Choosing Great Blog Topics
Mar 03
Today we’re going to start our blogging journey. This journey begins with picking a topic. A niche if you will. While other projects we’ve done together have started at a keyword research tool, this one does not.
This project starts in you. In your heart, in your mind, in your spirit.
This one starts with passion. What is it that you just can’t stop talking about. What is you could talk about for days, weeks, years? That’s what you’re going to blog about.
Now before you start thinking let’s look at a couple thoughts to avoid:
1. It won’t be profitable: Now is not the time to think about profitability ~ there are so many ways to monetize/make money/be recognized for your blog. If you automatically dismiss your passion because YOU believe you can’t make money at it ~ you will be doing yourself a disservice. There is a way to make money with just about everything.
2. I’m not an expert: We covered your internet expert status yesterday. Just get the thought out of your head. If you can talk to your friends for more than an hour at a time about a topic you’re expert enough.
3. Yeah but, Yeah but, Yeah but…. whatever your yeah buts are let them go. This endeavor is going to be successful because you get started. You will never know if you’ve hit a profitable topic, are writing interesting posts, or if anyone else wants to read your stuff until you get started.
The biggest obstacle
The biggest obstacle in your blogging career is going to be coming up with something to say regularly (like at least 3 times a week regularly) for the long haul.
It can be hard to know in the beginning to know if this can be a long term thing. That’s when you have the most ideas flying around in your head and you have that invincible “I could write on this forever” feeling. Here’s my suggestion, and it’s made my life so much easier, both on this blog and the new one I’m doing.
If you’re really having hard time thinking of something one thing you can do is go check out some of the topics other people are blogging about. This might spark some ideas, and also help you let go of any “oh I couldn’t blog about that…” stuff going on in your head. One of my favorite places to do that is in blog showcases. This is one of my favorites. It’s Studiopress. Click on the “showcase” tab and just look at what other people are doing. We’re not looking at themes right now 
we’re looking for a topic. We’re just looking around here.
Create a mind map ~ or in a less fancy term ~ make a blog plan.
Here’s how I did mine ~ just for some ideas.
1. Take your overall topic.
2. Break it down into different areas of interest you can write on about that topic.
3. Break those topics down into smaller bite sized ideas/concepts/wanna talk abouts
You have just created a mind map for your blog.
The number 1 thing ~ is your overall topic (your title/domain name type stuff)
The number 2 thing is your categories.
The number 3 thing is your posts.
Here’s an example of how simple I’m talking here ~ not rocket science.
things 1: I want to talk about internet marketing strategies:
thing 2: free platforms, niche blogging, authority blogging, list building
thing 3: squidoo, how to set up a lens, how to use hubpages, how to create a link in a module etc
how to set up wordpress, how to get traffic etc
how to choose a topic, how to get traffic, how to build a network, twitter etc
how to create a free giveaway product, how to set up aweber, how to…
you get it? It’s very simple, and if I sat down and mapped it out you’d get, well… this blog. 
You can map this out as far as you’d like ~ write it down on a big piece of paper to do the brainstorming, then when you get to the posts part ~ write them in on a calendar. You will no longer have to waste time wondering what to write about on your blog (which totally saves me like 30 minutes a day!!).
Here’s a great post that does a better job creating a visual of this concept. If you like the more techie way of doing this you can use this free mindmap software and map it out, or this one if you want to do it completely online. 
Remember, this should be fun! This is the launching of a new project. Have fun with it. If you have kids and they have a great big floor pad of paper get down there with them. Let them have one side to create a project and you create your project on the other side. (That’s what Hanna and I did recently ~ I have since hung the big piece of paper over my (extremely messy) desk to continue writing down ideas/thoughts and other stuff when it comes)
Lighten up with this, have fun, don’t judge. You can’t get it wrong. Just play with it and see what you come up with.
If you find you can’t really think of many different things to write about on your topic you might want to go check and see if there are some forums on the topic. Go in, look around. Look for threads with lots of replies. Look for questions that get asked repeatedly. Look for hot topics. These can help spark some ideas on things to write about.
