Choosing Your Blog Topic

How did you choose your blog topic? What were the factors you considered? Did you give time to think about it or you just started blogging with no specific topic in mind?

I think a lot of bloggers don’t see the importance of a blog topic that they end up blogging without giving it a careful thought. The problem starts as soon as they realize that they’re no longer interested to continue with their topic or when they find out that they don’t have sufficient knowledge of their chosen blog topic. Not unless you’ve chosen to blog about anything, changing your blog topic will only alienate your readers and subscribers.

A friend of mine who want to start blogging asked my advice regarding choosing a blog topic and here are the pointers I told her.

Broad Topic Vs. Narrow Topic

Topics you can blog about may range from broad to narrow. A broad topic allows bloggers with a wider option of subject matters to blog about (i.e. Blogging, Online Marketing, Online Businesses) while a narrow topic limits bloggers with topics to cover (i.e. CSS Coding, Entrecard, Mozilla Firefox). Moreover, a general topic requires a general knowledge of everything, while a narrow topic requires a more specialized knowledge of your chosen topic.

Some established bloggers will tell you that a broad topic leads to a more profitable blog. In reality however, a narrower topic gets more advertisers and review opportunities. This for the simple reason that a narrower topic allows a blogger to establish authority and crediblity on his topic while a broader topic makes estabilishing authority and credibility much more difficult. Authority and credibility are regarded valuable by most advertisers and play crucial roles in their decisions.

Factors To Consider When Choosing A Blog Topic

To help you decide in choosing a blog topic, consider the following factors.

Interest In The Topic

Interest in your blog topic is the most important consideration you should take into account. Many bloggers failed because along the way, they lost the passion and motivation to continue blogging. If you love your blog topic, it will be easier for you to draw inspiration and keep yourself motivated to continue blogging. Naturally, if you forced yourself into a topic far from your interests, sooner or later you’ll lose your motivation and stop blogging. Also, remember that you will have to add more substance to your posts by doing some research and gathering useful information for your readers. This process is going to be difficult if you have less or no interest in your blog topic.

Knowledge Of The Topic

People read blogs for various reasons but mostly to get information. This is where a thorough knowledge of your blog topic helps. Instead of trying to blog about a topic you don’t know, why don’t you blog about something of your expertise. Doing this will enable you to contribute something of value to your blog readers or something that is probably unique from all other published articles with the same topic.

Profitablity Of The Topic

Aside from interest and knowledge, you need to choose a topic that brings in more revenue (assuming you want to make money from your blog). You can blog about Kiribati Island but there are only a few people who are interested about it, hence, fewer opportunities from advertisers. On the other hand, you can choose to blog about technology and receive a much larger traffic because there are more people interested about it, and at the same time, receive more opportunities from advertisers.

Popularity And Competition

While choosing a popular topic could lead to a more profitable blogging, you also need to look at the competition involved. A topic like “make money online” is widely popular but the competition among bloggers is fierce. In fact, there are so many blogs about making money online that the barrier of entry is almost impossible to overcome. You need to be strategic and strike a balance between popularity and competition to ensure your blog’s sustainability.

What else do you think should be included in the list? It would be nice to hear what you have to say.

Thank you for your time.

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