#nobody ever understands when i tell them that AD is just as meaningful and tragic as succession or like idfk breaking bad

[nadziejastar]

Pence: Do you guys think we’ll always be together like this?

Olette: I sure hope so.

Hayner: Huh? Where did that come from?

Pence: Oh, well, you know. Just thinking out loud.

Hayner: Well, I doubt we can be together forever. But isn’t that what growing up’s all about? What’s important isn’t how often we see each other, but how often we think about each other. Right?

Pence: Get that off a fortune cookie?

That’s easy. The reason I think KH3 did more damage to Axel/Lea than KH2 is that Axel’s attachment to Roxas was glorified in KH3. It was presented like we were supposed to find it endearing and perfectly healthy. But even in KH2, Axel was presented as dysfunctional and more than a little pitiable. He kidnapped Kairi and wanted to turn Sora into a Heartless again, just to see Roxas. None of this was ever meant to be seen as a healthy display of friendship. It was meant to show that Axel was a broken person, with a few screws loose. Roxas cried (through Sora) while saying goodbye to Hayner’s group. But Axel didn’t get a real goodbye scene until the Final Mix version. And even in that scene, Roxas was calm and at peace. Axel was the one who was broken up. Nomura and the writers knew that Axel’s relationship with Roxas was questionable and unhealthy. They wanted to give him interesting development regarding that.

It’s why I personally didn’t start truly loving his character until the arc that was building up to KH3 (Re:CoM, KH2FM, Days, BBS, Coded, 3D) was created. And I developed a new level of appreciation for him after reading the novels. That’s when he became fully humanized to me. And the reason is simple: his tragic backstory. The fact that a grown man was calling two kids his best friends was supposed to be seen as SAD, not something to celebrate. It was a symptom of his arrested development. After reading the novels, it was even more clear to me that Axel was intended to be seen as a maladjusted person. He lost his childhood and is stuck at 15-year-old in a lot of ways. You know how some people have daddy issues? Well, Axel had “best friend issues”.

Wendy: Listen, Peter. I’ve got something to tell you… I want to go home to London.

Peter Pan: What are you talking about? Why would you want to do that? You’d have to turn into a grown-up. Besides, goin’ on adventures is a lot more fun! If you go back to London, you’ll have to leave the nursery. You’ll grow up and we’ll never see each other again!

Wendy: I know, Peter. But… I still want to go home.

Peter Pan: I came to rescue you! And you don’t care if you ever see me again!

Wendy: No, you don’t understand!

Peter Pan: Suit yourself! And while you’re at it, rescue yourself! I’m leaving.

He was extremely damaged because of what happened to his best friend. It caused him to feel hatred and despair. He was stuck in the past, unable to move on from his childhood. Lea and Isa were just two innocent kids. Then one day they are kidnapped, experimented on, forced to join a death cult, and obey every command of the “Superior” under threat of death. Lea’s best friend was subsequently brainwashed, possessed, and branded with a giant scar of death on his face. His personality became unrecognizable. He changed from an innocent kid into a sociopathic robot incapable of feeling friendship or love. Or at least that was heavily implied to be the case before KH3 turned them into “apprentices” (what a crock).

Axel was a sorrowful person. He cared about Roxas and Xion…but he didn’t actually want to be best friends with them the way he wanted to be with Isa. Lea became best friends with Isa when he was a normal, well-adjusted, happy teenager. Axel became best friends with Roxas and Xion because he was a lonely and emotionally broken adult who couldn’t process the trauma he experienced as a kid. Even as a teen, Lea saw Ventus as a stray puppy. Isa and Lea were inseparable. They hung out all summer and did homework together. They ate ice cream and played frisbee. Normal stuff. They were happy. Axel was always fixated on the past. He doesn’t come on many missions with you in Days. But they made DAMN sure that he came with you to Neverland.

“Are you worried about her, too, Axel?”

The question slipped out before he could stop it.

Axel eyed him in mild surprise. “Of course I am.”

But his voice was still oddly low. Running into Saïx had brought out a different side of him—and that side was a little scary.

He wasn’t interested in Roxas romantically. He wasn’t even really obsessed with him. He was a lonely, miserable person, with a best friend-shaped void in his heart. And he was desperate to fill it. He really couldn’t relate to either Roxas or Xion on an adult level. He never expressed his deeper feelings to them. Axel’s relationship with Roxas was a lot more nuanced and realistic than it is made out to be. It had many shades of gray. This is the event that led to Axel calling Roxas and Xion his best friends. Saïx brought out a side of Axel that Roxas found scary.

“You wanna know?” Roxas quietly waited for the answer.

“It’s because you two are my best friends.”

Axel had said before that he didn’t have a best friend, Roxas remembered. But now it’s us…?

“Got it memorized?” A smile played at the corners of Axel’s mouth. “The three of us, we’re inseparable. You’re my best friends.”

Then he’s all smiles. Even Roxas was confused about why he was calling them his “best friends” at that moment. Roxas really didn’t understand Axel and couldn’t tell what he was thinking most of the time. He never shared anything about his past with them. I always found it fascinating that Axel murdered a bunch of people in Castle Oblivion, then came home and hung out with Roxas and Xion. They never saw that dark side of him. Ever. They never knew that Axel was best friends with Saïx as kids. Axel’s talk of being super-duper bestest friends with them was his attempt to cope with the pain of Isa getting Norted. I don’t think the fandom really appreciated this, though. Most people seem to have taken it for granted that he really became genuine best friends with Roxas and Xion, that he wanted nothing more in life than to be with them, and didn’t care about Saïx. But that wasn’t the case at all.

Roxas: I hope we always have each other.

Xion: Yeah…

Axel: What’s gotten into you?

Roxas: I just…want these days to last forever. Hanging out, the ice cream, the sunsets…

Axel: Nothing lasts forever, man. Least of all for a bunch of Nobodies. But you know, we’ll still have each other…even if things change and we can’t do this anymore.

Roxas: Yeah?

Axel: As long as we remember each other, we’ll never be apart. Got it memorized?

Roxas: Ha ha, wow, Axel. That sounded ridiculous.

Axel: What? I thought it was pretty deep.

His words to Roxas and Xion were so similar to Hayner’s because their time together was supposed to be impermanent. Things inevitably change. They don’t need to hang out with each other every day for their time to be meaningful. It’s more important that they’d always remember each other.

Axel suddenly broke his silence. “Well, even if things change, we’ll never be apart—”

“—As long as we remember one another,” Xion finished. “Right?”

Axel’s encouragement from ages ago echoed in Roxas’s head.

“Don’t worry, Axel. We’ve got it memorized.” Xion grinned at him.

“Just checking.” Looking at the sunset rather than her, Axel munched his ice cream.

When given the choice to leave with Roxas and Xion or stay, he would have stayed. That’s why he said this to them yet again. What Axel really needed was to heal from his past and be with someone who it was more appropriate for him to spend every day with. He needed to “grow up”, but Roxas and Xion first needed to help him heal and remember how to believe in order for him to do that. He also needed to get his best friend back. That was non-negotiable.

Peter Pan: Are you sure you won’t change your mind?

Wendy: Peter, I’m sorry. But I really want to go home.

Peter Pan: I was afraid of that… Everyone grows up—and grown-ups always forget. First you’ll forget what it feels like to be young, and then you’ll forget about me.

Wendy: How can you say such a thing, Peter? I’ll never, ever forget you.

Peter Pan: Sure, that’s what you think now. But when you try to remember me, the memories will be gone. You’ll forget—little by little, one memory at a time. Once you’re grown up, there won’t be a single memory left.

Sora: Don’t say that. Memories—even important ones—don’t come back to us whenever we want them to. But that doesn’t mean the memories are gone. It’s more like…like they’re sleeping. So when the right thing comes along and wakes the memory up, we can remember it. The memories engraved in our hearts never go away. I’m sure of it.

Lea had a dream of Roxas before he woke up. He was sitting on the clock tower eating ice cream, acting perfectly happy. Just like he always did in Days. “Best friends forever”. But…he’d been lying not only to Roxas, but also to himself. He wasn’t happy during those days spent on the clock tower. He doesn’t even like the taste of sea-salt ice cream anymore. His smile always belied his true feelings. It was to mask the pain that he was running away from.

Silence fell over the room. He paused in his munching to stare hard at Riku, then finally asked, “What is Sora to you?”

The question caught Riku off guard. He groped for words. On the sofa opposite him, Naminé spoke up instead. 

“Sora and Riku are best friends.”

Axel’s eyes crinkled as he remembered his own best friend—the only friend he’d ever had, in fact.

“If your best friend goes away, you’re sad, and if you get to be with them, you’re happy,” Naminé added. “Isn’t that how it is, Axel?”

“…That’s about the size of it.” Axel nodded and sat down on the remaining empty sofa, staring at the sea-salt ice cream he held.

“So you are capable of sincerity,” said Riku.

Axel only shrugged at the jab and finished his ice cream pop.

His sleeping memories of Isa awakened after he went to Castle Oblivion. He knew deep down that he was using his relationship with Roxas as a crutch to stay in Neverland and to not grow up. In KH3D, he knew that unless he dealt with Isa, he’d never move on. So, that’s why I think KH3 had a much more damaging effect on Lea’s character than KH2. By making him just as fixated on Roxas as he was in KH2, and making him totally unconcerned with Isa, you keep Lea in Neverland. He doesn’t grow up or mature. He stays an emotionally stunted man, unable to move beyond the age of 15. His arc was rendered totally pointless. It sent such a juvenile message and ruined his character for me. He was totally dumbed down as a character. I can see why you feel the way you do, especially when Axel/Roxas is the most popular Lea/Axel ship. I feel the way you do about him in KH3. I just don’t think he was supposed to turn out this way.

#kh axel #kh lea #anti kh3

[exileseverafter]

Chapter 9

Green Magic

“As this was done in my name, I ask you to accept my apology. We will explain everything; we owe you that much.”

