Earlier this week I wrote about the importance of choosing a good motif for your blog. Today, I would like to follow up by discussing a few pointers on selecting that motif for your blog. It is important to have a good motif for your blog because it goes hand in hand with the branding of your online publication. Such an integrated aspect of your blog has an impact on your audience’s ability to recognize your content and more readily become familiarized with it. Your blog motif also sets the ton for the future potential of your blog, from topics covered by yourself and other contributors to the companies that will be able to advertise on your site.
I have found that many people seeking advice prior to launching their own blog have a hard time selecting a good motif because they are unfamiliar with the blogging process overall. Understanding the way in which blogging works is a helpful guide, even in selecting a blog motif, as it helps you make your decisions regarding a blog you are about to launch. See here for my initial post on why a good blog motif is important, and read BloggingTips regularly to gain additional perspective on how the blogging process works.
When choosing a blog motif, a good exercise to do is to sit back and consider the things that you are passionate about. If you are thinking of starting a blog, you most likely have a topic in mind. There is already something you want to write about–already a topic you feel is important enough to share your relevant thoughts with the world. Stick with this initial thought process and begin tweaking from there.
Cash In on Missed Opportunities
I recommend tweaking your ideas around your initial topic of choice because your topic has most likely been covered by another successful blogger already. I am not suggesting that you avoid a topic for this reason–just about anything you think of as a blogging topic has been covered already by another blogger. Yet checking out their blog may give you a few points of inspiration for the manifestation of your own blog. See what the other blogger has done successfully, and where they can improve regarding the implementation of their blog motif.
One common opportunity for this is to see what areas of that blog motif other bloggers have missed. Let’s say your blog is all about cereal. Another blog with this motif may cover the basics of the best and worst of our favorite breakfast food. Perhaps your blog could cover cereal with a multimedia twist, adding a tab for videos of cereal-eating contests or unboxing a new cereal box prize every week.
Go Outlet Shopping
Shop around for other sites that can help you promote your blog. This is part of the exercise of letting the blogging process guide your initial topic-tweaking. Once you launch your blog, where will you promote it? Which sites out there are akin to your topic of choice and can help to support your blogging efforts?
Seek out forums where individuals are already discussing topics related to your motif. Groups on social networking sites offer similar media outlets for promoting your blog. Not only will this help validate or further prompt you to tweak your motif, but it will also give you a glimpse at the areas of interest within your motif that can be addressed on your blog. What concerns are people discussing, and would you be willing to cover these concerns on your blog? If so, you know that you already have interesting content that your target audience will be willing to read and share on these other media outlet sites.
Going through this process can help you think about the larger implications of the topic you initially considered blogging about, and will help you become more creative about its promotion once you have launched your online publication. Consider this an opportunity to hit the ground running.
Back to Square One
If you simply want to blog and you have yet to think of an initial topic, an exercise I have found helpful is to spend a few days nothing your thought process. What to you find yourself thinking about for a large portion of the day? What topics do you discuss with your coworkers, family and friends? What kind of observations do you make to yourself or to the person sitting in the car with you?
A great way to do this exercise is to simply tweet. Begin tweeting whenever you think of something interesting that would be worthy to share with the world. If you already tweet regularly, go through your profile and see exactly what you spend all day talking about. You may be surprised what the majority of your thoughts stream about. Perhaps you thought you may want to blog about cereal, but it turns out that you talk about shoes far more often. Do some research in the type of shoes you tweet about the most and make yourself a niche expert for this motif. Now, begin your blog.
Lastly, don’t be afraid to screw up your blog motifs. There is always room for evolving your blog, including its motif. In fact, a successful blog needs to evolve in order to remain fresh and appealing to a new potential audience base. Play around with some different motifs on Twitter or Facebook notes, as this can give you an idea of the blogging process before you purchase a domain name. And have fun!
Cool thought. I hadn't considered using Twitter in quite this way before. I especially like how often you used the word "motif." I may just name my next dog that!
Same good idea I too have never thought of doing that with Twitter.
Simply rocks. I have found some people suggesting using twitter and real time search engines to get the blog topics to write about.
Great idea about using twitter in blog writing. I had never used it before in my blogs as I am a new writer.