Millennial Entrepreneur

There’s a million and one topics you can write about on your blog. When you’re just starting out, how do you choose?

Some people just write about whatever happens to be on their minds. That’s totally okay if you simply want to express yourself, but many of you have other goals, like making money, growing a readership, or selling services.

If so, I definitely recommend clearly defining your blog niche and creating an appropriate content strategy to fill it. The easiest way to choose your niche is to start backwards - that is, with the end in mind. Here’s how it’s done:

1. Define your goal. In one sentence, why are you blogging? What do you hope to get out of it? For example:

• Make money semi-passively through advertising and affiliate marketing
• Establish yourself as an expert in the field to obtain consulting engagements
• Develop a subscription base to sell products
• Connect with a community to make friends and partners

Your goal can be a combination of any of these things, but it should be encapsulated in one sentence. One more thing: your goal can change, and probably will. That’s fine, and you’ll adjust your content strategy accordingly.

2. Brainstorm subject areas. There are two ways to do so:

• Current expertise. If you don’t think you’re an expert in anything, think again. Have you ever bought a car? You know a lot more about car buying and financing than most. If you’re young, you’re automatically an expert on what young people want. Think about what you do on a regular basis. Think about problems you’ve overcome in the past. How can your experiences help others?
• Interests. If you think dogs are awesome, but don’t know anything about them, read a book about dogs. You’ll probably become more knowledgeable than 90% of people who also think dogs are awesome.

What I’m getting at is that you either know more than you think, or you can learn enough on your own to write about a particular topic. Expertise is only relative to your audience, which is why you must…

3. Define your audience. If you don’t know who you’re writing for, it becomes difficult to stay consistent with your message and brand, which makes it harder to grow. Let’s look at a few good examples of blogs with defined audiences:

• Personal finance [for “the rest of us”].
• Copywriting [for bloggers who are also internet marketers].
• Technology news [for gadget lovers]
• Lolcats [for… people who might think that lolcats are funny. For the record, I so do.]

4. Define your niche. Choose your topic, decide who you’re writing for, and ask yourself if that niche would help you accomplish your goal. If so, you’re already done!

… with the easy part.

5. Research, research, research! Until now, all this has been speculation. How do you know there are [your target audience] looking for [your subject]?

There’s no one correct way to perform market research, and indeed it’s a subject worthy of another post, but to sum up: Talk to people. Snoop around forums and try to identify needs. Do some intensive keyword research. Believe me, it sucks to spend time on something only to find out too late that nobody cares about it.

If the demand isn’t significant enough to meet your needs, start from scratch and try again. By going through this process, you’ll likely find at least a few topics you can start blogging about.

Identifying the right niche is critical to blogging success. With the right niche, you’ll have a much easier time identifying what fits your blog and what doesn’t, and writing becomes that much easier. The next step is to develop an actual blog content strategy for your niche - that’s coming soon.