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Content Planning

How to Decide What to Write a Blog About When You Love #AllTheThings

I get it. You are passionate about a few, or a lot of, topics and you don’t know which one to focus on for your blog.

It can be hard to narrow down to just a few topics if you’re used to writing about #AllTheThings.

How to Decide What to Write a Blog About

Or, if you haven’t started your blog yet, how on earth are you supposed to pick just a few topics?

My free blog strategy course can turn you into a quality content posting machine, buuuuuut you do need to know what you wanna write about first, right?

Have no fear. Today I’m gonna walk you through how to pick a profitable blog topic that you love writing about.

I wish I did that like five years ago. šŸ™„

Start a Blog: What to Write About?

 

How to Pick a Profitable Blog Topic

Unless you’re a one dimensional cartoon character, you probably have at least a few hobbies and interests. And if you’re like 99% of beginner bloggers out there, you want to write about them ALL.

You’ve read how important it is to choose a niche to monetize your blog, or gain real traction from blogging.

But HOW do you pick one?! GAHHHH.

It can feel impossible but I’m here to tell you it’s not. I used to be just like you!

Long story short, a great way to find your ideal topic is to just start a blog, and start writing. Just DO IT ALREADY. When I started my blog, I wrote about marketing from an agency perspective (since that’s my background) but quickly discovered I liked writing with an entrepreneurial mindset instead.

Meaning, instead of helping the big companies succeed, I want to help YOU succeed.

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How to Do SEO Keyword Research for Your Blog

I’m passionate about SEO for blogging. You could say obsessed. And for good reason: mastering SEO is the ultimate free way to market your business.

Yes, there’s paid search (AdWords), Facebook advertising, networking, lead generation and all that stuff too… but those strategies are made even better with a solid SEO foundation for your blog.

It can be a tough thing to learn if you’re just starting out. I used to think it was just for the pros, or something techy marketing wizard types did to “growth hack” or disrupt or whatever other marketing buzzword is hot right now.

Until I became a techy marketing wizard type. šŸŒŸ

Okay, before we get to my awesome lesson (including awkward video walkthrough) showing you how to do SEO keyword research for your blog, I’m gonna tell you my SEO story. Buckle up.

how to do blog seo keyword research

About five years ago, I got a job in an ad agency. It was all very exciting for 25 year old me. They had leather couches, rum hidden in cabinets and worked with huge national brands that I was a fan of. What’s not to love, right?

Well, the truth about the downside of agency life would come crushing down on me years later, but at that moment, things were great. I was the fresh meat, the eager young intern-type ready to learn about the industry and take it by the horns.

I amĀ marketer, hear me roar! Or something.

Why Bloggers Need SEO

I got the job because I wrote well (and hopefully still do in the present tense). But, I had no idea about SEO. I’d heard of it, but again, filed it away in my brainĀ into a folder called Wizard Land: Do Not Attempt.

I had to learn SEO for my new job, and I was nervous. My boss at the time took me under his wing and promised me it was really easy, I’d learn it in no time. The first week of my new job, I eagerly read everything I could find on the internet about how to do SEO keyword research, write for SEO, get higher rankings, get Google to like me, etc.

The articles I found were good, but I was left with a feeling of, “So now what? What do I do with all this information?”

Well, my boss showed me in like an hour how powerful SEO can be. How it can help businesses, how to write for it without sounding like a total tool, and why keywords are only one small part of SEO.

“Whoa, what? There’s more to SEO than keywords?!” you might be asking.

YEAH. There is. It’s a big topic with lots of shady shit in it and some really stellar strategies too.

I wanted to cover just keyword research today because it’s the easiest place to start if you’re new to SEO, and it’s especially important for bloggers.

I’ll show you exactly how to do SEO keyword research below…

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Blog SEO: 10 Tricks for Optimizing Your Blog Posts

I’ve talked about how to format your blog posts to get the most readers before, but today I want to talk about one of the most mystical creatures in these lands: SEO.

A search result in the wild.

You probably know how important SEO is by now, but if not… well, it’s really important.

As a freelance writer and marketing agency copywriter, I spend a lot of time optimizing content for search engines, and writing about SEO for clients. There are some obvious tricks that everyone knows, like picking a keyword and mentioning it throughout your post. There are also some lesser known blog post SEO tricks out there to increase your rankings.

I’m going to share those secret tips with you today.

Blog SEO: 10 Tricks to Grow Your Blog

A critical thing to keep in mind about SEO is WHERE it fits into your writing process.

Any guesses as to where it should fit in? At the end maybe, when you’re editing your post before publishing it and want to sprinkle in some keyword magic dust?

NO!

SEO should be thought of from the very beginning of a blog post’s life. When it’s still nothing but a wee little idea tadpole floating around your brain.

Thinking about SEO from the beginning means that ALL your future actions for that post will be optimized for the Google overlords, increasing your chances of beating the algorithm and ranking high. F yeah!

