Why You Should Spend More Time Thinking About Your Topic
When you start your blog (or even if you’re trying to finetune or reinvent it), the topic is something people don’t always give enough attention to. If you’re truly just writing for yourself, friends, and family, then this isn’t a post for you. In that case, just keep truckin’. If you’re looking to build a name for yourself, maybe even earn a little money on the side…
Research the topic you want to blog about. Don’t just dive in head first. It’s important that you recognize what kind of environment you’re about to get into. You’ll want to assess just how saturated the niche is already. For example, my primary niche is beauty, and at this point, it is a fairly saturated market. The more saturated the market, the harder it is to breakthrough. On the other end of the spectrum, perhaps your topic is too micro and there might not be a large enough audience to make it worth your time.
If the topic you want already has a lot of blogs… think about how you can make your topic more specific, more niche-driven. My expertise is in beauty, so you’ll find many of my examples are from that niche. Instead of having a blog just on beauty, why not do a blog only on skincare or only on makeup? What about a blog that is written from a mom-on-the-go’s perspective? You want to narrow your niche, or else you need to find a way (an “angle”) that makes you stand out from other bloggers.
If the topic you want already has few to zero blogs… expand your topic. So, you wanted to blog on golf balls. All right, a little too narrow, yeah? If you know enough to blog as an expert on golf balls, why not include more golf equipment, too? You don’t have to jump from golf balls to everything golf, you just have to find a way to embody what you want with similar things (that you can talk about).
Get three more reasons why topic is a big deal!
You don’t want to compete aggressively. Some competition is healthy, but there’s no sense in exhausting yourself by competing with other blogs if you don’t have to. If you’re really set on a certain topic or niche, that’s fine, and you just have to recognize that you have a steeper hill to climb–but if you can, you want to strive to grow quickly without worrying about what the competition is up to. If there are a lot of good blogs in your topic, it would do you good to be honest with yourself and ask, “What can I bring to the table that they haven’t already?” If you find yourself stumped or with just a few ideas, you have to consider if it’s still worth it.
You want to have enough, but not too much, to talk about. Going too broad in your topic will often leave you overwhelmed. There’s just so many things you can write and talk about, so it could lead to difficulty in choosing just what to talk about when. If your niche is too narrow, you’ll often be left without ideas.
You need to be a resource for your topic. It’s going to be extremely difficult to find things to write about and do it in a way that’s natural if you don’t know what you’re talking about. For instance, I would never run a blog about cats. I don’t know anything about them beyond what they look like. My lack of expertise would be readily apparent in every post I published, and nobody would want to stick around to watch (unless they liked trainwrecks).
Why You Should Spend More Time Thinking About Your Topic
Why You Should Spend More Time Thinking About Your Topic
When you start your blog (or even if you’re trying to finetune or reinvent it), the topic is something people don’t always give enough attention to. If you’re truly just writing for yourself, friends, and family, then this isn’t a post for you. In that case, just keep truckin’. If you’re looking to build a name for yourself, maybe even earn a little money on the side…
Research the topic you want to blog about. Don’t just dive in head first. It’s important that you recognize what kind of environment you’re about to get into. You’ll want to assess just how saturated the niche is already. For example, my primary niche is beauty, and at this point, it is a fairly saturated market. The more saturated the market, the harder it is to breakthrough. On the other end of the spectrum, perhaps your topic is too micro and there might not be a large enough audience to make it worth your time.
If the topic you want already has a lot of blogs… think about how you can make your topic more specific, more niche-driven. My expertise is in beauty, so you’ll find many of my examples are from that niche. Instead of having a blog just on beauty, why not do a blog only on skincare or only on makeup? What about a blog that is written from a mom-on-the-go’s perspective? You want to narrow your niche, or else you need to find a way (an “angle”) that makes you stand out from other bloggers.
If the topic you want already has few to zero blogs… expand your topic. So, you wanted to blog on golf balls. All right, a little too narrow, yeah? If you know enough to blog as an expert on golf balls, why not include more golf equipment, too? You don’t have to jump from golf balls to everything golf, you just have to find a way to embody what you want with similar things (that you can talk about).
Get three more reasons why topic is a big deal!
You don’t want to compete aggressively. Some competition is healthy, but there’s no sense in exhausting yourself by competing with other blogs if you don’t have to. If you’re really set on a certain topic or niche, that’s fine, and you just have to recognize that you have a steeper hill to climb–but if you can, you want to strive to grow quickly without worrying about what the competition is up to. If there are a lot of good blogs in your topic, it would do you good to be honest with yourself and ask, “What can I bring to the table that they haven’t already?” If you find yourself stumped or with just a few ideas, you have to consider if it’s still worth it.
You want to have enough, but not too much, to talk about. Going too broad in your topic will often leave you overwhelmed. There’s just so many things you can write and talk about, so it could lead to difficulty in choosing just what to talk about when. If your niche is too narrow, you’ll often be left without ideas.
You need to be a resource for your topic. It’s going to be extremely difficult to find things to write about and do it in a way that’s natural if you don’t know what you’re talking about. For instance, I would never run a blog about cats. I don’t know anything about them beyond what they look like. My lack of expertise would be readily apparent in every post I published, and nobody would want to stick around to watch (unless they liked trainwrecks).