How to Select a Topic for Your Blog? – Blogging Guide 101

With the demand for quality and authentic content increasing day by day, blogging has become one of the most popular content marketing strategies. One of the main reasons why blogging has been so popular is that anyone can easily start a blog and does not require any technical training. However, although thousands of people and businesses start blogs every day, not all of them survive the competition. It is crucial to understand the basics of blogging if you want to stand out from the thousands of other blogs.

Identifying the topic of the blog or your niche is the foundation of a successful blog. You have to have a clear idea of who your target audience is and what they like to read. And you should make sure that you are passionate about this topic and have enough knowledge regarding that particular topic.

Through this article, we will explain all the basics you have to follow when selecting the topic for your blog. If you are a beginner and interested in starting a brand new blog or if you already have a blog and re-evaluating the performance of your blog, this article on how to select a topic for your blog is ideal for either of you.

Find your passion for what you want to write in your blog

It is very important that you are passionate about what you are going to write in your blog. Because it is not going to be something that you will do only once or twice, but consistently for a very long time. Therefore, if you are not passionate about what you write, it is going to be very difficult in the long run and will look less authentic to your audience.

You can start by answering the below questions to identify your passion;

1. What are your hobbies or leisure activities?
2. What is one topic that you can go on and on about for hours with your friends and family?
3. What do you wish to do for the rest of your life without considering money as a factor?
4. What do you like to read mostly about?

If you still can’t figure out your main passion after the above exercise, create a list of blog articles that you can write on each of the areas you identified from the above questions. Take only 5 minutes for each main topic. The category on which you wrote the most blog topics can be selected as your niche because it is evident that you are confident and comfortable about that topic and you are also passionate about it.

Identify your target audience

This point is mainly important for business blogs. If you are planning to start-up a blog for your business, you must ensure that it aligns with your overall marketing plan and that it helps you to achieve your overall business objectives. This is why having a clear understanding of your target audience is important. 

There is no point in writing content that your actual audience is not interested in. So first you have to identify your target audience and then conduct thorough research on their interests, what they search online, other online resources that they refer to find content etc.

There are many platforms that you can use to conduct your research such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Search Console and Google Keywords Planner.

Find a niche in the market

It is very important to avoid writing what everybody else is writing. Because if you choose a very general topic for your blog, there is a very high probability that there are millions of other articles online about the same topic. Finding your niche can be challenging, but it is very important to survive and succeed.

There are many ways to narrow down your topic such as make it specific to a particular geographic location, narrow down your target audience and address a niche group of people.

Also, you can conduct competitor research by considering both direct and indirect competitors and try to identify topics that there is a high demand for but none of these competitors address. That is a gap and also a highly demanded one and can be a great opportunity for you.

Does your topic have a long-term appeal?

A blog should be a long-term effort and not something that you do only for a couple of weeks or months. Therefore when selecting a blog topic you have to make sure that it is not something that is going to go away in a couple of months or years but will be there in the longer run.

We see a lot of fads coming and going everyday. You might find it really fascinating and interesting during that period of time. So it is important that you do your research on these new trends, the people who promote these ideas, their credibility and background, the adaptability of these ideas to the estimated market and environmental changes over time etc. in order to identify whether it is actually a valid niche that is going to stay for a while or just a fad that is going to go away after some time.

What is your expertise?

It is easy to write about something that you actually know about. If you are a business, obviously this will be about what you are specialised in. For example, if you are a salon, you can talk about beauty tips, if you are a hotel, you can talk about tourism and the different services that you offer.

But if you are an individual who is interested in starting a personal blog, it will be easier to write as well as to attract readers if it is about something that you are specialised in. If you have studied something in detail at school or university, you can consider writing about that, if you are really good at cooking and everybody loves your food, you can write about that.

Purpose of your blog

You have to be clear about the purpose of starting your blog. Is it going to be a hobby or do you want to make money out of it? Although this feels like a minor detail, this is a fundamental question that you should ask from yourself before starting the blog and should not skip over lightly. If your purpose is to earn profit via the blog there are other considerations such as whether your niche is profitable, are there any affiliate schemes for your niche, are other people making money out of this niche etc. 

If you follow these fundamentals in selecting the topic for your blog, you are off to a great start in your blogging journey. If you need any help with identifying your niche and the audience, designing a content marketing plan or any other technical support, our team at DigiFix is more than happy to help you succeed.