You write your blog to connect with people. To offer help, guidance, support, to entertain or so they feel less alone. Whatever your reason for creating content, you want people to connect with it in some way and hope that it impacts them as a result.
For people to connect with your content and for it to impact them, it needs to be quality content, which is relevant to your audience and to your niche.
Any content creator could come up with 50 blog post titles in no time at all, but it takes strategy and planning to choose blog post topics your audience will love.
Serving your audience well means you want to create the best possible content for them. All killer and no filler!
You might choose to plan digitally or get a big sheet of paper and some colourful pens. How you plan doesn’t matter, what matters is that you take the time to do it.
How to choose blog post topics your audience will love
Brainstorm a list of categories
Let’s start this process by writing down the main 3-5 topics you write about on your blog.
Say you’re a food blogger. You might have Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, Snacks and special occasion food as your main categories. If you’re a food blogger who has niched down to create content around Baking, your topics could be Desserts, Cakes, Bread, Savoury, and special occasion cakes. Or maybe you just blog about cakes, in which case your categories could be Fruit, Chocolate, Party, Quick-cook cakes. You get the picture.
Know your target audience
Your audience will love the topics that are most helpful and the most relevant to them and which are focused on the things they need help with.
So, it becomes crucial to know as much as you can about your audience.
The more you interact with your audience, listen to their problems and connect with them, the more chance you have of creating content that they will love.
The key to knowing them is to be very specific about who they are. The clearer you can be on your ideal audience, the easier it will be to create content that is just for them. Survey them, chat with them online, skype them; do all you can to learn about their wants, needs, issues, and desires.
When you have this knowledge, it becomes easy to choose blog post topics your audience will love.
Break down each category
Start with the main category (i.e. Breakfasts) in the middle are write ‘What, Why, When, Where, How’ round the outside.
Fill in each section with content ideas
Then topic by topic fill in the following:
WHAT topics: What techniques or concepts do you need to introduce to your reader? E.g. What a Virtual Assistant can do for you, 9 Inspiring Podcasts for entrepreneurs
WHY topics: How can you answer the objections your reader might have? E.g. 7 reasons hiring a Virtual Assistant is the best decision you could make.
WHEN topics: When topics speak to the timing of the situation. E.g. When is the right time to hire a Virtual Assistant.
WHERE topics: These topics relate to physical and digital locations around your topic. E.g. Which scheduling tool is the best fit for you.
HOW topics: ‘How’ topics cover tutorials, how-tos, step by step processes. E.g. How to hire the right Virtual Assistant for your business.
A great resource that can help with this brainstorming and which breaks down questions/topics as above is Answer The Public. So check it out if you need more inspiration.
OTHER IDEAS: You might also think of additional posts, which don’t fall into the above lists and that’s fine! People love interviews, behind the scenes, case studies, etc.
Create your post ideas list
When you’ve brainstormed all you can on the How, Why, When, What and How of each topic, you can create a list of the posts that you know your audience will love. Your final list will be posts that you have a lot to say on the topic. Those which you’re excited to get stuck into writing and those which you know your audience will want to read.
I hope this post helps you choose blog post topics your audience will love and I’d love to hear how you plan your content?