Ezra had helped Basil and Marjorie chase out what was by his account an absolutely ludicrous number of stray cats, snooped the area for mice or another frog on Marjorie’s advice, and moved a half-broken bookcase to barricade the door just in case. Aurora, the bear, was guarding the exterior of the cabin. Now there was nothing more to do than to sit at the table only ever used for baking and hear the truth. The thick wooden table had obviously been built by the previous owner, a man considerably taller than Ezra. Marjorie and Basil needed to sit on top of cookbooks in order to reach. The tiny Flower being sat on the table with her dress puffing out around her, somehow dignified despite being covered in a dusting of flour. The moth, which Ezra now recognized as the one which had landed on him when he’d first arrived, was sitting on the kitchen wall and resting. It was a little hard for Ezra to see the princess. He could make out a humanoid shape with dark skin, black hair with purple streaks that must have been ribbons, and a purple gown with bell sleeves. Her face was too small to perceive. If he had to concentrate to notice a human’s eye color, he would need a magnifying glass to read her expressions. It meant he had to rely on her voice and broader expressions to communicate with her. And what if his voice sounded like an earthquake to her? If humans were enormous in comparison to Philomene, how must he look? Self-consciousness made him sink back into his seat. What nonsense! His was the default size, so why did it bother him now? It was Marjorie who spoke first, at the princess’s blessing. Her face was a little red and there was a hint of unsteadiness in her voice, but she otherwise hid any shame she felt at having hidden Philomene from them. “So! As I’m sure you have figured out by now, this is our true reason for hiding out here. In all fairness to me, and I think I do deserve at least some fairness, I did tell Ezra that I was here on behalf of my mistress in distress. And she is absolutely in distress.” “So it would seem, milady.” Basil was switching between studying the princess and giving confused looks to Marjorie. He seemed a little put off by the size of the furniture, insisting on standing on his chair. “But why did you tell me you had a sick grandmother?” Marjorie frowned and tapped her chin. “That was a lie, yes. My grandmother is dead. But you have to understand, we were out here in the middle of nowhere and it was quite a stressful situation. Very much a change from palace life. You’re a prince, surely you must understand that?” “Marjorie!” Philomene’s tiny voice somehow managed to fill the room anyway. She stood up with the help of her cane and managed to stare down Marjorie. “We misled that poor boy and our landlord. Even if it was fear of my own safety, that doesn’t justify it.” She turned towards Basil and Ezra, giving a bow. “As this was done in my name, I ask you to accept my apology. We will explain everything; we owe you that much.” Marjorie looked for a moment as if she’d been slapped. “Princess, you needn’t apologize for me. I-I mean…” She looked so much like she wanted to sink into the wood of the chair that Ezra felt it difficult to maintain his irritation with her. “It’s alright,” he mumbled. “Really. Mostly I’m just hurt that you thought I’d ever endanger Princess Philomene.” He glanced away, hiding a scowl. “I know I’m bigger than you all and must be a frightening sight sometimes, but I’d rather not be treated like a criminal down her before I’ve even had a chance to do anything.” Not that he’d done anything up there, he added mentally. At least he could understand why the humans might regard him with suspicion, though it was impossible to tell what the little Flower Folk thought of him. “Anyway.” He clasped his hands under his chin. “You can stay here as long as you like, if it’s still safe for you. I’m not sure why you call me ‘Landlord’ since neither of you pay any rent, but Marjorie did tell me about the Market. I wouldn’t be able to make a living without it. And a baker who can’t bake is like a…a…it’s a…I’m not a poet and I’m no good at metaphor. You know what I mean.” He heard a tiny giggle from Philomene. “That’s simile, Mr. Kettle. But thank you! It will be a great asset to have you on our side. Nobody threatens a giant…” At this Ezra felt himself blush and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You’d be surprised…” But even if it was only due to his relative size, it did feel nice to be wanted for once. Wasn’t he supposed to be angry at Marjorie for lying? He really was a pushover. It was Philomene who turned to Marjorie. “I understand,” the princess said. “You just wanted to do what you thought was best to protect me. I respect your loyalty, and I’m sorry I yelled at you. But we should try being a bit more straightforward from this point on. It’s okay to trust some people.” “I know, I know…” Marjorie apparently turned into a scolded puppy around the princess, her usual slick confidence having melted away. “I really am sorry about that, you two. It’s just that-” “Princess!” Basil interrupted Marjorie, leaning forward on the table and staring down at the poor Flower girl. “I don’t know what Thumbelina Kingdom is or what dangers you’re hiding from, but as a prince I vow on my honor and this, um, table to do everything in my power to protect you and defeat whoever threatens you! You have my sword and my courage and my strength, and I won’t rest until justice is done!” Philomene was crouching and covering her ears, and her tone sounded a little pained when she looked up at Basil. “Thank you, Prince Basil. I appreciate all of those things. But perhaps you’d like to hear what that threat is before you make that promise?” “I hold the promise all the same! Be it dragon or wizard or wicked giiiaaaogre, I vow to-ow! Marjorie!” Basil shot a little glare at Marjorie as she pulled him back onto his chair by his hood. Ezra, meanwhile, tried his best to ignore the little voice wishing that Basil would make that sort of vow to him. Ezra was not in distress at the moment, after all, and he knew he was being petty at the wrong time. “Her highness is probably a little exhausted from her ordeal, and would probably appreciate if you could abstain from CROWDING HER or LOUD NOISES.” Marjorie gave meaningful looks to Basil and Ezra. Basil retreated into his chair as he seemed to catch on. “I wasn’t being loud. Was I? Am I loud?” Ezra found listening to his own voice was an impractical way to tell. “No, dear, but just consider it a preemptive suggestion. As I was going say, I’ll let Philomene rest while I explain our situation,” Marjorie said. Ezra raised an eyebrow. “No lying this time? No fake grandmothers, no conveniently dropped information, no failing to mention other possibly high profile individuals living in this shack they’ve decided is my house?” “Promise! I owe you that much.” Marjorie held up her hands. “See? No fingers crossed. Nothing but a firsthand account of the fall of the Kingdom of Thumbelina, where humans and Flower Folk lived side by side in harmony. A tragic tale of Ezra where are you going?” Ezra was up on his feet, heading to the stove. “Tensions are obviously high, Her Highness has had a rough night and we’re all probably a little tired from the marketplace. We’re about to hear a story, and we’ll hear it over tea. And I set a cherry tart aside that I’m sure I can divide by four. Three and one very small sliver? Whichever. You’re all currently my guests and my pride demands I offer hospitality, something I would have done earlier if you weren’t always off by yourself.” That wasn’t entirely true, he had to admit; he’d mostly avoided Marjorie and pretended she wasn’t there. He also knew he was preparing tea mostly as a stress relief for himself, as he needed to do something a bit ‘normal’ after all that had happened that evening. There would be tea. He understood tea. Marjorie shrugged. “If you insist on offering us refreshments I certainly owe it to you not to turn them down. I’ll just start telling you the story.” # “As I said, Thumbelina Kingdom is a place where humans and Flower Folk lived together. It was hidden in a hollowed-out mountain which, I have been told, used to be some sort of volcano. That detail is completely irrelevant to the story, but I thought you might find it interesting. It was lit from the inside by lanterns and luminescent mushrooms, with moss and greenery growing along the walls. Quite a lovely place. The humans who lived there resided in the bigger tunnels, and the Flower Folk lived in smaller residences inside the cavern walls or in hanging gardens. Flower Folk like Philomene give off a natural magical aura that makes plants grow more readily, so they were able to survive without much sunlight. The plants, I mean. A human monarch and a Folk one always ruled side by side in each generation, and any humans considered too much of a threat to the Folk were summarily exiled as a threat to the greater good. Ezra, are you okay? Do be careful! I’d hate to see you spill tea on yourself after you went to the trouble of making it. Ahem. So it’d been relatively peaceful for generations, until that Toad showed up. We had a few Enlightened animals residing in Thumbelina, mostly mice or insects. The Toad was not terribly bright, but he was quite obviously Enlightened and had apparently come to attend university there. That was his cover, anyway; personally I suspect he had this planned from the start. Well, some time passes and he bursts from the library one day, claiming he has a right to marry one of the princesses, seeing as their ancestor, the Revered Thumbelina, ran away from a marriage to his ancestor, the…Toad. I suppose they’re all Toads. Not terribly creative, amphibians. This is quite a surprise to us and frankly a little baffling, as he had been a casual friend to the princess in the past. But no, he was absolutely adamant that one of them should marry him, carrying on about divine right of this and honor of his forefathers that. I don’t need to tell you how that went over, do I? He wouldn’t leave her alone, and was eventually expelled for such behavior. Rightly so! That should have been the end of it. But then things started going awry. The plants along the walls began growing out of control. It was slow at first, until suddenly we had entire tunnels clogged by weeds within a few hours. The central cavern almost collapsed when an entire oak tree sprouted within it, growing in a matter of minutes. We humans helped the Flower Folk evacuate as the disaster became more dire, but we could only do so much. The Toad arrived and claimed responsibility, which seems impossible as he hadn’t a single bit of magic. He said he’d let up if the Princess would marry him. She actually considered it, being a selfless leader of her people, but that would have only made the situation worse. Besides, why should bullies get their way? Instead the guards attempted to arrest him and he vanished before a human could stomp him out, which is frankly a tragedy. When he vanished he left behind a puff of seeds, which landed and grew into briars. Those briars enveloped the palace, sprouting massive red roses which gave off some kind of poisonous scent. Anyone who breathed them in fell into some manner of sleep like death. Philomene was lucky to have been outside trying to investigate the phenomenon, and she was the only member of the royal family not affected by the curse. All she could determine was that Green Magic was used. That’s all we know! I was not lying about being the court jester. I'm just also a bodyguard. I was Philomene’s servant and still am, so I ran off with her to protect her. That’s how we ended up here, in the almost literal middle of nowhere. All we can do right now is figure out who did it and how they did it so we can reverse the spell. Oh, and bring whoever’s using this Green Magic to justice. Green Magic is what it sounds like, magic using enchanted plants. It’s a little like that aura the Flower Folk have, magnified by a thousand. But it’s usually considered small fry magic, used to increase harvest or create decorative flower beds. According to Philomene’s research there’s never been a precedent for it being used on this scale! Well, not like this anyway. So I’ve been going to Moonflower Market trying to pick up any sort of potentially magical bits and pieces I can get ahold of for cheap in exchange for my painted miniatures, and Philomene dissects them, soaks them or melts them down to try to find bits and pieces of spells. Neither of us is a wizard, but she thinks we might be able to assemble an antidote spell with the right components. It’s just a matter of finding them, which so far is proving to be like sorting out a single bead in a silo full of them. And I’m sure I saw some woman selling magic plants at the marketplace the other day, but she hasn’t shown her face since. But not all is grim! All we need is to find the right pea, the right seed, maybe the right enchanted bean and… Oh, Ezra! Really, are you alright? Splash some cold water on it!” Ezra had indeed spilled hot tea on his shaking hands, but he was almost too shaken to register the reddish mark on his palm. “No, it’s my fault. I made the water too hot. Just, pardon me. I might know something about this. You said…” He turned to stare at her over his shoulder. “You said plants, right? Enchanted plants?” Marjorie stared at him for a moment, and he felt as if he was being dissected in the name of science himself. “Yes, I did. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” “I know you said neither one of you knows how this was done, except that it used this Green Magic.” Ezra could feel his heart pounding in his chest. “Is it possible that same kind of magic could make a beanstalk grow?” Marjorie glanced towards Philomene, and the princess considered for a moment before speaking in a squeaky, scholarly tone. “I don’t see why not. Just one beanstalk?” “Yes, but a very large one. One big enough to support the weight of someone my size.” It had not been enough to support Hamilton Tooth, who was considerably bigger. “One tall enough to reach from the Center of the Universe, I mean the land, to the Sky. One that could anchor its roots down here and its longest tendrils in a Cloud Island.” “I can only imagine how much magic that would take. I’d consider it impossible had I not seen what had happened to my own kingdom.” Philomene leaned on her cane. “I take it this isn’t a rhetorical question?” “Someone did it. I don’t know who, but someone did it and the result was that one of us ended up robbed and murdered. And that’s why I’m here, because the people of the Sky need a scapegoat in order to feel safe.” Ezra hoped the bitterness in his voice was not too apparent. “But I can’t imagine why they would. The Sky didn’t end up ravaged by plants the way Thumbelina did. The only thing the beanstalk brought was…" “Jack!” Basil snapped his fingers. “You’re talking about Jack!” Ezra twitched. “You know him, Prince?” “Why, word of his adventure has already spread far and wide! He traded his only cow for magic beans, and climbed to the Sky where he faced a ferocious giant who tried to eat him. He barely escaped with his life, returning with a harp that sings on its own and a huge goose that lays golden eggs. I heard about it when my brother came to visit me a few days ago. He said Jack told his story in song thanks to the harp, and earned the respect of the Ever After Empress herself. And…” Basil trailed off, covering his mouth. “Oh. Oh, wait. I see. I’m so sorry, Sir Ezra! I didn’t think about it. It must not have been so glorious for you.” “No,” Ezra managed, “it wasn’t. It’s quite alright, though.” He tried to remember the Jack he’d known, frightened and hungry, and reconcile it with what he’d heard. Jack couldn’t have been lying about his desperation, could he? And he was probably just a pawn, just like this Toad. And certainly Hamilton Tooth might threaten to eat a human in a drunken rage even if he probably wouldn’t actually go through with it. And that foolish, ungrateful little brat had HIS FAMILY’S GOOSE. Ezra took a deep breath. “Well! I’m happy for him. Really! He seemed like he needed some help.” The Sun would reward virtue in the end, he reminded himself. He had to gulp down half his tea before continuing, to calm himself down. “I’m sorry, you were talking about much greater problems and I dragged the conversation off to talk about my own. That was awfully self-centered of me. I’d love to help in any way I can, especially since we might be suffering from the results of the same Green Magic. But I really don’t know anything about it. I’m just a baker. Of course, as I said, you have my shelter…” “And my sword, and all I offered before. I can talk to my fairy godmothers to see if they’ve heard anything. I can defeat those wolves the next time they menace you!” Basil had bounced back completely from his misstep. Ezra had to admit, that was somehow a bit endearing. Basil’s cheer was contagious, as was his proud grin. So what if Basil occasionally misspoke, or Marjorie fibbed, or Philomene talked about concepts he didn’t understand? Basil saved him and was charming. Philomene seemed kind and noble, and Marjorie was, well, Marjorie. He found, for all the strange news regarding malicious plant magic and fallen kingdoms landing in his lap, he liked talking with them about it. That was something. Ezra hadn’t enjoyed talking with Hamilton Tooth about anything. “The wolves are odd. I don’t know how they fit into anything yet.” Marjorie thought about it and then shrugged. “And I promise to lie in service to this investigation…” She seemed to notice Philomene giving her a meaningful look, one too small for Ezra to see. “And to tell the truth to you,” she added. “Honest. Just, one knows what one is good at, right?” “You all might be of more help than you think,” Philomene said. “I would like to speak with you tomorrow in private, Ezra.” Ezra had no idea how he’d manage to converse one on one with someone so tiny, but he agreed with a little nod. There really was something authoritative about the princess. “I just can’t imagine why the same person would enact such complete destruction on a kingdom of Flower Folk,” Ezra said, “but play what amounts to a prank on Mielle. What could the motivation be? I mean, is it even the same person? We know it was plants. Plants!” He slapped his forehead. “That’s what I wanted to be on the lookout for at the marketplace! Magic plants, because of that. I spent all my money on seasonings and ingredients I can’t get ahold of instead. You know, for next time.” Basil patted his side. “It’s alright! You know for next time.” “I know. I just can’t believe it slipped my mind. I must have been distracted. It’s so late. I may just be tired.” His mind had been consumed with the idea of impressing someone. Who? Was it one of the customers? All he knew was that when he tried to think back, he was left with a strong urge to conquer one of those recipes in his book if it took him all night to do so. It had to be stress. Surely after such a night he had a right to stress, didn’t he?

#The Exiles Ever After #chapter posting #Fairy tale #web serial #giants

[simplemlmsponsoring]

New Post has been published on https://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/website-traffic/what-to-blog-about-the-data-driven-guide-to-choosing-blog-topics/

What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics

Let’s begin with a simple fact:

Anyone can start a blog, but not anyone can start a blog other people want to read.

In the throes of self-pity, you might be tempted to believe it’s because of the fickleness of human nature, a lack of influential connections, or perhaps the realization of how difficult building an engaged audience actually is.

And you would be partially correct. All those factors do play a part.

But what if I told you the primary cause of failure for bloggers is actually their choice of what to blog about? Not their connections, not their persistence, not their understanding of how blogging actually works, but the accidental, unfortunate decision to write about the wrong blog topics.

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The good news is, I’m about to prove that assertion to you right now. Even better, I’ll show you how to uncover exactly what to blog about, increasing your chances of success 100X.

Blog Topic Insights from Studying 13,360 Bloggers

Over the years, my team and I have mentored 13,360 bloggers in every imaginable niche, language, and style. Everyone from meteoric success stories like Laurel Bern to thousands of students who have struggled to break through the noise.

And we’ve noticed some patterns. Some very interesting patterns.

Data from students shows us that some blog topics get traffic quite easily while others are nearly impossible. For instance, you can blog about square-shaped tomatoes with as much vigor and persistence as you like, and you’re never going to take off, because… nobody cares.

In fact, the range of blog topics where you can expect to both get substantial traffic and monetize is relatively narrow. Some blog topics that seem plausible from the outset, such as freelancing, actually don’t have a prayer of success.

In other words, your choice of what to blog about is critical. If you make the wrong decision, you can execute every traffic and monetization technique flawlessly, and none of it will work, because having the right blog topic is critical.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your blog topic:

Step 1: Choose a Popular Niche

Before you write a single post, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question:

Is anyone in your niche getting significant traffic?

If not, what makes you think you can be the first?

For some reason, people are happy to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours into publishing content without stopping to consider if anyone else has ever been successful. Worse, they believe that competition is bad. They take pride in being the first person to write about a topic and believe that’s an opportunity.

It makes me want to cry. Not only is that perspective flat-out wrong, it’s tragic because it leads you to invest time into projects that never had a prayer of success.

So, how can you tell if a niche is popular or not?

The easiest way is to reference a research library like the one we have in Freedom Machine. It does all the heavy lifting for you by giving you a list of successful blogs, their most popular posts, and examples of how they monetize.

But let’s say you don’t have that. What can you do?

There’s no exact science to it, but here’s the process I recommend:

Find a List of Popular Blogs in the Niche

This is trickier than it sounds.

Let’s say you’re blogging about how to trade stocks. Does that put you in the “stock trading” niche, the “investing” niche, or something else?

My advice: go to the broadest category that makes sense. In the case of trading stocks, that would actually be the “personal finance” niche, assuming you’re targeting people who want to trade stocks for themselves (more discussion about this later).

From there, just run a simple Google query like “best personal finance blogs”, and chances are, you’ll find several lists to browse through:

From there, you just need to dig a little deeper and find out how popular those blogs really are.

Plug the Blogs into Ahrefs to Uncover Their Traffic

One of my favorite things about Ahrefs (affiliate link) is it gives you both social and search data. Let’s go through an example, and you’ll see what I mean.

In their Site Explorer, you can type in any URL to pull a report on the site:

You’ll get back a report with an enormous amount of data. Going back to our trading stocks example, let’s say I found out that Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular personal finance sites, so I plug it into Ahrefs. Here’s what comes back:

And that’s just a sample. In the left sidebar, there are lots of additional reports where you can go even deeper.

If you want to look at social traffic, for example, you can click the “Top Content” link, and here’s what you get back:

There’s all the content on the site, sorted by total shares. As you can see, the top 10 posts all crossed 2,000 shares, so it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is doing well from a social traffic perspective.

Personally, I like to see at least five sites within the same niche with at least five posts above 1,000 shares. That’s usually enough to start guessing what readers in the space want to read more about. More on this later.

A Word of Warning about Popularity

Stop for a moment and think about another question:

What’s your end goal for building a blog?

I’m guessing it’s not just to get a bunch of traffic and feel good about yourself. You want to turn that traffic into money somehow, right?

Well, some niches are dramatically easier to monetize than others. You can get a lot of traffic writing about the daily activities of celebrities, for example, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make money blogging about it.

Some niches can only be monetized through advertising. A good example is the news. Every time you read an article on a news site, they get paid a few cents for an “impression.” That’s how they survive.

If you do the math though, it takes a lot of traffic to start earning enough from advertising to quit your job or do anything meaningful. Like… hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

For that reason, when my team evaluates popular niches, we also look at how the blogs are monetizing. Ideally, we want to see people selling some type of products and services because those genuinely have the highest ROI on blogs. If all we find are popular sites stuffed with ads, it’s a bad sign.

The bottom line?

Popularity is good, but it’s not enough. When you’re doing research, also pay attention to how blogs in the space are monetizing.

Step 2: Choose a Single Tribe That’s Hungry for Content

When you’re researching a niche, you’ll notice blogs seem to focus on different types of readers.

In the personal finance niche, for example, blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar focus on fundamentals like secure investments, living frugally, and so on. At the same time, there are other blogs like I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Mr. Money Mustache that focus much more on how to increase your income and improve your lifestyle.

If you feel like those sites are fundamentally different, you’re right. While they both occupy the personal finance niche, they serve different “tribes.”

Here’s what I mean by tribe:

A tribe is a group of people who congregate online around common interests.

In the personal finance space, the two biggest groups are “save and invest” people and “increase your income” people. Neither tribe is right, but they don’t really mix well with one another. You won’t find a blog focusing equally on both tribes.

So, how does this help you?

It allows you to narrow in on your target audience. Here’s what to do:

Name the Tribe for Each Popular Blog in Your Niche

Earlier, we talked about identifying at least five blogs with more than 1,000 shares on at least a few posts. Now let’s go back and figure out which tribe they are talking to.

For instance, here are the popular posts on Mr. Money Mustache:

Do you see the pattern?

Mr. Money Mustache is clearly positioning himself for getting rich and against extreme frugality in some of his most popular posts. In other words, he’s speaking primarily to the “increase your income” people.

So, go through your list of five blogs. Based on their most popular posts, who are they resonating with? If it’s not immediately clear, here’s how to figure it out:

Skim through their popular posts for patterns. Read at least a few of them to get a better idea of their philosophy. Based on what you’ve learned, assign the tribe a name.

When you’re finished, you should have a pretty good idea about who’s interested in reading what. From there, you’re ready to…

Choose the Tribe That’s the Best Fit for You

Not all decisions can be made with spreadsheets and numbers. To succeed at blogging, you also need to consider what you enjoy talking about. The sweet spot is the overlap between your interests and everyone else’s:

For instance, let’s say all of the blogs you studied were suddenly interested in having you take over as Editor-In-Chief. Ask yourself…

Based on your own approach and philosophy, which tribe would be most excited to have you as their leader? Which tribe do you feel like you could help grow and achieve their objectives?

