Article by: Roy Werner Karlsen
Welcome to Part Two of the Become A Blogger Mini Course. In Part 1, you learned what exactly a blog is and how you can use it to your own advantage.
By now you may be thinking it's a good idea to create a blog of your own. But the big question is, what exactly should you be blogging about?
This is one of the most common questions I get from the thousands and thousands of people who are currently subscribed to our newsletter, and with today's lesson, I'd like to give you a few pointers on how to select the perfect topic for your blog.
Inside this lesson, you'll learn:
- What "the blogging flow state" is and how it can help you come up with exactly the right topic for your blog...
- How to come up with multiple different options to choose from for your blog topic...
- How to decide on the most appropriate topic that will provide you with the highest chance of success...
- What the next step is after you've decided on your topic...
I'd like to remind you that this mini series is a companion guide to The Roadmap To Become A Blogger Report, so make sure you have the report next to you as you go through today's lesson.
In particular, you'll need to have a look at milestones number 1 to 3 inside the The Roadmap Report.
Ok, let's get into the first point...
################################################## 1. What "the blogging flow state" is and how it can help you come up with exactly the right topic for your blog... ##################################################
If you've ever watched professional tennis players, I'm sure you will have noticed their amazing ability to concentrate and focus on the present moment. Or as some would call it, the "now".
When interviewed, many sports people mention that they often get into what they call "The Zone". During these times their performances just seem to flow smoothly and everything goes right for them.
It was the famous psychiatrist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who first coined the term "flow" in this context and did an amazing amount of research to figure out exactly how to get into this ever elusive state known as "flow".
His argument was that the more often you can get into a flow state, the more you will enjoy life and achieve lasting happiness as a result.
The same idea can be applied to blogging, and finding a suitable topic to blog about.
The bottom line with being in a flow state, is that it's all about the PROCESS of doing something, as opposed to the RESULT of doing something.
In other words, it's important to be enjoying activities for the sake of doing them, as opposed to slaving away at an unpleasant activity just because it has a desirable outcome.
Do you get what I'm saying here?
Because it's really important that you understand this.
Let's dig a little deeper just to make sure you understand the significance of this point...
From Yaro and my own experience, to become a successful blogger, it's absolutely essential that you:
(a) blog about a topic you love DOING...
and also...
(b) enjoy the PROCESS of blogging and creating content related to your topic of choice.
If you can "check the boxes" for both the above points, you will have come a long way towards your success as a blogger.
But I can't stress these two points enough. If either of the above two criteria are not met, you'll find it difficult to succeed or even start as a blogger.
So, before you even think about coming up with different topics for your blog, let's have a closer look at each one of the above two points...
A. Blogging about a topic you love DOING
Ok, let's look at an example to clarify the point...
Let's say you just LOVE everything about knitting. Whenever you are knitting, or reading about knitting, or learning new skills about knitting, time seems to just disappear and you get so engrossed in your activity that you don't even notice what's happening around you.
That is, whenever you get involved in the topic of knitting, you mysteriously enter into a state of flow, or you get into "the zone" of knitting... as many sports people call it.
This is a typical example where you would enjoy the PROCESS of knitting and may not even care too much about the RESULT... a bunch of woolen jerseys.
Of course, you may enjoy the result of your knitting a lot too, but let's face it, if you really hate the process of knitting, you'll give up pretty quickly, even though you know that you could be having a nice woolen jersey at the end of it.
Do you see the difference though, between enjoying the PROCESS and enjoying the RESULT?
Another good example is where a young person takes on a demanding accounting degree because they like the prospect of earning a high salary. Sooner or later, if they do not enjoy the process of accounting, they'll discover that their job becomes unbearable and soul draining, even though they may be getting a nice fat pay check week after week.
In this particular case, even though the result is desirable, the actual process of getting there may not be. (Of course, it's very possible that someone may enjoy the process of accounting, and these will be the top performers in their profession.)
So, where does this leave you for blogging?
It's key here that you select a topic that you love DOING. A topic where you enjoy the PROCESS of getting engaged in it as opposed to the RESULT. Of course, the ideal is to get enjoyment out of both the process AND the result. When you can achieve THAT, you'll be on a winning streak.
In the next section, I'll talk about a great technique for coming up with potential topics to blog about.
But first, let's assume now that you've found that wonderful topic that you love so much. You're still not fully there yet. You need to solve the other part of the puzzle as well, which is...
B. Enjoying the actual PROCESS of blogging and creating content related to your topic of choice
In his book "Flow", Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi mentions that it's possible to actually "engineer" a flow state for whatever activity you engage in. From his research, he found four guidelines you need to keep in mind to help you get into the flow state of any activity.
Here they are:
1. The skill of the activity must match the challenge of the activity. If the the challenge is too great, your skills won't be up to the level required, and then you could end up feeling all anxious.
And vice versa, if the challenge is too low, you'll get bored. Of course, this also implies that the higher your level of skill in an activity, the greater challenges you can afford to take on.
2. The activity must be goal directed. In other words, by doing the activity, it must help you move closer to a specific, pre-defined goal.
3. The activity must be rule bound. This simply means that there must be some rules or guidelines that defines "fair play" for your activity.
4. The activity must have some kind of a feedback loop to help you figure out whether you're on the right track.
So, let's apply these 4 guidelines to blogging...
