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How To Start A Blog, Part 2: Brainstorming

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How To Start A Blog, Part 2: Brainstorming

If you don’t already know what you want to blog about, figuring it out can seem a little bit challenging. There are so many possibilities, and they can be hard to narrow down.

Start the process by considering the topics you might enjoy blogging about. You can blog about pretty much anything. Here are some popular subjects:

  • A business you’re already running
  • A hobby
  • Family life
  • Career
  • Cooking
  • Pets
  • Gardening
  • Personal finance
  • Fitness
  • Education (very popular for homeschoolers)
  • Faith
  • Advice
  • Just about any other subject you enjoy

You don’t need any special qualifications to blog, although you should know enough about your subject to gain people’s trust. Blogs about “watch me learn to do this thing” rarely stay interesting for long. It’s better to go for a subject you know well. That goes double, or even triple if you’re giving advice.

Once you know what you want to blog about, it’s time to do some initial brainstorming. You need to figure out categories for your posts and get several post ideas to start off with. A mind mapping app can be very helpful for this, and there are several free or paid versions available. SimpleMind is a popular choice. The basic version is free, and the paid version is quite reasonable.

You may want to compose a couple blog posts even before you have your blog set up. Just use your favorite word processor. You can copy and paste them into your blog when you’re ready to go. This will give you some practice writing before  you’re paying for hosting.

Don’t stress too much about length. There are many opinions on how long a blog post should be. My opinion is that a blog post should be long enough to give the information you intend to share, but not so long that it bores people. How long that is depends on what you need to say. There are some statistics that say search engines like longer content, but if your readers hate it, there’s no point.

Always be ready to take notes on blog post ideas. Back when I started, I kept a notebook in my purse so I could write down ideas any time. These days I use my iPhone if I’m out and about, or my laptop if I’m home and it’s more convenient. You can keep using your brainstorming app or switch over to the notes function on your phone or use another program. I like using Google Drive, so that my ideas are accessible wherever.

This is also a good point to start brainstorming domain names. Don’t be surprised if your first choice is taken – that happens to a lot of people. I’ll include how to get your domain name in the next post. You usually get it from your hosting. If you want to get that right now, you can sign up with HostGator.

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1 Response

  1. Hai Tran says:
    August 15, 2017 at 12:35 am

    As I said, I’ll follow this series. I found this really informative to read. And as you mentioned, it’s not important to make a post long if your readers are not happy. Actually, I really love reading short, useful tips like this.

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