In other words, you’re looking for an existing blog and tribe to serve as a model for what you want to build. It’s already built a following, so it’s clearly viable, and you feel like you could also contribute in a meaningful way.

That’s what I call the Zone of Magic. Ideally, it’s where you spend all your time.

What to Do It If You Don’t like Your Options

Before we move on, there’s one important question we need to address:

What if you’re not a good match for any of the existing tribes in your niche?

Approximately 60% of the students who go through our flagship course, Freedom Machine, find themselves in this exact situation. They have zero interest in writing about any of the topics they find on other popular sites in their niche. Even worse, they feel like those bloggers and their tribes just “don’t get it.”

If you find yourself in that situation, here’s a little tough love for you:

If there’s not an existing tribe who’s clearly interested in the same things you are, and you start a blog anyway, you’re essentially telling people they are wrong and need to change the way they think. In general, people don’t respond well to this. Not only will they refuse to share your posts or buy your products, but they might send you some hate mail as well.

The better, safer, and ultimately much more rewarding approach?

Go back to the drawing board and find a tribe whose interests align with yours. Instead of fighting them, just figure out where they want to go and show them how to get there.

Here’s how…

Step 3: Write About Their Proven Interests

Which would you rather write about: topics you think your readers might like, or ones you know will get traffic, because you have proof of those topics being popular in the past?

Obviously, it’s better to have the proof, right? You might as well invest your time where you have the best chances of success.

In this section, I’ll show you how to uncover those proven interests, as well as put your own spin on them. Let’s jump in.

Drill Deeper into the Site Stats

Earlier, we used Ahrefs (affiliate link) to examine the most shared posts on Mr. Money Mustache. Let’s go back to that:

In general, the highest-quality shares are the ones from Facebook, so I tend to sort posts that way instead of by overall shares. Save these for later by running a custom export of the first 20 rows and saving it to your computer.

The next step is to dig into the keywords driving the most search engine traffic. You can find those by clicking on “Organic keywords” in the left sidebar.

The default sorting by traffic is fine, but if you’re a beginning blogger, I would recommend eliminating all keywords with a keyword difficulty (KD) over 40. Again, do a custom export of the first 20 rows and save it to your computer.

You should go through the same process for all the most popular sites serving your tribe. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a list of dozens or maybe hundreds of posts proven to be popular with your audience.

Choose Posts Where You Can Add Value

So… now you have a big list of popular posts on other sites serving your tribe. That’s obviously useful information, but here’s the big question:

How do you use that information without sounding like a copycat?

You didn’t get into this to regurgitate the ideas of other writers. You want to publish content that’s uniquely you.

Here’s how:

Copy the topic, not the advice.

For instance, one of Mr. Money Mustache’s most popular posts is Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero in One Blog Post. The topic is getting rich, and the advice is to live simply and frugally on half of what you make.

If I were to write a post on the same topic, I would talk about getting a remote job where you can live in a cheaper country like Mexico but continue making US dollars. In other words, I would give completely different advice on the same topic, and I would interweave my own story of moving to Mexico into it.

I’d also choose a different headline like, “How I Became a Millionaire from My Wheelchair.” Again, it’s the same topic, but an entirely unique headline. No one would accuse me of being a copycat.

You can follow the same approach with the most popular topics in your space. Scan through the list of posts you exported from Ahrefs (affiliate link) and choose the ones where you can write about the same topic but give your own unique advice.

Write a Better Version of That Post

Okay, you’re almost ready to write your post. Finally!

Before you start scribbling down your thoughts, consider two final questions:

What made the post you studied on the topic popular? What can you do to create an even better post?

It’s like the old saying, “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” When you find a popular posts model, you always want to know why it worked, and you want a good idea of how to improve upon it.

At some point, I’ll write a post detailing exactly how to do that, but here’s the short version. There are five ways to improve upon any post, and they all begin with the letter ‘D’:

Detail: make your post more detailed (or comprehensive). Design: include an infographic or organize your points in a more useful way. Data: include unique stats or examples to back up your points. Drama: amp up the emotion by infusing your post with personality and stories. Distinctions: give advice based on your unique perspective as an expert.

For instance, the Getting Rich post on Mr. Money Mustache is pretty short and lacks a lot of detail, so if I wanted to compete, I would probably write a much more comprehensive manual for getting rich, clocking in at 3000+ words. I might also add in my personal story, giving it extra drama.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the bottom line:

Your goal is to write the best post ever published on a proven, familiar topic.

Is it easy?

Hell no. Usually, it’s a lot of work.

But this is how you win.

You stop writing about whatever you want and limit yourself to proven topics. You study the competition. You create content so much better than theirs, that it makes them want to call their mommy.

‘nough said.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

The post What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics appeared first on Smart Blogger.

Read more: smartblogger.com

#blog #blogs #like #popular #posts #their #tribe #want #your #WEBSITE TRAFFIC

[felixdgreen]

What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics

Let’s begin with a simple fact:

Anyone can start a blog, but not anyone can start a blog other people want to read.

In the throes of self-pity, you might be tempted to believe it’s because of the fickleness of human nature, a lack of influential connections, or perhaps the realization of how difficult building an engaged audience actually is.

And you would be partially correct. All those factors do play a part.

But what if I told you the primary cause of failure for bloggers is actually their choice of what to blog about? Not their connections, not their persistence, not their understanding of how blogging actually works, but the accidental, unfortunate decision to write about the wrong blog topics.

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The good news is, I’m about to prove that assertion to you right now. Even better, I’ll show you how to uncover exactly what to blog about, increasing your chances of success 100X.

Blog Topic Insights from Studying 13,360 Bloggers

Over the years, my team and I have mentored 13,360 bloggers in every imaginable niche, language, and style. Everyone from meteoric success stories like Laurel Bern to thousands of students who have struggled to break through the noise.

And we’ve noticed some patterns. Some very interesting patterns.

Data from students shows us that some blog topics get traffic quite easily while others are nearly impossible. For instance, you can blog about square-shaped tomatoes with as much vigor and persistence as you like, and you’re never going to take off, because… nobody cares.

In fact, the range of blog topics where you can expect to both get substantial traffic and monetize is relatively narrow. Some blog topics that seem plausible from the outset, such as freelancing, actually don’t have a prayer of success.

In other words, your choice of what to blog about is critical. If you make the wrong decision, you can execute every traffic and monetization technique flawlessly, and none of it will work, because having the right blog topic is critical.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your blog topic:

Step 1: Choose a Popular Niche

Before you write a single post, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question:

Is anyone in your niche getting significant traffic?

If not, what makes you think you can be the first?

For some reason, people are happy to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours into publishing content without stopping to consider if anyone else has ever been successful. Worse, they believe that competition is bad. They take pride in being the first person to write about a topic and believe that’s an opportunity.

It makes me want to cry. Not only is that perspective flat-out wrong, it’s tragic because it leads you to invest time into projects that never had a prayer of success.

So, how can you tell if a niche is popular or not?

The easiest way is to reference a research library like the one we have in Freedom Machine. It does all the heavy lifting for you by giving you a list of successful blogs, their most popular posts, and examples of how they monetize.

But let’s say you don’t have that. What can you do?

There’s no exact science to it, but here’s the process I recommend:

Find a List of Popular Blogs in the Niche

This is trickier than it sounds.

Let’s say you’re blogging about how to trade stocks. Does that put you in the “stock trading” niche, the “investing” niche, or something else?

My advice: go to the broadest category that makes sense. In the case of trading stocks, that would actually be the “personal finance” niche, assuming you’re targeting people who want to trade stocks for themselves (more discussion about this later).

From there, just run a simple Google query like “best personal finance blogs”, and chances are, you’ll find several lists to browse through:

From there, you just need to dig a little deeper and find out how popular those blogs really are.

Plug the Blogs into Ahrefs to Uncover Their Traffic

One of my favorite things about Ahrefs (affiliate link) is it gives you both social and search data. Let’s go through an example, and you’ll see what I mean.

In their Site Explorer, you can type in any URL to pull a report on the site:

You’ll get back a report with an enormous amount of data. Going back to our trading stocks example, let’s say I found out that Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular personal finance sites, so I plug it into Ahrefs. Here’s what comes back:

And that’s just a sample. In the left sidebar, there are lots of additional reports where you can go even deeper.

If you want to look at social traffic, for example, you can click the “Top Content” link, and here’s what you get back:

There’s all the content on the site, sorted by total shares. As you can see, the top 10 posts all crossed 2,000 shares, so it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is doing well from a social traffic perspective.

Personally, I like to see at least five sites within the same niche with at least five posts above 1,000 shares. That’s usually enough to start guessing what readers in the space want to read more about. More on this later.

A Word of Warning about Popularity

Stop for a moment and think about another question:

What’s your end goal for building a blog?

I’m guessing it’s not just to get a bunch of traffic and feel good about yourself. You want to turn that traffic into money somehow, right?

Well, some niches are dramatically easier to monetize than others. You can get a lot of traffic writing about the daily activities of celebrities, for example, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make money blogging about it.

Some niches can only be monetized through advertising. A good example is the news. Every time you read an article on a news site, they get paid a few cents for an “impression.” That’s how they survive.

If you do the math though, it takes a lot of traffic to start earning enough from advertising to quit your job or do anything meaningful. Like… hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

For that reason, when my team evaluates popular niches, we also look at how the blogs are monetizing. Ideally, we want to see people selling some type of products and services because those genuinely have the highest ROI on blogs. If all we find are popular sites stuffed with ads, it’s a bad sign.

The bottom line?

Popularity is good, but it’s not enough. When you’re doing research, also pay attention to how blogs in the space are monetizing.

Step 2: Choose a Single Tribe That’s Hungry for Content

When you’re researching a niche, you’ll notice blogs seem to focus on different types of readers.

In the personal finance niche, for example, blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar focus on fundamentals like secure investments, living frugally, and so on. At the same time, there are other blogs like I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Mr. Money Mustache that focus much more on how to increase your income and improve your lifestyle.

If you feel like those sites are fundamentally different, you’re right. While they both occupy the personal finance niche, they serve different “tribes.”

Here’s what I mean by tribe:

A tribe is a group of people who congregate online around common interests.

In the personal finance space, the two biggest groups are “save and invest” people and “increase your income” people. Neither tribe is right, but they don’t really mix well with one another. You won’t find a blog focusing equally on both tribes.

So, how does this help you?

It allows you to narrow in on your target audience. Here’s what to do:

Name the Tribe for Each Popular Blog in Your Niche

Earlier, we talked about identifying at least five blogs with more than 1,000 shares on at least a few posts. Now let’s go back and figure out which tribe they are talking to.

For instance, here are the popular posts on Mr. Money Mustache:

Do you see the pattern?

Mr. Money Mustache is clearly positioning himself for getting rich and against extreme frugality in some of his most popular posts. In other words, he’s speaking primarily to the “increase your income” people.

So, go through your list of five blogs. Based on their most popular posts, who are they resonating with? If it’s not immediately clear, here’s how to figure it out:

Skim through their popular posts for patterns.

Read at least a few of them to get a better idea of their philosophy.

Based on what you’ve learned, assign the tribe a name.

When you’re finished, you should have a pretty good idea about who’s interested in reading what. From there, you’re ready to…

Choose the Tribe That’s the Best Fit for You

Not all decisions can be made with spreadsheets and numbers. To succeed at blogging, you also need to consider what you enjoy talking about. The sweet spot is the overlap between your interests and everyone else’s:

For instance, let’s say all of the blogs you studied were suddenly interested in having you take over as Editor-In-Chief. Ask yourself…

Based on your own approach and philosophy, which tribe would be most excited to have you as their leader?

Which tribe do you feel like you could help grow and achieve their objectives?

In other words, you’re looking for an existing blog and tribe to serve as a model for what you want to build. It’s already built a following, so it’s clearly viable, and you feel like you could also contribute in a meaningful way.

That’s what I call the Zone of Magic. Ideally, it’s where you spend all your time.

What to Do It If You Don’t like Your Options

Before we move on, there’s one important question we need to address:

What if you’re not a good match for any of the existing tribes in your niche?

Approximately 60% of the students who go through our flagship course, Freedom Machine, find themselves in this exact situation. They have zero interest in writing about any of the topics they find on other popular sites in their niche. Even worse, they feel like those bloggers and their tribes just “don’t get it.”

If you find yourself in that situation, here’s a little tough love for you:

If there’s not an existing tribe who’s clearly interested in the same things you are, and you start a blog anyway, you’re essentially telling people they are wrong and need to change the way they think. In general, people don’t respond well to this. Not only will they refuse to share your posts or buy your products, but they might send you some hate mail as well.

The better, safer, and ultimately much more rewarding approach?

Go back to the drawing board and find a tribe whose interests align with yours. Instead of fighting them, just figure out where they want to go and show them how to get there.

Here’s how…

Step 3: Write About Their Proven Interests

Which would you rather write about: topics you think your readers might like, or ones you know will get traffic, because you have proof of those topics being popular in the past?

Obviously, it’s better to have the proof, right? You might as well invest your time where you have the best chances of success.

In this section, I’ll show you how to uncover those proven interests, as well as put your own spin on them. Let’s jump in.

Drill Deeper into the Site Stats

Earlier, we used Ahrefs (affiliate link) to examine the most shared posts on Mr. Money Mustache. Let’s go back to that:

In general, the highest-quality shares are the ones from Facebook, so I tend to sort posts that way instead of by overall shares. Save these for later by running a custom export of the first 20 rows and saving it to your computer.

The next step is to dig into the keywords driving the most search engine traffic. You can find those by clicking on “Organic keywords” in the left sidebar.

The default sorting by traffic is fine, but if you’re a beginning blogger, I would recommend eliminating all keywords with a keyword difficulty (KD) over 40. Again, do a custom export of the first 20 rows and save it to your computer.

You should go through the same process for all the most popular sites serving your tribe. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a list of dozens or maybe hundreds of posts proven to be popular with your audience.

Choose Posts Where You Can Add Value

So… now you have a big list of popular posts on other sites serving your tribe. That’s obviously useful information, but here’s the big question:

How do you use that information without sounding like a copycat?

You didn’t get into this to regurgitate the ideas of other writers. You want to publish content that’s uniquely you.

Here’s how:

Copy the topic, not the advice.

For instance, one of Mr. Money Mustache’s most popular posts is Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero in One Blog Post. The topic is getting rich, and the advice is to live simply and frugally on half of what you make.

If I were to write a post on the same topic, I would talk about getting a remote job where you can live in a cheaper country like Mexico but continue making US dollars. In other words, I would give completely different advice on the same topic, and I would interweave my own story of moving to Mexico into it.

I’d also choose a different headline like, “How I Became a Millionaire from My Wheelchair.” Again, it’s the same topic, but an entirely unique headline. No one would accuse me of being a copycat.

You can follow the same approach with the most popular topics in your space. Scan through the list of posts you exported from Ahrefs (affiliate link) and choose the ones where you can write about the same topic but give your own unique advice.

Write a Better Version of That Post

Okay, you’re almost ready to write your post. Finally!

Before you start scribbling down your thoughts, consider two final questions:

What made the post you studied on the topic popular?

What can you do to create an even better post?

It’s like the old saying, “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” When you find a popular posts model, you always want to know why it worked, and you want a good idea of how to improve upon it.

At some point, I’ll write a post detailing exactly how to do that, but here’s the short version. There are five ways to improve upon any post, and they all begin with the letter ‘D’:

Detail: make your post more detailed (or comprehensive).

Design: include an infographic or organize your points in a more useful way.

Data: include unique stats or examples to back up your points.

Drama: amp up the emotion by infusing your post with personality and stories.

Distinctions: give advice based on your unique perspective as an expert.

For instance, the Getting Rich post on Mr. Money Mustache is pretty short and lacks a lot of detail, so if I wanted to compete, I would probably write a much more comprehensive manual for getting rich, clocking in at 3000+ words. I might also add in my personal story, giving it extra drama.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the bottom line:

Your goal is to write the best post ever published on a proven, familiar topic.

Is it easy?

Hell no. Usually, it’s a lot of work.

But this is how you win.

You stop writing about whatever you want and limit yourself to proven topics.

