. A blog might start with lessons on writing short stories before expanding its content to include poetry or novels. A blog might start with content that includes travel vlogging and travel advice, before including sections on personal finance.
If it’s possible that you will expand the type of content you include on your blog in the future, try to factor those possibilities into your site design and your positioning—your site’s branding.
Sometimes the additional blogging interests you want to pursue won’t belong on your current blog. In that case, a new blog with its own focus and target audience makes more sense. But in cases where your new interest is also of interest to your audience, expanding your current blog will allow you to build its authority and usefulness to a larger audience.
Not paying attention to how your site’s branding might accommodate your future interest could cause a lot of work later on if you have to re-brand. For example, a blog that is branded around teaching and curating poetry might send mixed signals to new visitors when they find content about writing fiction and writing productivity. One way of avoiding this hypothetical problem is to avoid using the word poetry in the domain name, rather than something that better encompasses poetry, fiction, and productivity together.
It’s impossible to know for sure where your interests will take you, and re-branding is always an option, but thinking about how your blog might evolve early on can save you time down the road.
Conclusion
A lot goes into choosing a blog topic, and it’s not a decision you should rush. Take your time. One of my favorite pieces of advice for starting a writing project comes from a textbook I was assigned in college: Writing Analytically by David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen. In it is the very simple but powerful advice to dwell with the material. Let the information you’ve collected for your potential blog sit there a while, see what you notice, allow your ideas to incubate. Reconsider these ideas in the context of the five steps discussed in this post, and you’ll improve the odds that you’ve chosen the right topic for your blog.