This is the third in a month-long series about blogging. You can find the first two parts in the newsletter archive here:
If you've been thinking about starting a blog, one sticking point might well be deciding what to blog about.
Even if you've already got a blog up and running, you may struggle for ideas, or feel like you're
going in the wrong direction.
The best place to start is by considering the purpose of your blog – and, therefore, the intended audience.
Don't make the mistake of just picking a topic that interests you, or simply keeping an online diary about your own writing. While that's fine if you want to blog as a hobby, if you're using your blog as part of a business, you need to think strategically
about why you're blogging about particular things.
Example: Freelance Editor
Let's say you decide to start a blog to bring in freelancing clients for your editing business. You might blog about:
- Tips for editing your own work
- Advice for hiring an editor
- Help deciding what type of editing you need (e.g. developmental vs line editing)
- What NOT to do when working with an
editor
- Getting your first draft finished and ready for an editor
... and so on. All of these are things that someone looking for an editor might search for on Google, leading them to your blog.
However, you probably wouldn't blog about:
- Your frustrations about online business (not necessarily relevant to your potential clients, and quite possibly offputting to someone thinking of hiring
you!)
- Your partner / child / goldfish (irrelevant to your potential clients)
- The most hilarious mistakes you've seen when editing (could make potential clients wary of sending you their work!)
All of those topics might be perfectly appropriate for a different blog ... just not for yours.
If you're feeling stuck on what to blog about, set aside some time this week to answer these questions:
- What's
the main purpose of your blog?
- Who, therefore, do you want your audience to be?
- Which topics would be interesting to that audience?
Good luck with narrowing down your focus! Next week, we'll be taking a look at one of the trickiest – and most important – areas of blogging: how to find readers for your blog.
