One of the most daunting aspects of starting a blog is knowing what to write about. Following are some tips that can help any new blogger choose winning topics for the first blog posts.

Talk About Yourself

People enjoy connecting with other people, not business entities. Your first blog posts should tell a bit about yourself. Following are some points you'll want to cover:

  • Your name
  • General information about yourself
  • A brief history of your business
  • Why you do what you do
  • An overview of topics you intend to cover in your blog
  • How often you intend to update your blog
  • How your readers can get involved. This could involve not just a sales pitch but also an invitation for comments, ideas, suggestions and/or reviews.

It's also a good idea to put up a high quality picture of yourself; however, you will need to make sure your picture appeals to your target audience. If your blog will be formal, put up a picture of yourself wearing formal business attire. If your blog is casual, wear casual clothing or even put up a picture of you with your family.

Consider Your Target Audience

You need to carefully consider who you want to reach with your blog. Doing so will determine what type of research you do, the type of blog posts you write and how long these posts will be. If you don't already have a target audience for your business, take some time to carefully consider who you want to reach. Write this down and keep it at the forefront of your mind as you come up with blog post ideas.

Do Some Research

Find out what topics are trending in your industry. Buzzsumo has a helpful online tool for this; alternatively, you can look through industry blogs on the first page of Google search engine results.

Bear in mind your goal is not to copy what other people have written. Instead, you want to branch out and use their posts to gain ideas of what you can write. Perhaps there is a topic that is briefly touched on in a blog post that you can expand on. Alternatively, there may be an old blog post from a competitor that you could update, providing new, up to date insight into your industry. If you intend to use curated or aggregated content on your blog at some point in the future, bookmark useful posts that you feel your readers will enjoy.

Make sure your search doesn't just include written blog posts. These are by far the most common; however, written content isn't the only type of content that can provide you with good ideas. You may also want to check out the following popular content types:

  • Videos
  • Infographics
  • Podcasts
  • eBooks
  • Books
  • White papers
  • Studies

Choosing Topics for Your First Blog Posts 

Once you have finished researching, write down 50 to 100 blog post topics and ideas. Naturally, you won't use these all at once; however, they provide a good pool of suggestions to pick from. Once you've come up with all the ideas you want to cover, look over your list to see if any particular titles jump out at you. Choose titles that inspire you, as your readers will feel your inspiration and enthusiasm in your post.

Choose Social Sharing Buttons

Make it easy for your readers to share your content by placing appealing, easy to see social sharing buttons on every blog posts. There are a number of websites that offer social sharing buttons in various sizes, shapes and styles. Find the buttons that appeal to you, copy the html code and put them to work.

Pick Your Photos

Every single written blog post should have at least one high quality photo. As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth 1,000 words.” Pictures attract your audience, help them to visualize what you are writing about and are useful for breaking up large groups of text. What is more, images can be optimized for search engines, increasing your chances of getting a high ranking for your blog posts.

In some cases, you may need to take your own photos. However, those who have a limited amount of time may want to use stock photo websites. Some, such as Shutterstock and Dreamstime, require that you pay a fee in order to use a photo. Others, such as Pexels and Pixabay, feature public domain images that you can use at no cost. Flickr is home to literally tens of thousands of images that can be used under a Creative Commons license as long as you are willing to credit the photographer on your blog post.

Starting a new blog doesn't have to be as daunting as it may seem. Following the steps outlined above and you will be able to find appealing, engaging topics for your first blog posts. You can also avail yourself of professional help to create winning blog posts that will appeal to your readers and search engines alike. Brandgy has many years of experience with effective content marketing and offers a variety of content marketing packages to suit your needs and budget. Get in touch with us to day to find out how we can help you start your blog off on the right foot.