TOPIC SELECTION FOR A BLOG [BY B.S. BISHT]

 

Topic Selection a Key to Profitable Blog-Today

Blogs may have originated as a means of online journal writing and community building, but the use of this model won't accomplish much for the online entrepreneur. Unless your cats are far cuter than every other bloggers? or unless you are an amazingly interesting person with some tremendous writing talents, your personal blog will get lost in the chorus of voices that crowd the world of blogs. In order to making blogging profitable, one must select a good topic upon which to focus. Topic selection is at the very root of blogging success. The idea is to choose a topic area in which you can be competitive.

A HIGH LEVEL OF INTEREST NICHE

 Optimally, you can find a blogging niche that is underserved yet has a high level of interest. This will allow you to attract a great deal of visitors more easily which, of course, translates into higher profit levels. There are a few factors to consider when choosing the subject area for a ?money blog.?

 First, one may want to attempt to find a subject area in which they have a personal interest, especially if they plan on writing their own content. This is because successful blogs require regular updates and it can become difficult to regularly produce quality information if one has no real interest in a topic. If someone opts to hire a writer to produce their blog posts, however, this is a far less important factor.

 Second, one should strive to find a topic area in which interest is at least relatively high. You may be able to rule the search engines on the topic of 17th century wooden paperweights,? but there are so few, if any, people with an interest in the subject.Thus, that number one ranking in Google will not produce the kind of traffic stream you will need to turn a healthy profit. It may be more difficult to enter a more competitive marketplace, but the potential rewards are far greater, too. The key to this element of topic selection, however, is not just writing a blog on a hot topic. It is finding a field from which a healthy number of visitors can be culled.

 Third, one will want to find a market that is underserved. Basically, you are looking for a strong disparity in the number of interested parties and the amount of readily available information. If you can find a topic in which many people are interested but that is not well-covered online, you will be sitting upon a potential blogging gold mine.

MONEY MAKING BLOG POTENTIAL FOR SUCCESS

 It is perfectly acceptable to build a wonderful blog and to expend the effort to compete in a more crowded area, but this does require much more work. Finding an underserved niche and filling a hole in the marketplace is a much easier way to produce blogging revenue. Choosing a topic for your moneymaking blog can be a challenging process. This first step, however, is probably one of the most important. The choice of a topic not only establishes the nature of the blog, it also (in large measure) determines its potential for success.

What Does A Blogging Consultant Look Like?

You know, normally you can find a definition of a word or phrase by typing to define: your phrase here into google and come up with a lot of results. Currently there are millions of blogs and there are hundreds of people who call themselves master of Blog or Blogging Consultants, yet when you type and define: Blogging Consultant or Blogging Consultant into google you get no definition. That is probably a good thing for most blogging consultants because without a definition, there is no standard to hold them to blogs. I'm not claiming to be the blogging guru of all time or anything of the sort. So before you become blogging consultants out there start getting defensive about this, think before you write. If you get too nasty about the post I may ask you to define blogging consultant and without google many of you couldn't do it.

EVERY BUSINESS SHOULD HAVE A BLOG

 Now that is out of the way, lets talk business. Every business should have a blog. There are so many reasons for your business to have a blog it would be hard to write them all in one blog post, so lets assume you know your company needs a blog. So do you hire a blogging consultant? What qualifications do you look for in a blogging consultant? What does a blogging consultant look like? How much should I pay a blogging consultant? Lets start with ?Should you hire a blogging consultant? The quick answer is yes, but lets go into why first. There are a lot of things that go into making a blog popular.

ABOUT BLOGGING CONSULTANT

 Technorati tags, submissions and pings to blog lists and blog search websites, learning how to get on the right blogrolls, etc. If you are new to blogging it takes awhile to catch on to most of these things and most blogging consultants say that all of the above is necessary if you are going to have a successful blog. There are more things to add to the list but this article isn't about how to run a successful blog, it's about blogging consultants. Hiring a blogging consultant can save you from making a lot of early mistakes and get your blog found a lot quicker than trying to do it on your own. Now all the blogging consultants are liking me again. I can tell. But will it last? What qualifications do you look for in a blogging consultant? Here is where things get ugly between me and the blogging consultants.

SUCCESSFUL BLOGS MAKES YOU  CONSULTANT

 Most blogging consultants are well bloggers. Many of them have what they think is a successful blog although many bloggers have different ideas for what success is. Some think it's defined as how much they made on google adsense last month. Others count success by number of visitors to their website or the number of comments that appear on their blog. Still others measure their success by what the other bloggers think about them. What do all of those bloggers who are blogging consultants have in common? They all think that having a successful blog automatically makes you a qualified blogging consultant. I told you it was going to get nasty. After this article if I measured my success by what the other bloggers think of me then I'm doomed! Fortunately I don't measure my success in terms of what the other bloggers and blogging consultants think.

BLOGGING CONSULTANT'S QUALIFICATION

 Lets get back to those qualifications for a blogging consultant. First of all a blog is a website. It is a website that is updated often in most cases, but it is still a website. Each blogpost becomes a page of that website. So with a blog you are creating more webpages to your website as often as you post to your blog. Now I have a question for you. Would you first look to hire a blogger to do search engine optimization for your website? Would you first look to hire a blogger to handle your AdWords campaign? Would you first look for a blogger to build your website for you? The answer to all of the above is probably no, unless the blogger also has experience in those fields and not just for their blog. Actual websites they have built, optimized, and marketed for themselves and for clients. A blogging consultant should not just be a blogger. They should also have all of the skills necessary to run a website. Now the blogging consultants are all mad at me again. But think about it.

