No matter if you're making a blog for personal purposes, as a hobby or for a business, the first and most important step to making your blog worthwhile is determining what the blog should be about. All blogs need a main focus to hook in readers and to keep them coming back for more, but figuring out a blog topic can be very difficult. Many people don't even know where to start. Luckily, there are several blog topic selection methods to make the process easier and more effective.

Don't choose topics just because they're popular
Some people are inspired to make blogs based on popular topics or topics that seem to generate a lot of money. While it's perfectly fine to emulate success, you won't really be putting your heart into the blog. Readers can usually tell when a writer is being fake. Writing simply for popularity or money is a clear indicator of insincerity. In addition, you should keep in mind that just because someone else is popular or making a lot of money on a certain topic doesn't automatically mean that you will. Those people may have skills, knowledge and passion for the topic that you don't have, which allows them to achieve that success.

Try to teach
While you may not share the skills and knowledge of some popular bloggers, you may still have specialties in certain areas that are incredibly interesting. If you do, would you like to share this knowledge with others? Create a blog that teaches people about the subject. Encourage feedback and questions from the readers to truly help them learn, and try to make learning about it fun. You may even learn some things from readers and resources that you never thought of before.

Work within your passion
Just like readers can tell when a blogger is being insincere and fake, they can also tell when a blogger is truly being sincere and passionate. When you really enjoy a topic, it reflects in your writing. You have fun with it, you feel a desire to build on your skills and knowledge with it, and you have a drive to build a community around it. No matter if your blog becomes popular or not, at least you'll be having fun with writing for it.

Find a niche or specialty
While you may be passionate about a topic, there may be many other blogs discussing the same thing. In order to give more focus to your blog and attract more readers, try to find a specific niche or specialty that you can focus on that other blogs usually aren't talking about. For example, if you were making a gaming blog, you might want to specifically focus on foreign games or rare peripherals.

Know your target audience
If you know who it is you want to reach out to, get into their mindset. Know what they want and what you can offer. Do they want to see wildly different ideas, or do they typically want to stay with what is familiar to them? Approach every idea with their view. If you were the reader, would you be interested in the topic?

Don't worry about wanting to build your audience outside of your initial target audience. Going for a wider appeal is great, just try to avoid alienating your main audience.

Whether it's for business or pleasure, choosing a blog topic that grabs the attention of readers and keeps them coming back is almost as important as writing the blog posts themselves. It may be frustrating at times, but the process will be much easier and streamlined by implementing these tips.

Copyright © Gotter on NiceAnswers.com 2017

Editor's Note: Here are some additional resource links that you may find helpful in relation to blogging;
Information on choosing a blog topic
How to discover your writing niche/specialty
Tips on how to find your target audience
Blogging tools in the NiceAnswers.com web directory