The art of choosing a great Blog topic

As my mother says, if a job is worth doing, then it’s worth doing properly. Blogging for your business is no different and in order to do it ‘properly’, then it’s imperative that you master the art of choosing great topics to write them on.

So listen up Sensei, hopefully at the end of this you’ll have mastered it yourself.

The first and arguably most important thing about selecting a blog topic is knowing your audience. The importance of this can not be understated but it’s not something that you’ll be able to achieve immediately, so be patient and stick with it.

The first thing you’ve got to do, is define your audience. Getting to know your audience, without knowing who you’re trying to get to know, would be as useful as a waterproof teabag.

Getting to know your readership is a gradual process, in which you’ll learn what kind of topics, and writing style, they positively respond to. And let’s face it, along the way you’re likely to get it wrong a few times also, so unfortunately you’ll probably get to know what they don’t like as well as what they do.

You want to pick topics that are familiar (and relevant, but more on that a bit later…) with your audience. Occasionally, you may also want to select topics that aren’t too familiar; After all, people like to shake things up every now and then to learn something new. As you get to know your audience better, you’ll know better how to tow this line.

To develop this vital relationship consider using a “comments” or “feedback” section at the bottom of your posts. This way you can see what people are thinking about your article posts. It will also give people opportunity to discuss the post, encouraging engagement and it may even give you some future ideas for what to write your next blog on. Additionally, you may want to encourage your readers to reach out to you to discuss your blog posts, via email or social media platforms like Twitter.

Investing time into your readers has the potential to transform them into loyal customers for your business, and that’s going to do nothing but good for your conversion rates.

Another extremely important thing to consider when choosing a blog topic is that of Relevancy. This is a 5-fold concept of making sure that your blog articles are, you guessed it, relevant.

Audience

Consider asking yourself questions like; What are my audience interests? What might they want to know? What areas of my business/industry might my customers/readers find complex? What’s something interesting they probably don’t know?

Industry Specific

If you’re a business in the Motor Car industry, then choosing a topic on Prince William’s latest hair-do is probably not the best of ideas. I know this sounds obvious, and frankly it should, because it is.

Present Day

Adapt and select your article topics to be relevant to the present day. For instance, how your business or industry is reacting to the current global supply chain crisis? Or the recent gas price increases across Canada?

Objective

Make sure you choose a topic relevant to what you want the post to achieve. For instance, if you want to highlight the release of your latest product then make sure you choose a topic that allows you to do so.

Problem Solving

If you can find articles that solve the problems of your readers, then you’ll have absolutely hit the nail on the head with regards to relevancy.

My final tip for you, is simple: do your research.

By researching blog topics similar to the one you want to write, you’ll be able to see first hand what is relevant, what people are reading and what people want to read. If you think it’s good, it’s likely that others do too. Have a Google and a read around yourself, it will help to get the cogs turning.

BuzzSumo is an absolutely marvelous for determining the top trending topics within your industry, and with stats and data to back it up. For an added bonus, it tells you who writes them which is great because now you can copy them. Don’t take this literally of course. Mindlessly copying someone is of course a terrible idea, but there’s no harm in taking inspiration from someone who knows what they’re doing.

There you have it Sensei, now you’re the master.