If you don’t find any forums on your topic you might want to broaden your topic a bit. This is not a tight niche site, you want to give yourself plenty of room to move around ~ but you do want to keep it related to the topic.
One other thing I particularly like about having this type of map is I can see if I’m staying on topic or not. If my idea doesn’t fit in one of my categories ~ then it probably is not a tight match for my site. (or I need to add another category lol)
One more thing about categories ~ this is how people will get around your site and find your information. We’ll get into this more when we choose a theme, but you might want to think about how many categories you’re going to have. While there’s no right or wrong ~ if every post ends up being its own category it will be hard to get around your site and find what people are looking for. (If you have or want a bunch of categories there are themes that can show your main categories and you can put more specific categories under them and see them on a drop down menu ~ which is working VERY well for my other site ~ but more about that later.)
I did a little searching this morning and found a couple other posts I really like on the topic of choosing a topic for your blog.
The first is from Yaro Starak ~ my blogging mentor ~ with his simple take on how to choose a niche.
The second is from Darren @Problogger ~ he’s the master so I thought it would be good to get his opinion!
The last one is from Steph at The Everyday Blogger ~ I love the example she gives in this post.
I know there are some of you who will freak out a little bit that we’re not doing more analytical data diving for this process ~ but just go with it. Have some fun, relax. It will be ok. I promise.
So here’s my thought and I’d like your opinion on it. For this process it’s great to take your time, but you aren’t going to know anything until you take action so I was thinking about doing a Weekly Action Challenge ~ like post them on Sunday so you can work on them through the week. The content on the blog will help you take the steps during the week.
I’m thinking about getting one of those linky things so you can come back and post your link when you finish the challenge and we can all check out each other’s blogs and spread the word around. Win/win/win/win let me know.
Since it’s already Wednesday you’re going to have to get to it this week.
Here’s this week’s challenge:
Choose a topic and create a mind map/plan for your blog.
When you get it done come back and let us know. And as always if you have any questions please ask away.
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Other Posts That Might Help:
This is a great post about advertising.I really enjoyed reading your post and have subscribed to your RSS feed.
Some Contents and topics are my usual “problem” when I plan to start an article. I am not sure if your suggestions and tips will be working fr me, but who knows, this may be the inspiration I am looking for. Thanks for helping!
Ok – 19 days later, and I’ve got my topic and Mind map done. The topic was easy-ish, since I’m already blogging it, and I love that online mind map thing – how handy is that??
Kelly @ What We’re Eating (and More!)´s last blog ..Free Pastry at Starbucks!
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Count me in! Looking forward to this, really love your site.
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Hey Linny ~ I have a fanpage!
It would be a great place for us to work together during the week on the challenges. Great idea! I don’t get notifications from my page for some reason. So I’ll have to do something to remember to go over there regularly. :0 I’m also going to post the linky thing here on Sundays with the actual challenge, but the fanpage gives us extra room for support! Great idea.
http://www.facebook.com/internetmarketingstrategyforbeginners We can start a discussion each week or something to give us room to work.
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Hi Jackie!
Thanks for an inspiring post! I think it’s great that you shifted focus from “doing the right thing correctly” to “just having fun”. You can just about feel everyone’s enthusiasm jump off the page! To me that’s mentoring at it’s best
I was wondering – would a Facebook Fan Page be a good venue for the challenge? Or would it overwhelm you with even more to do? Heaven only knows how you keep up with everything as it is!
Just an idea -
Linny
I have a question when it comes to choosing a URL for your blog. At this point do we want to do any keyword research? I’m itching to research SOMETHING! If we do research – what criteria are we looking for to choose a good URL name?
Thanks!
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We’re going to talk about urls and domain names on Monday ~ work on getting your blog plan and editorial calendar created so you’ll be set for content first.
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Excellent! Looking forward to Monday!
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Jackie, once again a great post. I’ll go for the weekly challenge.