You study the competition.

You create content so much better than theirs, that it makes them want to call their mommy.

‘nough said.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

The post What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from IM News And Tips https://smartblogger.com/what-to-blog-about/

[sandranelsonuk]

What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics

Let’s begin with a simple fact:

Anyone can start a blog, but not anyone can start a blog other people want to read.

In the throes of self-pity, you might be tempted to believe it’s because of the fickleness of human nature, a lack of influential connections, or perhaps the realization of how difficult building an engaged audience actually is.

And you would be partially correct. All those factors do play a part.

But what if I told you the primary cause of failure for bloggers is actually their choice of what to blog about? Not their connections, not their persistence, not their understanding of how blogging actually works, but the accidental, unfortunate decision to write about the wrong blog topics.

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The good news is, I’m about to prove that assertion to you right now. Even better, I’ll show you how to uncover exactly what to blog about, increasing your chances of success 100X.

Blog Topic Insights from Studying 13,360 Bloggers

Over the years, my team and I have mentored 13,360 bloggers in every imaginable niche, language, and style. Everyone from meteoric success stories like Laurel Bern to thousands of students who have struggled to break through the noise.

And we’ve noticed some patterns. Some very interesting patterns.

Data from students shows us that some blog topics get traffic quite easily while others are nearly impossible. For instance, you can blog about square-shaped tomatoes with as much vigor and persistence as you like, and you’re never going to take off, because… nobody cares.

In fact, the range of blog topics where you can expect to both get substantial traffic and monetize is relatively narrow. Some blog topics that seem plausible from the outset, such as freelancing, actually don’t have a prayer of success.

In other words, your choice of what to blog about is critical. If you make the wrong decision, you can execute every traffic and monetization technique flawlessly, and none of it will work, because having the right blog topic is critical.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your blog topic:

Step 1: Choose a Popular Niche

Before you write a single post, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question:

Is anyone in your niche getting significant traffic?

If not, what makes you think you can be the first?

For some reason, people are happy to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours into publishing content without stopping to consider if anyone else has ever been successful. Worse, they believe that competition is bad. They take pride in being the first person to write about a topic and believe that’s an opportunity.

It makes me want to cry. Not only is that perspective flat-out wrong, it’s tragic because it leads you to invest time into projects that never had a prayer of success.

So, how can you tell if a niche is popular or not?

The easiest way is to reference a research library like the one we have in Freedom Machine. It does all the heavy lifting for you by giving you a list of successful blogs, their most popular posts, and examples of how they monetize.

But let’s say you don’t have that. What can you do?

There’s no exact science to it, but here’s the process I recommend:

Find a List of Popular Blogs in the Niche

This is trickier than it sounds.

Let’s say you’re blogging about how to trade stocks. Does that put you in the “stock trading” niche, the “investing” niche, or something else?

My advice: go to the broadest category that makes sense. In the case of trading stocks, that would actually be the “personal finance” niche, assuming you’re targeting people who want to trade stocks for themselves (more discussion about this later).

From there, just run a simple Google query like “best personal finance blogs”, and chances are, you’ll find several lists to browse through:

From there, you just need to dig a little deeper and find out how popular those blogs really are.

Plug the Blogs into Ahrefs to Uncover Their Traffic

One of my favorite things about Ahrefs (affiliate link) is it gives you both social and search data. Let’s go through an example, and you’ll see what I mean.

In their Site Explorer, you can type in any URL to pull a report on the site:

You’ll get back a report with an enormous amount of data. Going back to our trading stocks example, let’s say I found out that Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular personal finance sites, so I plug it into Ahrefs. Here’s what comes back:

And that’s just a sample. In the left sidebar, there are lots of additional reports where you can go even deeper.

If you want to look at social traffic, for example, you can click the “Top Content” link, and here’s what you get back:

There’s all the content on the site, sorted by total shares. As you can see, the top 10 posts all crossed 2,000 shares, so it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is doing well from a social traffic perspective.

Personally, I like to see at least five sites within the same niche with at least five posts above 1,000 shares. That’s usually enough to start guessing what readers in the space want to read more about. More on this later.

A Word of Warning about Popularity

Stop for a moment and think about another question:

What’s your end goal for building a blog?

I’m guessing it’s not just to get a bunch of traffic and feel good about yourself. You want to turn that traffic into money somehow, right?

Well, some niches are dramatically easier to monetize than others. You can get a lot of traffic writing about the daily activities of celebrities, for example, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make money blogging about it.

Some niches can only be monetized through advertising. A good example is the news. Every time you read an article on a news site, they get paid a few cents for an “impression.” That’s how they survive.

If you do the math though, it takes a lot of traffic to start earning enough from advertising to quit your job or do anything meaningful. Like… hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

For that reason, when my team evaluates popular niches, we also look at how the blogs are monetizing. Ideally, we want to see people selling some type of products and services because those genuinely have the highest ROI on blogs. If all we find are popular sites stuffed with ads, it’s a bad sign.

The bottom line?

Popularity is good, but it’s not enough. When you’re doing research, also pay attention to how blogs in the space are monetizing.

Step 2: Choose a Single Tribe That’s Hungry for Content

When you’re researching a niche, you’ll notice blogs seem to focus on different types of readers.

In the personal finance niche, for example, blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar focus on fundamentals like secure investments, living frugally, and so on. At the same time, there are other blogs like I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Mr. Money Mustache that focus much more on how to increase your income and improve your lifestyle.

If you feel like those sites are fundamentally different, you’re right. While they both occupy the personal finance niche, they serve different “tribes.”

Here’s what I mean by tribe:

A tribe is a group of people who congregate online around common interests.

In the personal finance space, the two biggest groups are “save and invest” people and “increase your income” people. Neither tribe is right, but they don’t really mix well with one another. You won’t find a blog focusing equally on both tribes.

So, how does this help you?

It allows you to narrow in on your target audience. Here’s what to do:

Name the Tribe for Each Popular Blog in Your Niche

Earlier, we talked about identifying at least five blogs with more than 1,000 shares on at least a few posts. Now let’s go back and figure out which tribe they are talking to.

For instance, here are the popular posts on Mr. Money Mustache:

Do you see the pattern?

Mr. Money Mustache is clearly positioning himself for getting rich and against extreme frugality in some of his most popular posts. In other words, he’s speaking primarily to the “increase your income” people.

So, go through your list of five blogs. Based on their most popular posts, who are they resonating with? If it’s not immediately clear, here’s how to figure it out:

Skim through their popular posts for patterns.

Read at least a few of them to get a better idea of their philosophy.

Based on what you’ve learned, assign the tribe a name.

When you’re finished, you should have a pretty good idea about who’s interested in reading what. From there, you’re ready to…

Choose the Tribe That’s the Best Fit for You

Not all decisions can be made with spreadsheets and numbers. To succeed at blogging, you also need to consider what you enjoy talking about. The sweet spot is the overlap between your interests and everyone else’s:

For instance, let’s say all of the blogs you studied were suddenly interested in having you take over as Editor-In-Chief. Ask yourself…

Based on your own approach and philosophy, which tribe would be most excited to have you as their leader?

Which tribe do you feel like you could help grow and achieve their objectives?

In other words, you’re looking for an existing blog and tribe to serve as a model for what you want to build. It’s already built a following, so it’s clearly viable, and you feel like you could also contribute in a meaningful way.

That’s what I call the Zone of Magic. Ideally, it’s where you spend all your time.

What to Do It If You Don’t like Your Options

Before we move on, there’s one important question we need to address:

What if you’re not a good match for any of the existing tribes in your niche?

Approximately 60% of the students who go through our flagship course, Freedom Machine, find themselves in this exact situation. They have zero interest in writing about any of the topics they find on other popular sites in their niche. Even worse, they feel like those bloggers and their tribes just “don’t get it.”

If you find yourself in that situation, here’s a little tough love for you:

If there’s not an existing tribe who’s clearly interested in the same things you are, and you start a blog anyway, you’re essentially telling people they are wrong and need to change the way they think. In general, people don’t respond well to this. Not only will they refuse to share your posts or buy your products, but they might send you some hate mail as well.

The better, safer, and ultimately much more rewarding approach?

Go back to the drawing board and find a tribe whose interests align with yours. Instead of fighting them, just figure out where they want to go and show them how to get there.

Here’s how…

Step 3: Write About Their Proven Interests

Which would you rather write about: topics you think your readers might like, or ones you know will get traffic, because you have proof of those topics being popular in the past?

Obviously, it’s better to have the proof, right? You might as well invest your time where you have the best chances of success.

In this section, I’ll show you how to uncover those proven interests, as well as put your own spin on them. Let’s jump in.

Drill Deeper into the Site Stats

Earlier, we used Ahrefs (affiliate link) to examine the most shared posts on Mr. Money Mustache. Let’s go back to that:

In general, the highest-quality shares are the ones from Facebook, so I tend to sort posts that way instead of by overall shares. Save these for later by running a custom export of the first 20 rows and saving it to your computer.

The next step is to dig into the keywords driving the most search engine traffic. You can find those by clicking on “Organic keywords” in the left sidebar.

The default sorting by traffic is fine, but if you’re a beginning blogger, I would recommend eliminating all keywords with a keyword difficulty (KD) over 40. Again, do a custom export of the first 20 rows and save it to your computer.

You should go through the same process for all the most popular sites serving your tribe. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a list of dozens or maybe hundreds of posts proven to be popular with your audience.

Choose Posts Where You Can Add Value

So… now you have a big list of popular posts on other sites serving your tribe. That’s obviously useful information, but here’s the big question:

How do you use that information without sounding like a copycat?

You didn’t get into this to regurgitate the ideas of other writers. You want to publish content that’s uniquely you.

Here’s how:

Copy the topic, not the advice.

For instance, one of Mr. Money Mustache’s most popular posts is Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero in One Blog Post. The topic is getting rich, and the advice is to live simply and frugally on half of what you make.

If I were to write a post on the same topic, I would talk about getting a remote job where you can live in a cheaper country like Mexico but continue making US dollars. In other words, I would give completely different advice on the same topic, and I would interweave my own story of moving to Mexico into it.

I’d also choose a different headline like, “How I Became a Millionaire from My Wheelchair.” Again, it’s the same topic, but an entirely unique headline. No one would accuse me of being a copycat.

You can follow the same approach with the most popular topics in your space. Scan through the list of posts you exported from Ahrefs (affiliate link) and choose the ones where you can write about the same topic but give your own unique advice.

Write a Better Version of That Post

Okay, you’re almost ready to write your post. Finally!

Before you start scribbling down your thoughts, consider two final questions:

What made the post you studied on the topic popular?

What can you do to create an even better post?

It’s like the old saying, “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” When you find a popular posts model, you always want to know why it worked, and you want a good idea of how to improve upon it.

At some point, I’ll write a post detailing exactly how to do that, but here’s the short version. There are five ways to improve upon any post, and they all begin with the letter ‘D’:

Detail: make your post more detailed (or comprehensive).

Design: include an infographic or organize your points in a more useful way.

Data: include unique stats or examples to back up your points.

Drama: amp up the emotion by infusing your post with personality and stories.

Distinctions: give advice based on your unique perspective as an expert.

For instance, the Getting Rich post on Mr. Money Mustache is pretty short and lacks a lot of detail, so if I wanted to compete, I would probably write a much more comprehensive manual for getting rich, clocking in at 3000+ words. I might also add in my personal story, giving it extra drama.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the bottom line:

Your goal is to write the best post ever published on a proven, familiar topic.

Is it easy?

Hell no. Usually, it’s a lot of work.

But this is how you win.

You stop writing about whatever you want and limit yourself to proven topics.

You study the competition.

You create content so much better than theirs, that it makes them want to call their mommy.

‘nough said.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

The post What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from Julia Garza Social Media Tips https://smartblogger.com/what-to-blog-about/

[stevenshartus]

What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics

Let’s begin with a simple fact:

Anyone can start a blog, but not anyone can start a blog other people want to read.

In the throes of self-pity, you might be tempted to believe it’s because of the fickleness of human nature, a lack of influential connections, or perhaps the realization of how difficult building an engaged audience actually is.

And you would be partially correct. All those factors do play a part.

But what if I told you the primary cause of failure for bloggers is actually their choice of what to blog about? Not their connections, not their persistence, not their understanding of how blogging actually works, but the accidental, unfortunate decision to write about the wrong blog topics.

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The good news is, I’m about to prove that assertion to you right now. Even better, I’ll show you how to uncover exactly what to blog about, increasing your chances of success 100X.

Blog Topic Insights from Studying 13,360 Bloggers

Over the years, my team and I have mentored 13,360 bloggers in every imaginable niche, language, and style. Everyone from meteoric success stories like Laurel Bern to thousands of students who have struggled to break through the noise.

And we’ve noticed some patterns. Some very interesting patterns.

Data from students shows us that some blog topics get traffic quite easily while others are nearly impossible. For instance, you can blog about square-shaped tomatoes with as much vigor and persistence as you like, and you’re never going to take off, because… nobody cares.

In fact, the range of blog topics where you can expect to both get substantial traffic and monetize is relatively narrow. Some blog topics that seem plausible from the outset, such as freelancing, actually don’t have a prayer of success.

In other words, your choice of what to blog about is critical. If you make the wrong decision, you can execute every traffic and monetization technique flawlessly, and none of it will work, because having the right blog topic is critical.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your blog topic:

Step 1: Choose a Popular Niche

Before you write a single post, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question:

Is anyone in your niche getting significant traffic?

If not, what makes you think you can be the first?

For some reason, people are happy to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours into publishing content without stopping to consider if anyone else has ever been successful. Worse, they believe that competition is bad. They take pride in being the first person to write about a topic and believe that’s an opportunity.

It makes me want to cry. Not only is that perspective flat-out wrong, it’s tragic because it leads you to invest time into projects that never had a prayer of success.

So, how can you tell if a niche is popular or not?

The easiest way is to reference a research library like the one we have in Freedom Machine. It does all the heavy lifting for you by giving you a list of successful blogs, their most popular posts, and examples of how they monetize.

But let’s say you don’t have that. What can you do?

There’s no exact science to it, but here’s the process I recommend:

Find a List of Popular Blogs in the Niche

This is trickier than it sounds.

Let’s say you’re blogging about how to trade stocks. Does that put you in the “stock trading” niche, the “investing” niche, or something else?

My advice: go to the broadest category that makes sense. In the case of trading stocks, that would actually be the “personal finance” niche, assuming you’re targeting people who want to trade stocks for themselves (more discussion about this later).

From there, just run a simple Google query like “best personal finance blogs”, and chances are, you’ll find several lists to browse through:

From there, you just need to dig a little deeper and find out how popular those blogs really are.

Plug the Blogs into Ahrefs to Uncover Their Traffic

One of my favorite things about Ahrefs (affiliate link) is it gives you both social and search data. Let’s go through an example, and you’ll see what I mean.

In their Site Explorer, you can type in any URL to pull a report on the site:

You’ll get back a report with an enormous amount of data. Going back to our trading stocks example, let’s say I found out that Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular personal finance sites, so I plug it into Ahrefs. Here’s what comes back:

And that’s just a sample. In the left sidebar, there are lots of additional reports where you can go even deeper.

If you want to look at social traffic, for example, you can click the “Top Content” link, and here’s what you get back:

There’s all the content on the site, sorted by total shares. As you can see, the top 10 posts all crossed 2,000 shares, so it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is doing well from a social traffic perspective.

Personally, I like to see at least five sites within the same niche with at least five posts above 1,000 shares. That’s usually enough to start guessing what readers in the space want to read more about. More on this later.

A Word of Warning about Popularity

Stop for a moment and think about another question:

What’s your end goal for building a blog?

I’m guessing it’s not just to get a bunch of traffic and feel good about yourself. You want to turn that traffic into money somehow, right?

Well, some niches are dramatically easier to monetize than others. You can get a lot of traffic writing about the daily activities of celebrities, for example, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make money blogging about it.

Some niches can only be monetized through advertising. A good example is the news. Every time you read an article on a news site, they get paid a few cents for an “impression.” That’s how they survive.

If you do the math though, it takes a lot of traffic to start earning enough from advertising to quit your job or do anything meaningful. Like… hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

For that reason, when my team evaluates popular niches, we also look at how the blogs are monetizing. Ideally, we want to see people selling some type of products and services because those genuinely have the highest ROI on blogs. If all we find are popular sites stuffed with ads, it’s a bad sign.

