Before you can dive into the blogging software and start writing to your heart’s content, you need to establish the scope of your blog. This can be the most challenging part of starting a blog if you don’t already have an idea defined. If you already blog, than you know what I’m talking about. Due the sheer volume of potential topics, it’s hard to pick just one thing to blog about.
The most important piece of advice I can offer for this step is to start a blog only on a topic you are passionate about. It helps to have some prior knowledge of your proposed topic as well. If you fail to pick a topic that interests you, you’ll find yourself bored out of your mind in a few weeks and you’ll be stuck with a topic you no longer care about. Blogging will become more like work and less like a hobby. You initial monetary investment as well as your invested time will have gone to waste. This is what we want to avoid.
Spend an hour or so developing a list of potential topics that interest you most. Start broad and narrow down your field. For example, suppose you want to start a baseball blog. As a single person, covering the entire MLB is simply impossible. You’re going to take on way too much work. You could choose to cover your favorite team or you could cover your favorite player if you wanted to get even more specific. Covering a specific player would be your niche, or distinct web page in a broad market. You are more likely to succeed and attract visitors with a specific theme.
A sure way to know if a topic is suitable for you is to ask yourself this question: will I be interested in this topic 6 months from now? If the answer is no, it’s time to start back at square one. If you found material that will hold your interest, it’s time to move on to the next step: finding other’s with shared interests.