First of all, the discipline of blogging requires that you learn the skill of blogging. At first you may feel overwhelmed and maybe even anxious about it, but as you practice more and more, your skill level will increase to meet the challenge, increasing your chance of getting into the flow of blogging.
In terms of a goal for blogging, a typical goal is to create a blog post. That's a fairly clear and concrete goal, and it's even possible to visualize a blog post to some extent.
In terms of rules, well, you need to stick to the rules of the language that you're using - like spelling and grammar. The better you know the "rules" of English, the better your chance of writing great content.
And finally, in terms of feedback, there are two levels. There is an immediate feedback loop as you type (you can see the text appearing on your screen), and you will also get feedback from other people as they read your post and provide you with comments.
The "take home" point here is that you need to develop the skill of blogging before you can really get into the flow of it. The same applies for getting involved in your topic of choice.
All this may seem a bit unrelated to finding your topic, but it's all very much interconnected. If you can find a topic area that you can naturally and easily get into the flow state of, and then blog about it while you're in flow state, you've got a golden combination.
Using Yaro Starak as an example - he absolutely LOVES everything to do with Internet Marketing. So, the first box is checked. He then blogs about this very same topic, and while doing so gets into "the blogging flow state". He's been blogging for so long now and he's honed in on his content creation skills so much now, so that whenever he does it, he almost always gets into a flow state.
Believe it or not, I am in a flow state right now as I'm writing this email letter. And an interesting side effect of being in a flow state, is that you're results are normally WAY better than when you are not in a flow state.
In other words, by getting into the flow state for both your topic area as well as the blogging process, you are almost guaranteed success!
But enough about flow. Let's move onto the next major point...
################################################## 2. How to come up with multiple different options to choose from for your blog topic... ##################################################
Now that you know the importance of flow and the theory behind it, I bet you're still kind of lost when it comes to narrowing down to the topic that you should be blogging about.
Inside this section, I'll reveal some easy and practical tips to help you come up with a bunch of different options to choose from.
What's great about this method, is that the topic options you'll end up with will be "optimized" to increase your chances of naturally getting into the flow state when you blog about them.
Here's what I suggest you do to help you come up with truckloads of possible options...
Brainstorm a massive list, or mindmap where you list all of the following things:
- Every topic that you know a lot of things about. This could include your hobbies, your job, your interests, your skills and your natural talents.
- Everything that you absolutely LOVE learning about. List everything that you are naturally attracted to.
- Everything that you are naturally good at. This is where you can go nuts with all your natural talents - the stuff that you find naturally easy to do.
- Everything that you naturally enjoy doing.
Some of the topics you list using the above guidelines may overlap a little, but don't let that worry you.
The point is that you come up with as many options as possible, so that you can get a nice overview of all the different topics that you could possibly blog about. And then, when you're done with that, you can narrow down to your favorites.
I strongly suggest you use a mind map for this exercise. Using a mind map will not only help your ideas flow better, but it will also help you come up with new topics WITHIN existing topics. And just having everything in a mind map format will also help you visualize all your different topics so much better.
And this leads us to the next point...
################################################## 3. How to decide on the most appropriate topic that will provide you with the highest chance of success... ##################################################
You're almost there...
Coming up with topics can be relatively easy. Especially if you follow the guidelines I provided you with earlier.
But how do you know that your topic will be popular enough to provide you with a sustainable stream of traffic day in and day out?
The short answer is that you can never know for sure how well a topic will do in the marketplace. There are just so many variables, and with technology changing so rapidly nowadays, new "topics" are created almost every day - none of which we could have dreamed about 10 or even 5 years ago!
But, there are some guidelines you could follow to help you narrow down on the topics that you listed in the previous step.
To help you with this, I suggest you read the section under Milestone #2 (Discover The Need) inside The Roadmap Report.
After reading Milestone #2 again, look at your list of possible topics, try to prioritize them in some way, and then identify your top 3 topics that you could see yourself blogging about, and that you feel there is a market for.
You are then ready for the final point...
################################################## 4. What the next step is after you've decided on your topic... ##################################################
This is where "the rubber meets the road". You are
now ready to create your blog.But, instead of creating a new blog for each of the 3 most popular topics all at the same time, just pick the one you like the most, and create a blog for that ONE topic alone.
Then focus your efforts completely on this ONE blog and do everything you can to make it a success. Run it for at least 3 to 6 months before deciding whether you want to continue with it for the long term.
To set up your blog, just head on over to www.becomeablogger.com and watch and implement the lessons from the 10 complimentary videos there. They show you step by step how to set up your blog from scratch.
In a nutshell, here are the steps for setting up your blog:
Step 1. Create a new domain name using the following service:
http://www.namecheap.com/
Step 2. Set up a new host using the following service:
http://secure.hostgator.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=babdotcom
Step 3. Install the WordPress software from www.WordPress.org (make sure you install version 2.6.3. - I show you how to do this inside the videos.)
Step 4. Install all the right plugins to optimize your blog for Search Engine Optimization (I mention a few of the most important ones inside the videos but I'll also cover this inside the next lesson).
And that's basically it!
So, once you've got your topic, go ahead and set up your blog, and then start creating content like crazy. Before you know it, you will have built up a sufficient skill level and then blogging will feel like second nature to you. You'll then find it easy as pie to get into "The Blogging Zone"!
Inside the next part of this mini course, I'll show you how to optimize your blog for both search engines, as well as your visitors - this will help you get more traffic later on...
Until then...
Roy Werner Karlsen Become A Blogger
Part 2 of 7
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