The bottom line?

Popularity is good, but it’s not enough. When you’re doing research, also pay attention to how blogs in the space are monetizing.

Step 2: Choose a Single Tribe That’s Hungry for Content

When you’re researching a niche, you’ll notice blogs seem to focus on different types of readers.

In the personal finance niche, for example, blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar focus on fundamentals like secure investments, living frugally, and so on. At the same time, there are other blogs like I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Mr. Money Mustache that focus much more on how to increase your income and improve your lifestyle.

If you feel like those sites are fundamentally different, you’re right. While they both occupy the personal finance niche, they serve different “tribes.”

Here’s what I mean by tribe:

A tribe is a group of people who congregate online around common interests.

In the personal finance space, the two biggest groups are “save and invest” people and “increase your income” people. Neither tribe is right, but they don’t really mix well with one another. You won’t find a blog focusing equally on both tribes.

So, how does this help you?

It allows you to narrow in on your target audience. Here’s what to do:

Name the Tribe for Each Popular Blog in Your Niche

Earlier, we talked about identifying at least five blogs with more than 1,000 shares on at least a few posts. Now let’s go back and figure out which tribe they are talking to.

For instance, here are the popular posts on Mr. Money Mustache:

Do you see the pattern?

Mr. Money Mustache is clearly positioning himself for getting rich and against extreme frugality in some of his most popular posts. In other words, he’s speaking primarily to the “increase your income” people.

So, go through your list of five blogs. Based on their most popular posts, who are they resonating with? If it’s not immediately clear, here’s how to figure it out:

Skim through their popular posts for patterns.

Read at least a few of them to get a better idea of their philosophy.

Based on what you’ve learned, assign the tribe a name.

When you’re finished, you should have a pretty good idea about who’s interested in reading what. From there, you’re ready to…

Choose the Tribe That’s the Best Fit for You

Not all decisions can be made with spreadsheets and numbers. To succeed at blogging, you also need to consider what you enjoy talking about. The sweet spot is the overlap between your interests and everyone else’s:

For instance, let’s say all of the blogs you studied were suddenly interested in having you take over as Editor-In-Chief. Ask yourself…

Based on your own approach and philosophy, which tribe would be most excited to have you as their leader?

Which tribe do you feel like you could help grow and achieve their objectives?

In other words, you’re looking for an existing blog and tribe to serve as a model for what you want to build. It’s already built a following, so it’s clearly viable, and you feel like you could also contribute in a meaningful way.

That’s what I call the Zone of Magic. Ideally, it’s where you spend all your time.

What to Do It If You Don’t like Your Options

Before we move on, there’s one important question we need to address:

What if you’re not a good match for any of the existing tribes in your niche?

Approximately 60% of the students who go through our flagship course, Freedom Machine, find themselves in this exact situation. They have zero interest in writing about any of the topics they find on other popular sites in their niche. Even worse, they feel like those bloggers and their tribes just “don’t get it.”

If you find yourself in that situation, here’s a little tough love for you:

If there’s not an existing tribe who’s clearly interested in the same things you are, and you start a blog anyway, you’re essentially telling people they are wrong and need to change the way they think. In general, people don’t respond well to this. Not only will they refuse to share your posts or buy your products, but they might send you some hate mail as well.

The better, safer, and ultimately much more rewarding approach?

Go back to the drawing board and find a tribe whose interests align with yours. Instead of fighting them, just figure out where they want to go and show them how to get there.

Here’s how…

Step 3: Write About Their Proven Interests

Which would you rather write about: topics you think your readers might like, or ones you know will get traffic, because you have proof of those topics being popular in the past?

Obviously, it’s better to have the proof, right? You might as well invest your time where you have the best chances of success.

In this section, I’ll show you how to uncover those proven interests, as well as put your own spin on them. Let’s jump in.

Drill Deeper into the Site Stats

Earlier, we used Ahrefs (affiliate link) to examine the most shared posts on Mr. Money Mustache. Let’s go back to that:

In general, the highest-quality shares are the ones from Facebook, so I tend to sort posts that way instead of by overall shares. Save these for later by running a custom export of the first 20 rows and saving it to your computer.

The next step is to dig into the keywords driving the most search engine traffic. You can find those by clicking on “Organic keywords” in the left sidebar.

The default sorting by traffic is fine, but if you’re a beginning blogger, I would recommend eliminating all keywords with a keyword difficulty (KD) over 40. Again, do a custom export of the first 20 rows and save it to your computer.

You should go through the same process for all the most popular sites serving your tribe. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a list of dozens or maybe hundreds of posts proven to be popular with your audience.

Choose Posts Where You Can Add Value

So… now you have a big list of popular posts on other sites serving your tribe. That’s obviously useful information, but here’s the big question:

How do you use that information without sounding like a copycat?

You didn’t get into this to regurgitate the ideas of other writers. You want to publish content that’s uniquely you.

Here’s how:

Copy the topic, not the advice.

For instance, one of Mr. Money Mustache’s most popular posts is Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero in One Blog Post. The topic is getting rich, and the advice is to live simply and frugally on half of what you make.

If I were to write a post on the same topic, I would talk about getting a remote job where you can live in a cheaper country like Mexico but continue making US dollars. In other words, I would give completely different advice on the same topic, and I would interweave my own story of moving to Mexico into it.

I’d also choose a different headline like, “How I Became a Millionaire from My Wheelchair.” Again, it’s the same topic, but an entirely unique headline. No one would accuse me of being a copycat.

You can follow the same approach with the most popular topics in your space. Scan through the list of posts you exported from Ahrefs (affiliate link) and choose the ones where you can write about the same topic but give your own unique advice.

Write a Better Version of That Post

Okay, you’re almost ready to write your post. Finally!

Before you start scribbling down your thoughts, consider two final questions:

What made the post you studied on the topic popular?

What can you do to create an even better post?

It’s like the old saying, “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” When you find a popular posts model, you always want to know why it worked, and you want a good idea of how to improve upon it.

At some point, I’ll write a post detailing exactly how to do that, but here’s the short version. There are five ways to improve upon any post, and they all begin with the letter ‘D’:

Detail: make your post more detailed (or comprehensive).

Design: include an infographic or organize your points in a more useful way.

Data: include unique stats or examples to back up your points.

Drama: amp up the emotion by infusing your post with personality and stories.

Distinctions: give advice based on your unique perspective as an expert.

For instance, the Getting Rich post on Mr. Money Mustache is pretty short and lacks a lot of detail, so if I wanted to compete, I would probably write a much more comprehensive manual for getting rich, clocking in at 3000+ words. I might also add in my personal story, giving it extra drama.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the bottom line:

Your goal is to write the best post ever published on a proven, familiar topic.

Is it easy?

Hell no. Usually, it’s a lot of work.

But this is how you win.

You stop writing about whatever you want and limit yourself to proven topics.

You study the competition.

You create content so much better than theirs, that it makes them want to call their mommy.

‘nough said.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

The post What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/what-to-blog-about/

[lindabodecom]

What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics

Let’s begin with a simple fact:

Anyone can start a blog, but not anyone can start a blog other people want to read.

In the throes of self-pity, you might be tempted to believe it’s because of the fickleness of human nature, a lack of influential connections, or perhaps the realization of how difficult building an engaged audience actually is.

And you would be partially correct. All those factors do play a part.

But what if I told you the primary cause of failure for bloggers is actually their choice of what to blog about? Not their connections, not their persistence, not their understanding of how blogging actually works, but the accidental, unfortunate decision to write about the wrong blog topics.

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The good news is, I’m about to prove that assertion to you right now. Even better, I’ll show you how to uncover exactly what to blog about, increasing your chances of success 100X.

Blog Topic Insights from Studying 13,360 Bloggers

Over the years, my team and I have mentored 13,360 bloggers in every imaginable niche, language, and style. Everyone from meteoric success stories like Laurel Bern to thousands of students who have struggled to break through the noise.

And we’ve noticed some patterns. Some very interesting patterns.

Data from students shows us that some blog topics get traffic quite easily while others are nearly impossible. For instance, you can blog about square-shaped tomatoes with as much vigor and persistence as you like, and you’re never going to take off, because… nobody cares.

In fact, the range of blog topics where you can expect to both get substantial traffic and monetize is relatively narrow. Some blog topics that seem plausible from the outset, such as freelancing, actually don’t have a prayer of success.

In other words, your choice of what to blog about is critical. If you make the wrong decision, you can execute every traffic and monetization technique flawlessly, and none of it will work, because having the right blog topic is critical.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your blog topic:

Step 1: Choose a Popular Niche

Before you write a single post, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question:

Is anyone in your niche getting significant traffic?

If not, what makes you think you can be the first?

For some reason, people are happy to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours into publishing content without stopping to consider if anyone else has ever been successful. Worse, they believe that competition is bad. They take pride in being the first person to write about a topic and believe that’s an opportunity.

It makes me want to cry. Not only is that perspective flat-out wrong, it’s tragic because it leads you to invest time into projects that never had a prayer of success.

So, how can you tell if a niche is popular or not?

The easiest way is to reference a research library like the one we have in Freedom Machine. It does all the heavy lifting for you by giving you a list of successful blogs, their most popular posts, and examples of how they monetize.

But let’s say you don’t have that. What can you do?

There’s no exact science to it, but here’s the process I recommend:

Find a List of Popular Blogs in the Niche

This is trickier than it sounds.

Let’s say you’re blogging about how to trade stocks. Does that put you in the “stock trading” niche, the “investing” niche, or something else?

My advice: go to the broadest category that makes sense. In the case of trading stocks, that would actually be the “personal finance” niche, assuming you’re targeting people who want to trade stocks for themselves (more discussion about this later).

From there, just run a simple Google query like “best personal finance blogs”, and chances are, you’ll find several lists to browse through:

From there, you just need to dig a little deeper and find out how popular those blogs really are.

Plug the Blogs into Ahrefs to Uncover Their Traffic

One of my favorite things about Ahrefs is it gives you both social and search data. Let’s go through an example, and you’ll see what I mean.

In their Site Explorer, you can type in any URL to pull a report on the site:

You’ll get back a report with an enormous amount of data. Going back to our trading stocks example, let’s say I found out that Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular personal finance sites, so I plug it into Ahrefs. Here’s what comes back:

And that’s just a sample. In the left sidebar, there are lots of additional reports where you can go even deeper.

If you want to look at social traffic, for example, you can click the “Top Content” link, and here’s what you get back:

There’s all the content on the site, sorted by total shares. As you can see, the top 10 posts all crossed 2,000 shares, so it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is doing well from a social traffic perspective.

Personally, I like to see at least five sites within the same niche with at least five posts above 1,000 shares. That’s usually enough to start guessing what readers in the space want to read more about. More on this later.

A Word of Warning about Popularity

Stop for a moment and think about another question:

What’s your end goal for building a blog?

I’m guessing it’s not just to get a bunch of traffic and feel good about yourself. You want to turn that traffic into money somehow, right?

Well, some niches are dramatically easier to monetize than others. You can get a lot of traffic writing about the daily activities of celebrities, for example, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make money blogging about it.

Some niches can only be monetized through advertising. A good example is the news. Every time you read an article on a news site, they get paid a few cents for an “impression.” That’s how they survive.

If you do the math though, it takes a lot of traffic to start earning enough from advertising to quit your job or do anything meaningful. Like… hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

For that reason, when my team evaluates popular niches, we also look at how the blogs are monetizing. Ideally, we want to see people selling some type of products and services because those genuinely have the highest ROI on blogs. If all we find are popular sites stuffed with ads, it’s a bad sign.

The bottom line?

Popularity is good, but it’s not enough. When you’re doing research, also pay attention to how blogs in the space are monetizing.

Step 2: Choose a Single Tribe That’s Hungry for Content

When you’re researching a niche, you’ll notice blogs seem to focus on different types of readers.

In the personal finance niche, for example, blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar focus on fundamentals like secure investments, living frugally, and so on. At the same time, there are other blogs like I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Mr. Money Mustache that focus much more on how to increase your income and improve your lifestyle.

If you feel like those sites are fundamentally different, you’re right. While they both occupy the personal finance niche, they serve different “tribes.”

Here’s what I mean by tribe:

A tribe is a group of people who congregate online around common interests.

In the personal finance space, the two biggest groups are “save and invest” people and “increase your income” people. Neither tribe is right, but they don’t really mix well with one another. You won’t find a blog focusing equally on both tribes.

So, how does this help you?

It allows you to narrow in on your target audience. Here’s what to do:

Name the Tribe for Each Popular Blog in Your Niche

Earlier, we talked about identifying at least five blogs with more than 1,000 shares on at least a few posts. Now let’s go back and figure out which tribe they are talking to.

For instance, here are the popular posts on Mr. Money Mustache:

Do you see the pattern?

Mr. Money Mustache is clearly positioning himself for getting rich and against extreme frugality in some of his most popular posts. In other words, he’s speaking primarily to the “increase your income” people.

So, go through your list of five blogs. Based on their most popular posts, who are they resonating with? If it’s not immediately clear, here’s how to figure it out:

Skim through their popular posts for patterns.

Read at least a few of them to get a better idea of their philosophy.

Based on what you’ve learned, assign the tribe a name.

When you’re finished, you should have a pretty good idea about who’s interested in reading what. From there, you’re ready to…

Choose the Tribe That’s the Best Fit for You

Not all decisions can be made with spreadsheets and numbers. To succeed at blogging, you also need to consider what you enjoy talking about. The sweet spot is the overlap between your interests and everyone else’s:

For instance, let’s say all of the blogs you studied were suddenly interested in having you take over as Editor-In-Chief. Ask yourself…

Based on your own approach and philosophy, which tribe would be most excited to have you as their leader?

Which tribe do you feel like you could help grow and achieve their objectives?

In other words, you’re looking for an existing blog and tribe to serve as a model for what you want to build. It’s already built a following, so it’s clearly viable, and you feel like you could also contribute in a meaningful way.

That’s what I call the Zone of Magic. Ideally, it’s where you spend all your time.

What to Do It If You Don’t like Your Options

Before we move on, there’s one important question we need to address:

What if you’re not a good match for any of the existing tribes in your niche?

Approximately 60% of the students who go through our flagship course, Freedom Machine, find themselves in this exact situation. They have zero interest in writing about any of the topics they find on other popular sites in their niche. Even worse, they feel like those bloggers and their tribes just “don’t get it.”

If you find yourself in that situation, here’s a little tough love for you:

If there’s not an existing tribe who’s clearly interested in the same things you are, and you start a blog anyway, you’re essentially telling people they are wrong and need to change the way they think. In general, people don’t respond well to this. Not only will they refuse to share your posts or buy your products, but they might send you some hate mail as well.

The better, safer, and ultimately much more rewarding approach?

Go back to the drawing board and find a tribe whose interests align with yours. Instead of fighting them, just figure out where they want to go and show them how to get there.

Here’s how…

Step 3: Write About Their Proven Interests

Which would you rather write about: topics you think your readers might like, or ones you know will get traffic, because you have proof of those topics being popular in the past?

Obviously, it’s better to have the proof, right? You might as well invest your time where you have the best chances of success.

In this section, I’ll show you how to uncover those proven interests, as well as put your own spin on them. Let’s jump in.

Drill Deeper into the Site Stats

Earlier, we used Ahrefs to examine the most shared posts on Mr. Money Mustache. Let’s go back to that:

In general, the highest-quality shares are the ones from Facebook, so I tend to sort posts that way instead of by overall shares. Save these for later by running a custom export of the first 20 rows and saving it to your computer.

The next step is to dig into the keywords driving the most search engine traffic. You can find those by clicking on “Organic keywords” in the left sidebar.

The default sorting by traffic is fine, but if you’re a beginning blogger, I would recommend eliminating all keywords with a keyword difficulty (KD) over 40. Again, do a custom export of the first 20 rows and save it to your computer.

You should go through the same process for all the most popular sites serving your tribe. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a list of dozens or maybe hundreds of posts proven to be popular with your audience.

Choose Posts Where You Can Add Value

So… now you have a big list of popular posts on other sites serving your tribe. That’s obviously useful information, but here’s the big question:

How do you use that information without sounding like a copycat?

You didn’t get into this to regurgitate the ideas of other writers. You want to publish content that’s uniquely you.

Here’s how:

Copy the topic, not the advice.