I’ve rack my brain over a blog subject. Could I just continue with my niche blog subject on horses? This is one I could keep on writing about. My other main interest is historic and Club motor sport but all my knowledge and experience is Australian-based and wouldn’t be of appeal to people overseas. They wouldn’t recognise drivers/owners names, racing venues, etc.
Please let me what you think about the horse subject. If you advise against it I’ll go back to further thinking.
RUSSELL
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Absolutely stay with what you’re doing Russell. I think the site you’re doing will make an excellent blog.
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Hi Jackie,
Maybe you are right, maybe it is my mindset. I think it can be discouraging sometimes, I have been working on my site now since August and haven’t made any money yet, other than some pennies from adsense that I can’t even buy dinner with yet. So it seems that it is going at a snail’s pace. Also, I have gotten caught up in all the “learning curves” along the way. But moving forward now at a MUCH faster pace so things are looking up.
You said “With a good mentor and focus and consistency it need not take that long”, I would like to think of YOU as that “mentor”, so if that is where you are putting yourself with this challenge, then I am prepared to do the “focus and consistency portion of the deal : ) And I’m sure I am speaking for several others on here too.
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I totally get “betwixt and between”. It was my main problem with niche blogging. They all seemed to be a great start for an authority blog.
Yes, of course you can use keyword research to get started with your blog. I’m just saying that it shouldn’t be something that keeps you from getting started. We will be doing some keyword stuff when we get to writing ~ it won’t be all that indepth, but there is some benefit to using well searched keywords at least in your titles. 
Just remember that this kind of blogging is not specifically blogging about keywords, but blogging about experiences, and STUFF. Blogs that blog only on the basis of good keywords tend to be more stuffy and not as engaging as other types of blogs so that may be something to keep in mind as you move forward.
Remember, as your blog ages and gains authority you will be able to rank for much more “competitive” keywords and you won’t have to worry about checking competition and all that so much because you will be able to easily rank for more and more things. So I would be careful limiting yourself on keyword based solely on the number of searches and level of competition.
The mindset is different between the two but there’s always middle ground to do a little bit of both.
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Jackie,
I would like to believe that what I’ve already started, could form a basis for your new series. I hope that I’m not heading in the wrong direction?
From your guidance in terms of an Internet marketing strategy, I settled for the niche blogging option. I chose a niche (power tools) that I have an interest in and, particularly, one that could gravitate towards an authority site. Contrary to what Yaro Starak says, I did extensive keyword research. This allowed me to register a URL that got me the current no. 3 position in Google without any marketing.
I have a spreadsheet with my keywords (60 at this point) and I have columns for search volume, competition, KEI, SEO for Firefox PR count, Traffic Travis 4-star rating and Mark J Thompson’s simple rule (more than 1,000 searches and fewer than 20,000 competitors). The keywords define my posts. I just need to add a “category” column to my spreadsheet and that’s my mind map almost done. I also need to give some thought to the “series” aspect.
I’ve been practicing your Content Creation series and I’m just starting on your Web Traffic series starting with the keywords that satisfy all three of the above-mentioned criteria.
So, I’m sort of betwixt and between. Your comments would be appreciated.
Well… I might stop and think about this statement for a second: “Making money online, as you know is not easy, and with an authority blog or site, the money tends to come slower” that is not necessarily true.
It may be a belief YOU have and maybe you want to take a look at that.
With a good mentor and focus and consistency it need not take that long. Lynn Terry earned 30K in 9 months after implementing tips from the Super Affiliate Handbook.
The challenge you will put to yourself is whatever you want it to be. You can start making sales in the first week ~ it’s up to you!!
I’m just making challenges to help you to keep taking action. With consistent action (the right actions) the money will come.
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Hi Jackie,
Thanks for the encouraging words. I can definitely put myself into it.. as I am proof, so that helps. I was also thinking of doing posts somewhat like the gal did in “Julie and Julia” where she just put her heart into it. Obviously, it’s not about cooking, but there are low cal recipes and I am always coming up with my own anyway, but there are so many other things, like foods to avoid when eating out.. I can even put my own stories in there, like certain restaurants and what I do to keep the cal count down and such. So yes, I can put MYSELF into it for sure.