So, with that in mind, let’s get into my top 10 blog SEO tips!

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How to Grow Your Blog Audience (The Easy Way)

What if I told you that the single biggest factor impacting the number of blog readers you have has nothing to do with your content?

Yeah, really.

You could write the absolute BEST post ever, full of witty comments, helpful stats, quality content with a unique voiceā€¦ all that jazz. But no one could read it.

What gives?!

It all comes down to formatting.

How to Grow Your Blog Audience The Easy Way

Formatting your blog post to be easily readable is SUPER important. I cannot stress this enough.

The key to getting more people to read your blog is to make your content easy to read (no Shakespearean language like ā€˜furthermoreā€™ and ā€˜perchanceā€™). And the best way to do that? Make it skimmable.

Skimmable is the new black when it comes to content.

In fact, visitors only read about 20% of the text on a webpage. 20%! So you better make your point obvious, and hook ā€˜em early, yo.

How toĀ Grow Your Blog With Skimmable Content

Here are some surefire strategies to make your blog posts easy to read.

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How to Create a Rockin’ Blog Content Strategy (Free Course!)

Why is Content Strategy Important for Bloggers?

There are a million blogs out there. Itā€™s hard to capture attention from your target audience when thereā€™s probably thousands of other blogs in your niche, offering similar content in a similar format.

So what makes you different? Why should people take time out of their day to read YOU, instead of some other blog?

It comes down to having a good blog content strategy. If you know WHAT your audience wants, WHEN they want it, and HOW to deliver it ā€” youā€™ll be successful. Sounds simple, but of course itā€™s not and it does take practice to make perfect.

Blog Content Strategy Free Email Course for Bloggers

Good blog content strategy means thinking less about you, and more about who you want to read your blog. When you focus on what your readers want, they will be attracted to your content.

More importantly, the right kind of readers will be attracted to your content. I donā€™t mean that in a snobby way – hell, Iā€™m thankful that anyone even reads my blog (Hi Mom!). By ā€œthe right readersā€, I mean that the people you want to drive into your sales funnel will be attracted to your content.

Oh donā€™t have a sales funnel yet? Donā€™t have any products to sell yet? Thatā€™s okay! You still need a content strategy, though.

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Make Money Blogging: How & Why to Choose a Niche

If you want to make money blogging, it’s really important to choose a niche for your blog. When I say choose a niche, I mean choose a very specific topic (or small group of related topics) to write about, and stick to writing about just those things. You’ve probably heard this mentioned a few places before, but it really is so important. FO REALZ.

Make Money Blogging: How and Why to Choose a Niche

The main reason you want to pick a niche for your blog is to attract the right audience, and to make them stick around for the long haul (i.e. hopefully convert them into subscribers and customers later on, if you plan to sell products).

The “right audience” means the specific target market you want to attract.

Who do you help with your blog? For me, I help new to intermediate level bloggers grow their blog and business, and provide marketing tips for solopreneurs, or aspiring solopreneurs. So that’s who I want to attract. In order to do that, I write posts specifically about topics those people want to know (like how to make money blogging!).

That means that when one of those magical unicorns comes along that I want to keep, they see my content is written for their benefit, read lots of it, (hopefully) like it, and decide to stick around and subscribe to my blog. Great!

Without a clearly defined niche, it’s super super hard to build any sort of engaged audience at all. Unless you’re like a Kardashian or something, aka the popular bitch.

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Blog Post Planner: A Free Template to Channel Your Ideas into Awesome Blog Posts

If you’re like me, you sometimes struggle to come up with new ideas to write about. Or, even if you happen to have a decent amount of new ideas, you struggle with getting them down on paper (err… screen) and just writing it all down into some sort of format that makes sense. Fear not, fellow blogger, I got ya covered today.

Free Blog Post Planner Template: Channel Your Ideas into Blog Posts Quickly!

 

I have like 17,000,000 drafts started in WordPress right now, with a title and maybe a one sentence idea of what I wanted to write about so that I’ll remember later when it comes time to actually write a post. I thought that was a good strategy for awhile. And for awhile, it worked.

But I soon realized that my system wasn’t enough to keep me constantly inspired and writing quality shiz for this blog thingy all the time. I felt very accomplished jotting down my headline ideas and rough article ideas, but when the time came to actually write, I was often lost and felt rather meh about it. I spent a lot of time procrastinating (sometimes that can be goodĀ because my house is pretty clean now).

There are lots of great blog post planner templates out there to download, so I got some. But I found that a lot of them were kinda what I was already doing – jotting down the gist of your idea, or the headline, and planning those out for the month. But I wasn’t able to find anything that captured all the pieces to think about for each post in a way that was quick and easy to write down, and that still motivated me to actually write the damn post sometime this century.

So I made this template today. Wheeee.

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