TL;DR: Provide value to people by providing them with helpful information they need, which will move them forward on their path to their goal. Ideally it is a topic with plenty of existing content and products available. Also I reveal my dirty little secret.
This is the third and final part of a three-part series or articles about choosing topics for your blog. The first (what to blog about – part 1)was about how to structure and categorize your content. The second (what to blog about – part 2) was about tools and tactics for brainstorming a list of possible topics. Now here is the third topic:
Evaluating Your Blog Topic Choices
There are some attributes that the perfect blog topics would have. In a perfect world you would want an article that people are hungry for, and which you can deliver in a way that your audience will choose yours over the competition. It would be engaging content with an irresistible headline, would solve their problem and guide them toward a purchase of one of your products. But it’s not a perfect world.
Here are some of the most important things you should check your content ideas for.
Does it Provide Value?
First and most important is, does it provide value to your audience. You can find millions of articles in many niches that have a whole lot of nothing in them. Many are written by people who are looking only to rank for keywords and drive traffic to their site once in the hopes that they click an ad on the site.
We’ve all been to pages like this where ads and pop-ups outnumber actual pieces of content. IN those instances it’s not necessarily the content topic which is the issue, but rather the execution. Your question to yourself should be, “Can I provide useful information on that topic?”
I can’t stress enough that this is THE most important thing to consider with a topic. Even if your goal is to rank high for certain keywords or phrases, the way you are going to do that is by providing content that people value enough to read and engage with. All the tricks for boosting your ratings will pale in comparison to doing that
Does it Move Your Reader Forward?
From the previous article in this series, one paradigm for looking for topics is to envision a path that your reader is on. Does the topic you’ve chosen move them along that path? Does it take them from where they are to the next step in getting where they want to be.
Let me use this article as its own example. It is literally the third step in selecting blog topics. It hopefully takes a reader from having a big list of ideas (from the previous step), to narrowing down those ideas based on more than just picking them at random. It’s just one step, but is meant to move you closer to creating content that performs well and helps the people you intend to help.
Do Other People Write about the Topic?
As litmus tests go, that’s a pretty good one. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty good.
If there are a good number of people writing about the same thing, it’s either because they all have tons of time on their hands, or because it is worth it to them.
If It’s worth it to them, then the chances are pretty good that it has the potential to be worth it to you.
And not only is it good if others are writing about it, but if you read their stuff and think, “I could do better than that”, or “That’s good, but I can frame it better for my audience.” IF that is happening, you are golden.
And speaking of gold,…
Are there products for sale directly related to the topic?
In the big picture, that’s more important for your niche, but if an individual topic has related products it may be a shorter path to some additioanl income.
It means you can make money in affiliate sales by mentioning those products in the right way (but that’s a topic for another article). It also means you can probably create a similar product and sell it with a different link right from the article (that too is a topic for another article). Yet a third option is to create a product to help the reader use one of the other products.
But all of that is just gravy as they say. The important thing is that the availability of products around the topic indicate a demand for the information.
And dare I say it? Giving away the information that others charge for a way of gaining trust and customer loyalty. It’s another example of providing value.
Do I do that on this blog? Give away information others charge for? I sure do. And don’t try to stop me.
My Dirty Little Secret
Here we are at the end of part three of three posts on selecting the right topics to blog about. And if your very observant and especially if you are reading this in the early days of this blog you may notice I don’t seem to follow my own advice.
That’s only partly true though. As I write this I do have my content pillars kind of figured out, but not totally nailed down.
But what about all that keyword stuff and the other stuff about skyscraping, going amongst the people, and defining a path for my readers. Did I do all that stuff? And did I evaluate my topics before writing them?
Mmmm. Kind of. I didn’t do it formally. At least not at this time.
And I don’t think that makes me a hypocrite. Here’s why.
I’ve kind of been living this stuff for a while. And I know a fair amount about what people are looking for and what they need even before I use the techniques I described.
This blog is aimed primarily at people like myself who feel like we are a bit on the shy side, introverted or camera shy. I know what it feels like and what questions I have (or had) and I feel I can address some of those.
But most of what I’ve written so far is stuff any online marketer will need to know. I know I need to have that information available regardless of my narrower niche. I’m not writing it to rank for keywords. I’m writing it so that when my target reader arrives here, there is some foundation of content for them to consume.
When I get the Bashful Blogger social media (socially awkward media?) empire up and running, people will want to have something to read when they get here.
And that brings me to this:
Write Now. Right Now.
You have to write about the topics. You can’t just come up with the ideas for topics.
Take action. Write some blog posts.
As you write, you’ll come up with more ideas. And you will get better at writing. At least for your sake I hope that I do.
I understand completely that the content I am writing at this moment is imperfect. It needs editing. It need visual appeal. It isn’t perfct.
But It doesn’t have to be perfect. Hopefully it comes across that I am sincerely trying to help you and in the process get better at what I do. I’m hoping you can see past the imperfections and see the intent and the value.
If you can do that, so can your readers as they read your content.