HOW TO WRITE A  SUCCESSFUL BLOG

 Many bloggers know how to write. They know how to get into the right circle of blogger friends who will link to them. They know about blogging. So if all you need to know is how to write a blog, then hiring a blogger who knows how to write is the answer, but if you need someone who is going to manage your blog for you including posting to the blog, search engine optimization, link popularity, (and not just from blogrolls), and marketing, then you need to hire a webmaster who also blogs. Okay, How much should I pay a blogging consultant? How much do you have? Just kidding. A lot depends on the type of blog you want or have. A corporation blog has to pay more, not because they have more, but because there are all kinds of legal and policy matters that have to be considered with every single blog post and every single link to or from another blog or website. A small business blog doesn't have many of the same issues as the corporate blog, but still has certain standards that need to be met. 

BLOGGING CONSULTANT COST MUCH

If you have ever hired a webmaster, not a web designer, a webmaster, or a Search Engine Optimization Company, or a Search Engine Marketer, or even just a Marketing Consultant, then you have an idea of what a blogging consultant should cost. Now keep in mind, if you are hiring a blogging consultant to strictly teach you how to blog, then it's not worth as much money as when you hire a blogging consultant who is also going to perform all of the services a Webmaster and Internet Marketer would provide plus search engine optimization. Ha ha! I still didn't say how much it costs. It's coming. Read on. What does a Blogging Consultant look like? He or she looks like someone who has more than just a blog or blogs. Someone who also owns and manages several websites for themselves and for clients. As I said before a blog is still a website.

The Blog Factor: Everything you need to know to start blogging – today!

So what is this “blog factor”? Well, what a few thought was a novel idea some years ago has now morphed into something no one expected. There are currently nine million blogs out there with 40,000 new ones being added everyday. Some are informative and some are just downright a waste of your time. And while we hear a lot about blogging these days, what is blogging *really*? Blogging in its simplest term is like an online journal but much, much more powerful. Blogs (short for Web log) is a place where surfers can get up to the minute information on a topic or voyeur into someone’s life. Some blogs are nothing more than a daily glimpse into someone’s life, while others are so sophisticated, it’s hard to tell them apart from an online news service.

BLOGS ARE SCRUTINIZED BY GOOGLE SPIDERS

 Why Blogs Matter Google, the #1 search engine on the net, loves blogs. So much so that if you do it right Google will spider the heck out of your site. What does it mean to “spider”? Well spidering is when Google, or the like, searches your site's content to establish ranking, and the more content you have (i.e. fresh content) the more Google will do its magic and push your site up the search engine. Another reason blogs matter is that they are interactive and, if you blog on your book's topic, it will help to further your expert status on a particular issue. When we plan “Virtual Tours” for our authors, we include as many blogs as we can into a tour. Why? Because if you can get into a good blog that’s seeing a lot of traffic, you can really start to gain some exposure for your book. 

THE CONTENT MATTERS MUCH

What Would You Talk About? This is the question we get asked most often. “If I start a blog, what on earth would I talk about?” Well if your book is non-fiction it’s pretty easy to figure out what your topic would be, but if your book is fiction it could get a bit tricky – but not impossible. An author I work with has a series of books starring one character – a private detective. I recommended that  the “blog” this character, meaning that the character (not the author) would have the blog. It could be the character’s diary or adventures and stories – a glimpse into the life of a private detective. This would give the reader (and fans of this character) a reason to return to the blog for an update on this ongoing adventure or story. In another instance, I work with an author who wrote a fiction book about right and wrong with a new age/spirituality spin. I advised him to blog on issues related to that – right and wrong in our society and his own personal “spin” on these issues. Some of his blogs might be controversial but that’s okay, you want to create your own “voice,” your own take on a certain issue and if that opinion is controversial, all the better for exposure and for getting people to interact on your blog.

HOW TO START A BLOG

 Getting readers to respond to your posts is a great way to gain interest and momentum for your blog and (more importantly) getting people to talk about it will grow your blog like nothing else! How to Start a Blog Starting a blog is super easy. All you have to do is register at a blog site (like http://www.blogger.com) and get started. It’s that easy. The blog service will link to your site; you’ll need to ask your Webmaster to add a button to your home page so people can find your blog.

UPDATE YOUR BLOG REGULARLY

 How to Blog Effectively The best bloggers know that the more you add to your blog, the more traffic you’ll drive there. Some bloggers I know post daily, sometimes even multiple times a day while others post weekly. How much you post will probably depend on how much time you have to dedicate to this. The challenge will be that if you want to keep driving people to your blog, you’ll want fresh content. This doesn’t mean you have to create this all yourself, in fact you can invite people onto your blog and interview them, or you can just post a one paragraph “thought” on your topic. It doesn’t have to be complicated or long, it just has to be fresh. Also be innovative, as we discussed earlier, be different with your blog, have fun with it. It might seem complicated at first but once you get the hang of it, you’ll quickly become a blog expert!