I guess the nagging question is, money. Making money online, as you know is not easy, and with an authority blog or site, the money tends to come slower, BUT I believe with hard work and perseverance, and a good teacher/mentor, such as yourself there is longevity. So is the ultimate goal for all of us doing this “challenge” to make money sooner than later, while having fun doing it? Or are we to just concentrate on the fun part, and the money may come later?
: )
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I’ve finished my mindmap and will continue to add to it as the ideas flow out. I’ve already got at least 60 post topics written down and a few series posts too. Looking forward to the next step!
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Writing a blog should all be about fun, love, and expressing yourself! If you find a medium as wonderful as the web to express yourself on, then boo frits to you me laddy. Ta
Totally up for the weekly challenge. Working in my mindmap now, already have the niche picked out. Although, I am afraid it could be a bit too competitive.
I am very knowledgeable and have a passion for low calorie diets, foods and of course exercise will come along with that. I know you said to pick something we are good at and could write for a long long time about, well that is one niche that I don’t think I would run out of helpful things to say or write about.
Any thoughts?
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I think you will be fine Anna. You will come at it from your own perspective. I’d say you will really have to put YOURSELF in it. If it’s just another blog about how to count calories it may not go over so well ~ but if it’s interesting and engaging and has YOU in it I think you’ll be fine. I know I read tons of weight loss blogs to help me stay motivated ~ so I think in this instance you’ll be fine. You will be out engaging with the market and creating relationships so that can tide you over for traffic until your site gets some authority to pull the rankings in the search engines.
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I love how I just need someone to give me permission to HAVE FUN and simply get clear. Thanks for that, Jackie!!!
I love the weekly challenge too… I’m IN!
~~Mary K
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I love how you say that mindmapping should not be a serious exercise. We need to be having fun with our blogs and this should be right from the start.
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Jackie,
I’m creating my mind-map and it’s getting kinda big
Is there a specific number of categories you should try to hold it to?
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It really depends on your site or your topic. With a theme that will do subcategories I try to stick to 3 or 4 main categories, then it doesn’t really matter how sub categories you have because they all show up in the drop down menu off the main ones.
You can see on this blog I have a LOT of categories in the sidebar ~ it’s really up to you. No right or wrong answer.
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Jackie, Your information is so helpful and interesting…AND you are exceptionally faithful about sending everyday.
My wordpress blog is years out of date yet I haven’t updated it because I’m afraid of ending up with a bigger problem (have heard some bad stories). Am wondering if
you have had any experience with downloading the latest version of wordpress???
Thank you:)
Norma
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Hey Norma ~ I’d go through your cpanel and do the wp update from there. Make sure you install and create a backup of your blog before you do it, that way if anything crazy happens you can put it back together. There’s a plugin you can use to create the backup. This is the one I use: http://ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/
Good luck!
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I’m totally in for the weekly challenge!! I love the idea!
I just finished reading this post (from a blog I linked to in the post earlier) and I think it might be helpful for you. http://www.noshtopia.com/2009/12/web-life-how-i-handle-my-identity-onlinepersonally-and-professionally.html
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Thank you Jackie! Looking forward to reading it. Ever feel like the lightbulb went off and something lifechanging is about to happen? Here we go
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I would think it probably would ~ you can even talk about your challenges with it. Think about it ~ do you like to read blogs where the person seems perfect or do you prefer to read blogs where the writer seems human (and makes mistakes and has challenges) I personally love to learn from experience (mine and other people’s). It seems to sink in much better than just straight information.
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AWESOME POST! I absolutely love the idea of having a weekly challenge list. This could really help me to stay on track. I’m still having difficulty seperating myself from all the information I’ve learned thus far regarding keywords, etc… but little by little I’m trying.
My passion is something I am not very good at. I have lots of knowledge about the subject itself, but when it comes to implementing the knowledge in my own life I don’t do it. Could this still be a good authority blog? Any suggestions would be apprecaited as to how to approach this!
Julie
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