For instance, one of Mr. Money Mustache’s most popular posts is Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero in One Blog Post. The topic is getting rich, and the advice is to live simply and frugally on half of what you make.

If I were to write a post on the same topic, I would talk about getting a remote job where you can live in a cheaper country like Mexico but continue making US dollars. In other words, I would give completely different advice on the same topic, and I would interweave my own story of moving to Mexico into it.

I’d also choose a different headline like, “How I Became a Millionaire from My Wheelchair.” Again, it’s the same topic, but an entirely unique headline. No one would accuse me of being a copycat.

You can follow the same approach with the most popular topics in your space. Scan through the list of posts you exported from Ahrefs and choose the ones where you can write about the same topic but give your own unique advice.

Write a Better Version of That Post

Okay, you’re almost ready to write your post. Finally!

Before you start scribbling down your thoughts, consider two final questions:

What made the post you studied on the topic popular?

What can you do to create an even better post?

It’s like the old saying, “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” When you find a popular posts model, you always want to know why it worked, and you want a good idea of how to improve upon it.

At some point, I’ll write a post detailing exactly how to do that, but here’s the short version. There are five ways to improve upon any post, and they all begin with the letter ‘D’:

Detail: make your post more detailed (or comprehensive).

Design: include an infographic or organize your points in a more useful way.

Data: include unique stats or examples to back up your points.

Drama: amp up the emotion by infusing your post with personality and stories.

Distinctions: give advice based on your unique perspective as an expert.

For instance, the Getting Rich post on Mr. Money Mustache is pretty short and lacks a lot of detail, so if I wanted to compete, I would probably write a much more comprehensive manual for getting rich, clocking in at 3000+ words. I might also add in my personal story, giving it extra drama.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the bottom line:

Your goal is to write the best post ever published on a proven, familiar topic.

Is it easy?

Hell no. Usually, it’s a lot of work.

But this is how you win.

You stop writing about whatever you want and limit yourself to proven topics.

You study the competition.

You create content so much better than theirs, that it makes them want to call their mommy.

‘nough said.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

The post What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics appeared first on Smart Blogger.

source https://smartblogger.com/what-to-blog-about/

[laurylyonus]

What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics

Let’s begin with a simple fact:

Anyone can start a blog, but not anyone can start a blog other people want to read.

In the throes of self-pity, you might be tempted to believe it’s because of the fickleness of human nature, a lack of influential connections, or perhaps the realization of how difficult building an engaged audience actually is.

And you would be partially correct. All those factors do play a part.

But what if I told you the primary cause of failure for bloggers is actually their choice of what to blog about? Not their connections, not their persistence, not their understanding of how blogging actually works, but the accidental, unfortunate decision to write about the wrong blog topics.

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The good news is, I’m about to prove that assertion to you right now. Even better, I’ll show you how to uncover exactly what to blog about, increasing your chances of success 100X.

Blog Topic Insights from Studying 13,360 Bloggers

Over the years, my team and I have mentored 13,360 bloggers in every imaginable niche, language, and style. Everyone from meteoric success stories like Laurel Bern to thousands of students who have struggled to break through the noise.

And we’ve noticed some patterns. Some very interesting patterns.

Data from students shows us that some blog topics get traffic quite easily while others are nearly impossible. For instance, you can blog about square-shaped tomatoes with as much vigor and persistence as you like, and you’re never going to take off, because… nobody cares.

In fact, the range of blog topics where you can expect to both get substantial traffic and monetize is relatively narrow. Some blog topics that seem plausible from the outset, such as freelancing, actually don’t have a prayer of success.

In other words, your choice of what to blog about is critical. If you make the wrong decision, you can execute every traffic and monetization technique flawlessly, and none of it will work, because having the right blog topic is critical.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your blog topic:

Step 1: Choose a Popular Niche

Before you write a single post, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question:

Is anyone in your niche getting significant traffic?

If not, what makes you think you can be the first?

For some reason, people are happy to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours into publishing content without stopping to consider if anyone else has ever been successful. Worse, they believe that competition is bad. They take pride in being the first person to write about a topic and believe that’s an opportunity.

It makes me want to cry. Not only is that perspective flat-out wrong, it’s tragic because it leads you to invest time into projects that never had a prayer of success.

So, how can you tell if a niche is popular or not?

The easiest way is to reference a research library like the one we have in Freedom Machine. It does all the heavy lifting for you by giving you a list of successful blogs, their most popular posts, and examples of how they monetize.

But let��s say you don’t have that. What can you do?

There’s no exact science to it, but here’s the process I recommend:

Find a List of Popular Blogs in the Niche

This is trickier than it sounds.

Let’s say you’re blogging about how to trade stocks. Does that put you in the “stock trading” niche, the “investing” niche, or something else?

My advice: go to the broadest category that makes sense. In the case of trading stocks, that would actually be the “personal finance” niche, assuming you’re targeting people who want to trade stocks for themselves (more discussion about this later).

From there, just run a simple Google query like “best personal finance blogs”, and chances are, you’ll find several lists to browse through:

From there, you just need to dig a little deeper and find out how popular those blogs really are.

Plug the Blogs into Ahrefs to Uncover Their Traffic

One of my favorite things about Ahrefs is it gives you both social and search data. Let’s go through an example, and you’ll see what I mean.

In their Site Explorer, you can type in any URL to pull a report on the site:

You’ll get back a report with an enormous amount of data. Going back to our trading stocks example, let’s say I found out that Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular personal finance sites, so I plug it into Ahrefs. Here’s what comes back:

And that’s just a sample. In the left sidebar, there are lots of additional reports where you can go even deeper.

If you want to look at social traffic, for example, you can click the “Top Content” link, and here’s what you get back:

There’s all the content on the site, sorted by total shares. As you can see, the top 10 posts all crossed 2,000 shares, so it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is doing well from a social traffic perspective.

Personally, I like to see at least five sites within the same niche with at least five posts above 1,000 shares. That’s usually enough to start guessing what readers in the space want to read more about. More on this later.

A Word of Warning about Popularity

Stop for a moment and think about another question:

What’s your end goal for building a blog?

I’m guessing it’s not just to get a bunch of traffic and feel good about yourself. You want to turn that traffic into money somehow, right?

Well, some niches are dramatically easier to monetize than others. You can get a lot of traffic writing about the daily activities of celebrities, for example, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make money blogging about it.

Some niches can only be monetized through advertising. A good example is the news. Every time you read an article on a news site, they get paid a few cents for an “impression.” That’s how they survive.

If you do the math though, it takes a lot of traffic to start earning enough from advertising to quit your job or do anything meaningful. Like… hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

For that reason, when my team evaluates popular niches, we also look at how the blogs are monetizing. Ideally, we want to see people selling some type of products and services because those genuinely have the highest ROI on blogs. If all we find are popular sites stuffed with ads, it’s a bad sign.

The bottom line?

Popularity is good, but it’s not enough. When you’re doing research, also pay attention to how blogs in the space are monetizing.

Step 2: Choose a Single Tribe That’s Hungry for Content

When you’re researching a niche, you’ll notice blogs seem to focus on different types of readers.

In the personal finance niche, for example, blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar focus on fundamentals like secure investments, living frugally, and so on. At the same time, there are other blogs like I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Mr. Money Mustache that focus much more on how to increase your income and improve your lifestyle.

If you feel like those sites are fundamentally different, you’re right. While they both occupy the personal finance niche, they serve different “tribes.”

Here’s what I mean by tribe:

A tribe is a group of people who congregate online around common interests.

In the personal finance space, the two biggest groups are “save and invest” people and “increase your income” people. Neither tribe is right, but they don’t really mix well with one another. You won’t find a blog focusing equally on both tribes.

So, how does this help you?

It allows you to narrow in on your target audience. Here’s what to do:

Name the Tribe for Each Popular Blog in Your Niche

Earlier, we talked about identifying at least five blogs with more than 1,000 shares on at least a few posts. Now let’s go back and figure out which tribe they are talking to.

For instance, here are the popular posts on Mr. Money Mustache:

Do you see the pattern?

Mr. Money Mustache is clearly positioning himself for getting rich and against extreme frugality in some of his most popular posts. In other words, he’s speaking primarily to the “increase your income” people.

So, go through your list of five blogs. Based on their most popular posts, who are they resonating with? If it’s not immediately clear, here’s how to figure it out:

Skim through their popular posts for patterns.

Read at least a few of them to get a better idea of their philosophy.

Based on what you’ve learned, assign the tribe a name.

When you’re finished, you should have a pretty good idea about who’s interested in reading what. From there, you’re ready to…

Choose the Tribe That’s the Best Fit for You

Not all decisions can be made with spreadsheets and numbers. To succeed at blogging, you also need to consider what you enjoy talking about. The sweet spot is the overlap between your interests and everyone else’s:

For instance, let’s say all of the blogs you studied were suddenly interested in having you take over as Editor-In-Chief. Ask yourself…

Based on your own approach and philosophy, which tribe would be most excited to have you as their leader?

Which tribe do you feel like you could help grow and achieve their objectives?

In other words, you’re looking for an existing blog and tribe to serve as a model for what you want to build. It’s already built a following, so it’s clearly viable, and you feel like you could also contribute in a meaningful way.

That’s what I call the Zone of Magic. Ideally, it’s where you spend all your time.

What to Do It If You Don’t like Your Options

Before we move on, there’s one important question we need to address:

What if you’re not a good match for any of the existing tribes in your niche?

Approximately 60% of the students who go through our flagship course, Freedom Machine, find themselves in this exact situation. They have zero interest in writing about any of the topics they find on other popular sites in their niche. Even worse, they feel like those bloggers and their tribes just “don’t get it.”

If you find yourself in that situation, here’s a little tough love for you:

If there’s not an existing tribe who’s clearly interested in the same things you are, and you start a blog anyway, you’re essentially telling people they are wrong and need to change the way they think. In general, people don’t respond well to this. Not only will they refuse to share your posts or buy your products, but they might send you some hate mail as well.

The better, safer, and ultimately much more rewarding approach?

Go back to the drawing board and find a tribe whose interests align with yours. Instead of fighting them, just figure out where they want to go and show them how to get there.

Here’s how…

Step 3: Write About Their Proven Interests

Which would you rather write about: topics you think your readers might like, or ones you know will get traffic, because you have proof of those topics being popular in the past?

Obviously, it’s better to have the proof, right? You might as well invest your time where you have the best chances of success.

In this section, I’ll show you how to uncover those proven interests, as well as put your own spin on them. Let’s jump in.

Drill Deeper into the Site Stats

Earlier, we used Ahrefs to examine the most shared posts on Mr. Money Mustache. Let’s go back to that:

In general, the highest-quality shares are the ones from Facebook, so I tend to sort posts that way instead of by overall shares. Save these for later by running a custom export of the first 20 rows and saving it to your computer.

The next step is to dig into the keywords driving the most search engine traffic. You can find those by clicking on “Organic keywords” in the left sidebar.

The default sorting by traffic is fine, but if you’re a beginning blogger, I would recommend eliminating all keywords with a keyword difficulty (KD) over 40. Again, do a custom export of the first 20 rows and save it to your computer.

You should go through the same process for all the most popular sites serving your tribe. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a list of dozens or maybe hundreds of posts proven to be popular with your audience.

Choose Posts Where You Can Add Value

So… now you have a big list of popular posts on other sites serving your tribe. That’s obviously useful information, but here’s the big question:

How do you use that information without sounding like a copycat?

You didn’t get into this to regurgitate the ideas of other writers. You want to publish content that’s uniquely you.

Here’s how:

Copy the topic, not the advice.

For instance, one of Mr. Money Mustache’s most popular posts is Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero in One Blog Post. The topic is getting rich, and the advice is to live simply and frugally on half of what you make.

If I were to write a post on the same topic, I would talk about getting a remote job where you can live in a cheaper country like Mexico but continue making US dollars. In other words, I would give completely different advice on the same topic, and I would interweave my own story of moving to Mexico into it.

I’d also choose a different headline like, “How I Became a Millionaire from My Wheelchair.” Again, it’s the same topic, but an entirely unique headline. No one would accuse me of being a copycat.

You can follow the same approach with the most popular topics in your space. Scan through the list of posts you exported from Ahrefs and choose the ones where you can write about the same topic but give your own unique advice.

Write a Better Version of That Post

Okay, you’re almost ready to write your post. Finally!

Before you start scribbling down your thoughts, consider two final questions:

What made the post you studied on the topic popular?

What can you do to create an even better post?

It’s like the old saying, “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” When you find a popular posts model, you always want to know why it worked, and you want a good idea of how to improve upon it.

At some point, I’ll write a post detailing exactly how to do that, but here’s the short version. There are five ways to improve upon any post, and they all begin with the letter ‘D’:

Detail: make your post more detailed (or comprehensive).

Design: include an infographic or organize your points in a more useful way.

Data: include unique stats or examples to back up your points.

Drama: amp up the emotion by infusing your post with personality and stories.

Distinctions: give advice based on your unique perspective as an expert.

For instance, the Getting Rich post on Mr. Money Mustache is pretty short and lacks a lot of detail, so if I wanted to compete, I would probably write a much more comprehensive manual for getting rich, clocking in at 3000+ words. I might also add in my personal story, giving it extra drama.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the bottom line:

Your goal is to write the best post ever published on a proven, familiar topic.

Is it easy?

Hell no. Usually, it’s a lot of work.

But this is how you win.

You stop writing about whatever you want and limit yourself to proven topics.

You study the competition.

You create content so much better than theirs, that it makes them want to call their mommy.

‘nough said.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

The post What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/what-to-blog-about/

[alanajacksontx]

What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics

Let’s begin with a simple fact:

Anyone can start a blog, but not anyone can start a blog other people want to read.

In the throes of self-pity, you might be tempted to believe it’s because of the fickleness of human nature, a lack of influential connections, or perhaps the realization of how difficult building an engaged audience actually is.

And you would be partially correct. All those factors do play a part.

But what if I told you the primary cause of failure for bloggers is actually their choice of what to blog about? Not their connections, not their persistence, not their understanding of how blogging actually works, but the accidental, unfortunate decision to write about the wrong blog topics.

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The good news is, I’m about to prove that assertion to you right now. Even better, I’ll show you how to uncover exactly what to blog about, increasing your chances of success 100X.

Blog Topic Insights from Studying 13,360 Bloggers

Over the years, my team and I have mentored 13,360 bloggers in every imaginable niche, language, and style. Everyone from meteoric success stories like Laurel Bern to thousands of students who have struggled to break through the noise.

And we’ve noticed some patterns. Some very interesting patterns.

Data from students shows us that some blog topics get traffic quite easily while others are nearly impossible. For instance, you can blog about square-shaped tomatoes with as much vigor and persistence as you like, and you’re never going to take off, because… nobody cares.

In fact, the range of blog topics where you can expect to both get substantial traffic and monetize is relatively narrow. Some blog topics that seem plausible from the outset, such as freelancing, actually don’t have a prayer of success.

In other words, your choice of what to blog about is critical. If you make the wrong decision, you can execute every traffic and monetization technique flawlessly, and none of it will work, because having the right blog topic is critical.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your blog topic:

Step 1: Choose a Popular Niche

Before you write a single post, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question:

Is anyone in your niche getting significant traffic?

If not, what makes you think you can be the first?

For some reason, people are happy to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours into publishing content without stopping to consider if anyone else has ever been successful. Worse, they believe that competition is bad. They take pride in being the first person to write about a topic and believe that’s an opportunity.

It makes me want to cry. Not only is that perspective flat-out wrong, it’s tragic because it leads you to invest time into projects that never had a prayer of success.

So, how can you tell if a niche is popular or not?

The easiest way is to reference a research library like the one we have in Freedom Machine. It does all the heavy lifting for you by giving you a list of successful blogs, their most popular posts, and examples of how they monetize.

But let’s say you don’t have that. What can you do?

There’s no exact science to it, but here’s the process I recommend:

Find a List of Popular Blogs in the Niche

This is trickier than it sounds.

Let’s say you’re blogging about how to trade stocks. Does that put you in the “stock trading” niche, the “investing” niche, or something else?

My advice: go to the broadest category that makes sense. In the case of trading stocks, that would actually be the “personal finance” niche, assuming you’re targeting people who want to trade stocks for themselves (more discussion about this later).

From there, just run a simple Google query like “best personal finance blogs”, and chances are, you’ll find several lists to browse through:

From there, you just need to dig a little deeper and find out how popular those blogs really are.

