Web Marketing all-in-one for Dummies®

Chapter 1. Picking Your Blog Topic

In This Chapter

• Finding a blog topic you care about

• Creating goals for your blog

• Calculating the size of your audience

Blogs sound faintly, well, magical. After all, they're everywhere. They're not necessarily mystical, though. A blog is simply a toolset with which you write and publish entries (posts), and then visitors can comment on those posts.

To have a blog — and use it for Web marketing — you need a solid topic upfront. Choose something about which you're passionate and knowledgeable. That way, you can build a base of followers, which in turn drives traffic to your site (or sites) — and ultimately, your endeavor.

Choosing a Blog Topic

If you're going to write a blog, you need a topic: a focus. Without one, you have a tough time attracting an audience. Your goal is to reach the point where your audience seeks you out because you consistently offer information that they find helpful in light of their interests.

Note

No focus means no consistency, which means no audience.

Picking that topic can be tougher than you might think. Common questions and concerns that I hear are

I don't want to pick a narrow topic. I'll be stuck writing about it forever.

No wants want to hear what I have to say.

My topic is so boring. Why would anyone read it?

I can't think of anything.

All the preceding questions translate to one issue: fear. We're all trained to be terrified of writing. Starting in grade school, we're told that we'll lose two points for a missing comma or four ...