If you asked just about any blogger, “How do I pick my topic”, they’ll likely say, “Write about what you’re good at.” I’ve given that advice myself, however, I’m changing my position.
The thought is writing about what you already know is easier than writing about a topic that you don’t know. This is what most bloggers do, however, it’s also the reason most blogs aren’t that good.
Great bloggers are often information hoarders, looking to learn and gather even more. We would rather be learning then spending time rehashing what we know. That makes writing what we know, boring and often causes our content to read poorly.
I’ve got another suggestion, that is, write about what we’re learning as we’re learning. If we write while we’re learning the process, we’re sharing valuable information with our readers. That’s significant, because we’re teaching what they want to know.
Besides writing about what we are learning, we need to focus on niche topics with significant traffic. I have two reasons for doing this. The first is to build a relationship with others interested in same topics. The second reason is to have reasonable opportunity to generate revenue from the blog.
Some bloggers don’t need to agree with their readers, and may even agitate them intentionally to engage them. That’s not really my style, but some do it really well, others alienate the audience.
Monetizing your blog is another reason to pick a topic with a significant traffic opportunity. If you focus on one blog, you’ll need more traffic, while other bloggers focus on doing multiple blogs. Either way, traffic potential is important.
Many tools exist to discover topics with traffic. Start out with Google Adwords and search exact match keywords. Search words ideally in a phrase of two or more words and watch for other interpretations, which could inflate numbers. We’ll go into this more in the future.