Plug the Blogs into Ahrefs to Uncover Their Traffic

One of my favorite things about Ahrefs is it gives you both social and search data. Let’s go through an example, and you’ll see what I mean.

In their Site Explorer, you can type in any URL to pull a report on the site:

You’ll get back a report with an enormous amount of data. Going back to our trading stocks example, let’s say I found out that Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular personal finance sites, so I plug it into Ahrefs. Here’s what comes back:

And that’s just a sample. In the left sidebar, there are lots of additional reports where you can go even deeper.

If you want to look at social traffic, for example, you can click the “Top Content” link, and here’s what you get back:

There’s all the content on the site, sorted by total shares. As you can see, the top 10 posts all crossed 2,000 shares, so it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is doing well from a social traffic perspective.

Personally, I like to see at least five sites within the same niche with at least five posts above 1,000 shares. That’s usually enough to start guessing what readers in the space want to read more about. More on this later.

A Word of Warning about Popularity

Stop for a moment and think about another question:

What’s your end goal for building a blog?

I’m guessing it’s not just to get a bunch of traffic and feel good about yourself. You want to turn that traffic into money somehow, right?

Well, some niches are dramatically easier to monetize than others. You can get a lot of traffic writing about the daily activities of celebrities, for example, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make money blogging about it.

Some niches can only be monetized through advertising. A good example is the news. Every time you read an article on a news site, they get paid a few cents for an “impression.” That’s how they survive.

If you do the math though, it takes a lot of traffic to start earning enough from advertising to quit your job or do anything meaningful. Like… hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

For that reason, when my team evaluates popular niches, we also look at how the blogs are monetizing. Ideally, we want to see people selling some type of products and services because those genuinely have the highest ROI on blogs. If all we find are popular sites stuffed with ads, it’s a bad sign.

The bottom line?

Popularity is good, but it’s not enough. When you’re doing research, also pay attention to how blogs in the space are monetizing.

Step 2: Choose a Single Tribe That’s Hungry for Content

When you’re researching a niche, you’ll notice blogs seem to focus on different types of readers.

In the personal finance niche, for example, blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar focus on fundamentals like secure investments, living frugally, and so on. At the same time, there are other blogs like I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Mr. Money Mustache that focus much more on how to increase your income and improve your lifestyle.

If you feel like those sites are fundamentally different, you’re right. While they both occupy the personal finance niche, they serve different “tribes.”

Here’s what I mean by tribe:

A tribe is a group of people who congregate online around common interests.

In the personal finance space, the two biggest groups are “save and invest” people and “increase your income” people. Neither tribe is right, but they don’t really mix well with one another. You won’t find a blog focusing equally on both tribes.

So, how does this help you?

It allows you to narrow in on your target audience. Here’s what to do:

Name the Tribe for Each Popular Blog in Your Niche

Earlier, we talked about identifying at least five blogs with more than 1,000 shares on at least a few posts. Now let’s go back and figure out which tribe they are talking to.

For instance, here are the popular posts on Mr. Money Mustache:

Do you see the pattern?

Mr. Money Mustache is clearly positioning himself for getting rich and against extreme frugality in some of his most popular posts. In other words, he’s speaking primarily to the “increase your income” people.

So, go through your list of five blogs. Based on their most popular posts, who are they resonating with? If it’s not immediately clear, here’s how to figure it out:

Skim through their popular posts for patterns.

Read at least a few of them to get a better idea of their philosophy.

Based on what you’ve learned, assign the tribe a name.

When you’re finished, you should have a pretty good idea about who’s interested in reading what. From there, you’re ready to…

Choose the Tribe That’s the Best Fit for You

Not all decisions can be made with spreadsheets and numbers. To succeed at blogging, you also need to consider what you enjoy talking about. The sweet spot is the overlap between your interests and everyone else’s:

For instance, let’s say all of the blogs you studied were suddenly interested in having you take over as Editor-In-Chief. Ask yourself…

Based on your own approach and philosophy, which tribe would be most excited to have you as their leader?

Which tribe do you feel like you could help grow and achieve their objectives?

In other words, you’re looking for an existing blog and tribe to serve as a model for what you want to build. It’s already built a following, so it’s clearly viable, and you feel like you could also contribute in a meaningful way.

That’s what I call the Zone of Magic. Ideally, it’s where you spend all your time.

What to Do It If You Don’t like Your Options

Before we move on, there’s one important question we need to address:

What if you’re not a good match for any of the existing tribes in your niche?

Approximately 60% of the students who go through our flagship course, Freedom Machine, find themselves in this exact situation. They have zero interest in writing about any of the topics they find on other popular sites in their niche. Even worse, they feel like those bloggers and their tribes just “don’t get it.”

If you find yourself in that situation, here’s a little tough love for you:

If there’s not an existing tribe who’s clearly interested in the same things you are, and you start a blog anyway, you’re essentially telling people they are wrong and need to change the way they think. In general, people don’t respond well to this. Not only will they refuse to share your posts or buy your products, but they might send you some hate mail as well.

The better, safer, and ultimately much more rewarding approach?

Go back to the drawing board and find a tribe whose interests align with yours. Instead of fighting them, just figure out where they want to go and show them how to get there.

Here’s how…

Step 3: Write About Their Proven Interests

Which would you rather write about: topics you think your readers might like, or ones you know will get traffic, because you have proof of those topics being popular in the past?

Obviously, it’s better to have the proof, right? You might as well invest your time where you have the best chances of success.

In this section, I’ll show you how to uncover those proven interests, as well as put your own spin on them. Let’s jump in.

Drill Deeper into the Site Stats

Earlier, we used Ahrefs to examine the most shared posts on Mr. Money Mustache. Let’s go back to that:

In general, the highest-quality shares are the ones from Facebook, so I tend to sort posts that way instead of by overall shares. Save these for later by running a custom export of the first 20 rows and saving it to your computer.

The next step is to dig into the keywords driving the most search engine traffic. You can find those by clicking on “Organic keywords” in the left sidebar.

The default sorting by traffic is fine, but if you’re a beginning blogger, I would recommend eliminating all keywords with a keyword difficulty (KD) over 40. Again, do a custom export of the first 20 rows and save it to your computer.

You should go through the same process for all the most popular sites serving your tribe. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a list of dozens or maybe hundreds of posts proven to be popular with your audience.

Choose Posts Where You Can Add Value

So… now you have a big list of popular posts on other sites serving your tribe. That’s obviously useful information, but here’s the big question:

How do you use that information without sounding like a copycat?

You didn’t get into this to regurgitate the ideas of other writers. You want to publish content that’s uniquely you.

Here’s how:

Copy the topic, not the advice.

For instance, one of Mr. Money Mustache’s most popular posts is Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero in One Blog Post. The topic is getting rich, and the advice is to live simply and frugally on half of what you make.

If I were to write a post on the same topic, I would talk about getting a remote job where you can live in a cheaper country like Mexico but continue making US dollars. In other words, I would give completely different advice on the same topic, and I would interweave my own story of moving to Mexico into it.

I’d also choose a different headline like, “How I Became a Millionaire from My Wheelchair.” Again, it’s the same topic, but an entirely unique headline. No one would accuse me of being a copycat.

You can follow the same approach with the most popular topics in your space. Scan through the list of posts you exported from Ahrefs and choose the ones where you can write about the same topic but give your own unique advice.

Write a Better Version of That Post

Okay, you’re almost ready to write your post. Finally!

Before you start scribbling down your thoughts, consider two final questions:

What made the post you studied on the topic popular?

What can you do to create an even better post?

It’s like the old saying, “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” When you find a popular posts model, you always want to know why it worked, and you want a good idea of how to improve upon it.

At some point, I’ll write a post detailing exactly how to do that, but here’s the short version. There are five ways to improve upon any post, and they all begin with the letter ‘D’:

Detail: make your post more detailed (or comprehensive).

Design: include an infographic or organize your points in a more useful way.

Data: include unique stats or examples to back up your points.

Drama: amp up the emotion by infusing your post with personality and stories.

Distinctions: give advice based on your unique perspective as an expert.

For instance, the Getting Rich post on Mr. Money Mustache is pretty short and lacks a lot of detail, so if I wanted to compete, I would probably write a much more comprehensive manual for getting rich, clocking in at 3000+ words. I might also add in my personal story, giving it extra drama.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the bottom line:

Your goal is to write the best post ever published on a proven, familiar topic.

Is it easy?

Hell no. Usually, it’s a lot of work.

But this is how you win.

You stop writing about whatever you want and limit yourself to proven topics.

You study the competition.

You create content so much better than theirs, that it makes them want to call their mommy.

‘nough said.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

The post What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from Internet Marketing Tips https://smartblogger.com/what-to-blog-about/

[annegalliher]

What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics

Let’s begin with a simple fact:

Anyone can start a blog, but not anyone can start a blog other people want to read.

In the throes of self-pity, you might be tempted to believe it’s because of the fickleness of human nature, a lack of influential connections, or perhaps the realization of how difficult building an engaged audience actually is.

And you would be partially correct. All those factors do play a part.

But what if I told you the primary cause of failure for bloggers is actually their choice of what to blog about? Not their connections, not their persistence, not their understanding of how blogging actually works, but the accidental, unfortunate decision to write about the wrong blog topics.

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The good news is, I’m about to prove that assertion to you right now. Even better, I’ll show you how to uncover exactly what to blog about, increasing your chances of success 100X.

Blog Topic Insights from Studying 13,360 Bloggers

Over the years, my team and I have mentored 13,360 bloggers in every imaginable niche, language, and style. Everyone from meteoric success stories like Laurel Bern to thousands of students who have struggled to break through the noise.

And we’ve noticed some patterns. Some very interesting patterns.

Data from students shows us that some blog topics get traffic quite easily while others are nearly impossible. For instance, you can blog about square-shaped tomatoes with as much vigor and persistence as you like, and you’re never going to take off, because… nobody cares.

In fact, the range of blog topics where you can expect to both get substantial traffic and monetize is relatively narrow. Some blog topics that seem plausible from the outset, such as freelancing, actually don’t have a prayer of success.

In other words, your choice of what to blog about is critical. If you make the wrong decision, you can execute every traffic and monetization technique flawlessly, and none of it will work, because having the right blog topic is critical.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your blog topic:

Step 1: Choose a Popular Niche

Before you write a single post, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question:

Is anyone in your niche getting significant traffic?

If not, what makes you think you can be the first?

For some reason, people are happy to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours into publishing content without stopping to consider if anyone else has ever been successful. Worse, they believe that competition is bad. They take pride in being the first person to write about a topic and believe that’s an opportunity.

It makes me want to cry. Not only is that perspective flat-out wrong, it’s tragic because it leads you to invest time into projects that never had a prayer of success.

So, how can you tell if a niche is popular or not?

The easiest way is to reference a research library like the one we have in Freedom Machine. It does all the heavy lifting for you by giving you a list of successful blogs, their most popular posts, and examples of how they monetize.

But let’s say you don’t have that. What can you do?

There’s no exact science to it, but here’s the process I recommend:

Find a List of Popular Blogs in the Niche

This is trickier than it sounds.

Let’s say you’re blogging about how to trade stocks. Does that put you in the “stock trading” niche, the “investing” niche, or something else?

My advice: go to the broadest category that makes sense. In the case of trading stocks, that would actually be the “personal finance” niche, assuming you’re targeting people who want to trade stocks for themselves (more discussion about this later).

From there, just run a simple Google query like “best personal finance blogs”, and chances are, you’ll find several lists to browse through:

From there, you just need to dig a little deeper and find out how popular those blogs really are.

Plug the Blogs into Ahrefs to Uncover Their Traffic

One of my favorite things about Ahrefs is it gives you both social and search data. Let’s go through an example, and you’ll see what I mean.

In their Site Explorer, you can type in any URL to pull a report on the site:

You’ll get back a report with an enormous amount of data. Going back to our trading stocks example, let’s say I found out that Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular personal finance sites, so I plug it into Ahrefs. Here’s what comes back:

And that’s just a sample. In the left sidebar, there are lots of additional reports where you can go even deeper.

If you want to look at social traffic, for example, you can click the “Top Content” link, and here’s what you get back:

There’s all the content on the site, sorted by total shares. As you can see, the top 10 posts all crossed 2,000 shares, so it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is doing well from a social traffic perspective.

Personally, I like to see at least five sites within the same niche with at least five posts above 1,000 shares. That’s usually enough to start guessing what readers in the space want to read more about. More on this later.

A Word of Warning about Popularity

Stop for a moment and think about another question:

What’s your end goal for building a blog?

I’m guessing it’s not just to get a bunch of traffic and feel good about yourself. You want to turn that traffic into money somehow, right?

Well, some niches are dramatically easier to monetize than others. You can get a lot of traffic writing about the daily activities of celebrities, for example, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make money blogging about it.

Some niches can only be monetized through advertising. A good example is the news. Every time you read an article on a news site, they get paid a few cents for an “impression.” That’s how they survive.

If you do the math though, it takes a lot of traffic to start earning enough from advertising to quit your job or do anything meaningful. Like… hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

For that reason, when my team evaluates popular niches, we also look at how the blogs are monetizing. Ideally, we want to see people selling some type of products and services because those genuinely have the highest ROI on blogs. If all we find are popular sites stuffed with ads, it’s a bad sign.

The bottom line?

Popularity is good, but it’s not enough. When you’re doing research, also pay attention to how blogs in the space are monetizing.

Step 2: Choose a Single Tribe That’s Hungry for Content

When you’re researching a niche, you’ll notice blogs seem to focus on different types of readers.

In the personal finance niche, for example, blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar focus on fundamentals like secure investments, living frugally, and so on. At the same time, there are other blogs like I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Mr. Money Mustache that focus much more on how to increase your income and improve your lifestyle.

If you feel like those sites are fundamentally different, you’re right. While they both occupy the personal finance niche, they serve different “tribes.”

Here’s what I mean by tribe:

A tribe is a group of people who congregate online around common interests.

In the personal finance space, the two biggest groups are “save and invest” people and “increase your income” people. Neither tribe is right, but they don’t really mix well with one another. You won’t find a blog focusing equally on both tribes.

So, how does this help you?

It allows you to narrow in on your target audience. Here’s what to do:

Name the Tribe for Each Popular Blog in Your Niche

Earlier, we talked about identifying at least five blogs with more than 1,000 shares on at least a few posts. Now let’s go back and figure out which tribe they are talking to.

For instance, here are the popular posts on Mr. Money Mustache:

Do you see the pattern?

Mr. Money Mustache is clearly positioning himself for getting rich and against extreme frugality in some of his most popular posts. In other words, he’s speaking primarily to the “increase your income” people.

So, go through your list of five blogs. Based on their most popular posts, who are they resonating with? If it’s not immediately clear, here’s how to figure it out:

Skim through their popular posts for patterns.

Read at least a few of them to get a better idea of their philosophy.

Based on what you’ve learned, assign the tribe a name.

When you’re finished, you should have a pretty good idea about who’s interested in reading what. From there, you’re ready to…

Choose the Tribe That’s the Best Fit for You

Not all decisions can be made with spreadsheets and numbers. To succeed at blogging, you also need to consider what you enjoy talking about. The sweet spot is the overlap between your interests and everyone else’s:

For instance, let’s say all of the blogs you studied were suddenly interested in having you take over as Editor-In-Chief. Ask yourself…

Based on your own approach and philosophy, which tribe would be most excited to have you as their leader?

Which tribe do you feel like you could help grow and achieve their objectives?

In other words, you’re looking for an existing blog and tribe to serve as a model for what you want to build. It’s already built a following, so it’s clearly viable, and you feel like you could also contribute in a meaningful way.

That’s what I call the Zone of Magic. Ideally, it’s where you spend all your time.

What to Do It If You Don’t like Your Options

Before we move on, there’s one important question we need to address:

What if you’re not a good match for any of the existing tribes in your niche?

Approximately 60% of the students who go through our flagship course, Freedom Machine, find themselves in this exact situation. They have zero interest in writing about any of the topics they find on other popular sites in their niche. Even worse, they feel like those bloggers and their tribes just “don’t get it.”

If you find yourself in that situation, here’s a little tough love for you:

If there’s not an existing tribe who’s clearly interested in the same things you are, and you start a blog anyway, you’re essentially telling people they are wrong and need to change the way they think. In general, people don’t respond well to this. Not only will they refuse to share your posts or buy your products, but they might send you some hate mail as well.

