If you’ve made the decision to blog, there’s a chance you already know what your blog is about. If so, that’s fantastic. If not, there’s no reason to panic. In this post, I go over some tips to choosing a topic and how you can get away with a general blog.
Using kitty intuition to choose a blog topic
If You Want a Specific Topic
If you want your blog to have a focus, blog about something you’re interested in. You don’t have to have a lot of knowledge of the subject (although it helps) but you do have to be interested enough that you’re willing to do the necessary research to provide material for continued posts. It’s also acceptable to blog about something as you learn it, such as a blog about learning to cook. If you’re interested in the subject, your readers are more likely to be interested, too. But if you lose interest, readers will notice or you’ll just give up. So choose something that you believe you can write about consistently for the long-term.
If you have a specific focus you can still veer off topic from time to time, but you must be clear with readers about why you’ve done so, and I wouldn’t make a habit of doing it frequently. Alternatively, if you have an idea for a post that doesn’t fit with your blog, see if you can write a guest post for someone else’s blog.
Recently, I wrote a post about suicide. But I made it clear that I wrote the post because I read something that deeply touched me and I thought there should be more discussion about suicide.
You Started Out General, But…
Some people start their blog out thinking it’s general. But a quick read actually shows a theme. For example, a person could start writing about cameras and photography, then write about computers and then switch gears and write about the new e-readers. Guess what? It’s actually a blog about technology. Or a person could take all his topics from newspaper headlines. The blog might seem general, but really it’s a commentary on daily news.
If you’ve started out with a general blog, take some time to review posts and see if you find a common theme. Finding that theme may help you determine what you’re most interested in writing about.
Blogs with a topic don’t have to be narrow. You could take an area such as technology and have your blog be about everything technology encompasses, not just cameras or computers.
Your Blog Really is General
If your blog really is general, that’s okay. You might narrow your focus in the future or you might not. But the tricky thing about having a general blog is you absolutely must have a strong voice. This means that whatever tone you choose to write your blog in must engage the audience and it must be consistent.
In a general blog, the only thing consistent is you. That means you, or your opinions, are the product. Although a strong voice is vital in blogs with a focus, in those cases the focus of the blog is just as important. The tone and the topic share the weight of bringing in readers. With no specific focus, readers can only depend on your tone to draw them in.
Take my blog: it’s about freelance writing, including the business aspect and the writing aspect. Readers come to the blog knowing they will find information about writing. It helps that I use a certain tone, but even if a reader doesn’t notice my tone, he might come back because the information is useful and he knows he’ll find tips about writing.
If your blog is general, your reader doesn’t know from one day to the next what you’ll write about. So he must come because he enjoys your style of writing. You have many options for tone: you can be humourous, self-deprecating, cynical, serious, thought-provoking, controversial, alarmist (I’m sure you get the picture). But the point is that the tone must grab the audience and it must be consistent.
When You Should Avoid A General Blog
If you want to write a general blog because you think it will appeal to everybody, I think it’s wise to reconsider. Very few blogs appeal to everybody and the most successful blogs tend to have a specific focus and audience. Furthermore, although it seems easier to write a blog with no limit on topics, that lack of focus can actually make choosing daily topics more difficult. Narrowing your focus can help you come up with more ideas.
Also, if you are self-conscious about your writing or researching abilities, a blog with a focus is probably best for you because you can research one area (much less difficult than researching a new topic every day), become familiar with the vocabulary associated with that topic and read other blogs and sites about that topic to improve your writing skills.
Tomorrow, I’ll blog about knowing your audience.