The better, safer, and ultimately much more rewarding approach?

Go back to the drawing board and find a tribe whose interests align with yours. Instead of fighting them, just figure out where they want to go and show them how to get there.

Here’s how…

Step 3: Write About Their Proven Interests

Which would you rather write about: topics you think your readers might like, or ones you know will get traffic, because you have proof of those topics being popular in the past?

Obviously, it’s better to have the proof, right? You might as well invest your time where you have the best chances of success.

In this section, I’ll show you how to uncover those proven interests, as well as put your own spin on them. Let’s jump in.

Drill Deeper into the Site Stats

Earlier, we used Ahrefs to examine the most shared posts on Mr. Money Mustache. Let’s go back to that:

In general, the highest-quality shares are the ones from Facebook, so I tend to sort posts that way instead of by overall shares. Save these for later by running a custom export of the first 20 rows and saving it to your computer.

The next step is to dig into the keywords driving the most search engine traffic. You can find those by clicking on “Organic keywords” in the left sidebar.

The default sorting by traffic is fine, but if you’re a beginning blogger, I would recommend eliminating all keywords with a keyword difficulty (KD) over 40. Again, do a custom export of the first 20 rows and save it to your computer.

You should go through the same process for all the most popular sites serving your tribe. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a list of dozens or maybe hundreds of posts proven to be popular with your audience.

Choose Posts Where You Can Add Value

So… now you have a big list of popular posts on other sites serving your tribe. That’s obviously useful information, but here’s the big question:

How do you use that information without sounding like a copycat?

You didn’t get into this to regurgitate the ideas of other writers. You want to publish content that’s uniquely you.

Here’s how:

Copy the topic, not the advice.

For instance, one of Mr. Money Mustache’s most popular posts is Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero in One Blog Post. The topic is getting rich, and the advice is to live simply and frugally on half of what you make.

If I were to write a post on the same topic, I would talk about getting a remote job where you can live in a cheaper country like Mexico but continue making US dollars. In other words, I would give completely different advice on the same topic, and I would interweave my own story of moving to Mexico into it.

I’d also choose a different headline like, “How I Became a Millionaire from My Wheelchair.” Again, it’s the same topic, but an entirely unique headline. No one would accuse me of being a copycat.

You can follow the same approach with the most popular topics in your space. Scan through the list of posts you exported from Ahrefs and choose the ones where you can write about the same topic but give your own unique advice.

Write a Better Version of That Post

Okay, you’re almost ready to write your post. Finally!

Before you start scribbling down your thoughts, consider two final questions:

What made the post you studied on the topic popular?

What can you do to create an even better post?

It’s like the old saying, “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” When you find a popular posts model, you always want to know why it worked, and you want a good idea of how to improve upon it.

At some point, I’ll write a post detailing exactly how to do that, but here’s the short version. There are five ways to improve upon any post, and they all begin with the letter ‘D’:

Detail: make your post more detailed (or comprehensive).

Design: include an infographic or organize your points in a more useful way.

Data: include unique stats or examples to back up your points.

Drama: amp up the emotion by infusing your post with personality and stories.

Distinctions: give advice based on your unique perspective as an expert.

For instance, the Getting Rich post on Mr. Money Mustache is pretty short and lacks a lot of detail, so if I wanted to compete, I would probably write a much more comprehensive manual for getting rich, clocking in at 3000+ words. I might also add in my personal story, giving it extra drama.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the bottom line:

Your goal is to write the best post ever published on a proven, familiar topic.

Is it easy?

Hell no. Usually, it’s a lot of work.

But this is how you win.

You stop writing about whatever you want and limit yourself to proven topics.

You study the competition.

You create content so much better than theirs, that it makes them want to call their mommy.

‘nough said.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

The post What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics appeared first on Smart Blogger.

[simonegaleanaus]

What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics

Let’s begin with a simple fact:

Anyone can start a blog, but not anyone can start a blog other people want to read.

In the throes of self-pity, you might be tempted to believe it’s because of the fickleness of human nature, a lack of influential connections, or perhaps the realization of how difficult building an engaged audience actually is.

And you would be partially correct. All those factors do play a part.

But what if I told you the primary cause of failure for bloggers is actually their choice of what to blog about? Not their connections, not their persistence, not their understanding of how blogging actually works, but the accidental, unfortunate decision to write about the wrong blog topics.

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The good news is, I’m about to prove that assertion to you right now. Even better, I’ll show you how to uncover exactly what to blog about, increasing your chances of success 100X.

Blog Topic Insights from Studying 13,360 Bloggers

Over the years, my team and I have mentored 13,360 bloggers in every imaginable niche, language, and style. Everyone from meteoric success stories like Laurel Bern to thousands of students who have struggled to break through the noise.

And we’ve noticed some patterns. Some very interesting patterns.

Data from students shows us that some blog topics get traffic quite easily while others are nearly impossible. For instance, you can blog about square-shaped tomatoes with as much vigor and persistence as you like, and you’re never going to take off, because… nobody cares.

In fact, the range of blog topics where you can expect to both get substantial traffic and monetize is relatively narrow. Some blog topics that seem plausible from the outset, such as freelancing, actually don’t have a prayer of success.

In other words, your choice of what to blog about is critical. If you make the wrong decision, you can execute every traffic and monetization technique flawlessly, and none of it will work, because having the right blog topic is critical.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your blog topic:

Step 1: Choose a Popular Niche

Before you write a single post, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question:

Is anyone in your niche getting significant traffic?

If not, what makes you think you can be the first?

For some reason, people are happy to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours into publishing content without stopping to consider if anyone else has ever been successful. Worse, they believe that competition is bad. They take pride in being the first person to write about a topic and believe that’s an opportunity.

It makes me want to cry. Not only is that perspective flat-out wrong, it’s tragic because it leads you to invest time into projects that never had a prayer of success.

So, how can you tell if a niche is popular or not?

The easiest way is to reference a research library like the one we have in Freedom Machine. It does all the heavy lifting for you by giving you a list of successful blogs, their most popular posts, and examples of how they monetize.

But let’s say you don’t have that. What can you do?

There’s no exact science to it, but here’s the process I recommend:

Find a List of Popular Blogs in the Niche

This is trickier than it sounds.

Let’s say you’re blogging about how to trade stocks. Does that put you in the “stock trading” niche, the “investing” niche, or something else?

My advice: go to the broadest category that makes sense. In the case of trading stocks, that would actually be the “personal finance” niche, assuming you’re targeting people who want to trade stocks for themselves (more discussion about this later).

From there, just run a simple Google query like “best personal finance blogs”, and chances are, you’ll find several lists to browse through:

From there, you just need to dig a little deeper and find out how popular those blogs really are.

Plug the Blogs into Ahrefs to Uncover Their Traffic

One of my favorite things about Ahrefs is it gives you both social and search data. Let’s go through an example, and you’ll see what I mean.

In their Site Explorer, you can type in any URL to pull a report on the site:

You’ll get back a report with an enormous amount of data. Going back to our trading stocks example, let’s say I found out that Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular personal finance sites, so I plug it into Ahrefs. Here’s what comes back:

And that’s just a sample. In the left sidebar, there are lots of additional reports where you can go even deeper.

If you want to look at social traffic, for example, you can click the “Top Content” link, and here’s what you get back:

There’s all the content on the site, sorted by total shares. As you can see, the top 10 posts all crossed 2,000 shares, so it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is doing well from a social traffic perspective.

Personally, I like to see at least five sites within the same niche with at least five posts above 1,000 shares. That’s usually enough to start guessing what readers in the space want to read more about. More on this later.

A Word of Warning about Popularity

Stop for a moment and think about another question:

What’s your end goal for building a blog?

I’m guessing it’s not just to get a bunch of traffic and feel good about yourself. You want to turn that traffic into money somehow, right?

Well, some niches are dramatically easier to monetize than others. You can get a lot of traffic writing about the daily activities of celebrities, for example, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make money blogging about it.

Some niches can only be monetized through advertising. A good example is the news. Every time you read an article on a news site, they get paid a few cents for an “impression.” That’s how they survive.

If you do the math though, it takes a lot of traffic to start earning enough from advertising to quit your job or do anything meaningful. Like… hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

For that reason, when my team evaluates popular niches, we also look at how the blogs are monetizing. Ideally, we want to see people selling some type of products and services because those genuinely have the highest ROI on blogs. If all we find are popular sites stuffed with ads, it’s a bad sign.

The bottom line?

Popularity is good, but it’s not enough. When you’re doing research, also pay attention to how blogs in the space are monetizing.

Step 2: Choose a Single Tribe That’s Hungry for Content

When you’re researching a niche, you’ll notice blogs seem to focus on different types of readers.

In the personal finance niche, for example, blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar focus on fundamentals like secure investments, living frugally, and so on. At the same time, there are other blogs like I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Mr. Money Mustache that focus much more on how to increase your income and improve your lifestyle.

If you feel like those sites are fundamentally different, you’re right. While they both occupy the personal finance niche, they serve different “tribes.”

Here’s what I mean by tribe:

A tribe is a group of people who congregate online around common interests.

In the personal finance space, the two biggest groups are “save and invest” people and “increase your income” people. Neither tribe is right, but they don’t really mix well with one another. You won’t find a blog focusing equally on both tribes.

So, how does this help you?

It allows you to narrow in on your target audience. Here’s what to do:

Name the Tribe for Each Popular Blog in Your Niche

Earlier, we talked about identifying at least five blogs with more than 1,000 shares on at least a few posts. Now let’s go back and figure out which tribe they are talking to.

For instance, here are the popular posts on Mr. Money Mustache:

Do you see the pattern?

Mr. Money Mustache is clearly positioning himself for getting rich and against extreme frugality in some of his most popular posts. In other words, he’s speaking primarily to the “increase your income” people.

So, go through your list of five blogs. Based on their most popular posts, who are they resonating with? If it’s not immediately clear, here’s how to figure it out:

Skim through their popular posts for patterns.

Read at least a few of them to get a better idea of their philosophy.

Based on what you’ve learned, assign the tribe a name.

When you’re finished, you should have a pretty good idea about who’s interested in reading what. From there, you’re ready to…

Choose the Tribe That’s the Best Fit for You

Not all decisions can be made with spreadsheets and numbers. To succeed at blogging, you also need to consider what you enjoy talking about. The sweet spot is the overlap between your interests and everyone else’s:

For instance, let’s say all of the blogs you studied were suddenly interested in having you take over as Editor-In-Chief. Ask yourself…

Based on your own approach and philosophy, which tribe would be most excited to have you as their leader?

Which tribe do you feel like you could help grow and achieve their objectives?

In other words, you’re looking for an existing blog and tribe to serve as a model for what you want to build. It’s already built a following, so it’s clearly viable, and you feel like you could also contribute in a meaningful way.

That’s what I call the Zone of Magic. Ideally, it’s where you spend all your time.

What to Do It If You Don’t like Your Options

Before we move on, there’s one important question we need to address:

What if you’re not a good match for any of the existing tribes in your niche?

Approximately 60% of the students who go through our flagship course, Freedom Machine, find themselves in this exact situation. They have zero interest in writing about any of the topics they find on other popular sites in their niche. Even worse, they feel like those bloggers and their tribes just “don’t get it.”

If you find yourself in that situation, here’s a little tough love for you:

If there’s not an existing tribe who’s clearly interested in the same things you are, and you start a blog anyway, you’re essentially telling people they are wrong and need to change the way they think. In general, people don’t respond well to this. Not only will they refuse to share your posts or buy your products, but they might send you some hate mail as well.

The better, safer, and ultimately much more rewarding approach?

Go back to the drawing board and find a tribe whose interests align with yours. Instead of fighting them, just figure out where they want to go and show them how to get there.

Here’s how…

Step 3: Write About Their Proven Interests

Which would you rather write about: topics you think your readers might like, or ones you know will get traffic, because you have proof of those topics being popular in the past?

Obviously, it’s better to have the proof, right? You might as well invest your time where you have the best chances of success.

In this section, I’ll show you how to uncover those proven interests, as well as put your own spin on them. Let’s jump in.

Drill Deeper into the Site Stats

Earlier, we used Ahrefs to examine the most shared posts on Mr. Money Mustache. Let’s go back to that:

In general, the highest-quality shares are the ones from Facebook, so I tend to sort posts that way instead of by overall shares. Save these for later by running a custom export of the first 20 rows and saving it to your computer.

The next step is to dig into the keywords driving the most search engine traffic. You can find those by clicking on “Organic keywords” in the left sidebar.

The default sorting by traffic is fine, but if you’re a beginning blogger, I would recommend eliminating all keywords with a keyword difficulty (KD) over 40. Again, do a custom export of the first 20 rows and save it to your computer.

You should go through the same process for all the most popular sites serving your tribe. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a list of dozens or maybe hundreds of posts proven to be popular with your audience.

Choose Posts Where You Can Add Value

So… now you have a big list of popular posts on other sites serving your tribe. That’s obviously useful information, but here’s the big question:

How do you use that information without sounding like a copycat?

You didn’t get into this to regurgitate the ideas of other writers. You want to publish content that’s uniquely you.

Here’s how:

Copy the topic, not the advice.

For instance, one of Mr. Money Mustache’s most popular posts is Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero in One Blog Post. The topic is getting rich, and the advice is to live simply and frugally on half of what you make.

If I were to write a post on the same topic, I would talk about getting a remote job where you can live in a cheaper country like Mexico but continue making US dollars. In other words, I would give completely different advice on the same topic, and I would interweave my own story of moving to Mexico into it.

I’d also choose a different headline like, “How I Became a Millionaire from My Wheelchair.” Again, it’s the same topic, but an entirely unique headline. No one would accuse me of being a copycat.

You can follow the same approach with the most popular topics in your space. Scan through the list of posts you exported from Ahrefs and choose the ones where you can write about the same topic but give your own unique advice.

Write a Better Version of That Post

Okay, you’re almost ready to write your post. Finally!

Before you start scribbling down your thoughts, consider two final questions:

What made the post you studied on the topic popular?

What can you do to create an even better post?

It’s like the old saying, “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” When you find a popular posts model, you always want to know why it worked, and you want a good idea of how to improve upon it.

At some point, I’ll write a post detailing exactly how to do that, but here’s the short version. There are five ways to improve upon any post, and they all begin with the letter ‘D’:

Detail: make your post more detailed (or comprehensive).

Design: include an infographic or organize your points in a more useful way.

Data: include unique stats or examples to back up your points.

Drama: amp up the emotion by infusing your post with personality and stories.

Distinctions: give advice based on your unique perspective as an expert.

For instance, the Getting Rich post on Mr. Money Mustache is pretty short and lacks a lot of detail, so if I wanted to compete, I would probably write a much more comprehensive manual for getting rich, clocking in at 3000+ words. I might also add in my personal story, giving it extra drama.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the bottom line:

Your goal is to write the best post ever published on a proven, familiar topic.

Is it easy?

Hell no. Usually, it’s a lot of work.

But this is how you win.

You stop writing about whatever you want and limit yourself to proven topics.

You study the competition.

You create content so much better than theirs, that it makes them want to call their mommy.

‘nough said.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

The post What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/what-to-blog-about/

[moffixxey]

What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics

Let’s begin with a simple fact:

Anyone can start a blog, but not anyone can start a blog other people want to read.

In the throes of self-pity, you might be tempted to believe it’s because of the fickleness of human nature, a lack of influential connections, or perhaps the realization of how difficult building an engaged audience actually is.

And you would be partially correct. All those factors do play a part.

But what if I told you the primary cause of failure for bloggers is actually their choice of what to blog about? Not their connections, not their persistence, not their understanding of how blogging actually works, but the accidental, unfortunate decision to write about the wrong blog topics.

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The good news is, I’m about to prove that assertion to you right now. Even better, I’ll show you how to uncover exactly what to blog about, increasing your chances of success 100X.

Blog Topic Insights from Studying 13,360 Bloggers

Over the years, my team and I have mentored 13,360 bloggers in every imaginable niche, language, and style. Everyone from meteoric success stories like Laurel Bern to thousands of students who have struggled to break through the noise.

And we’ve noticed some patterns. Some very interesting patterns.

Data from students shows us that some blog topics get traffic quite easily while others are nearly impossible. For instance, you can blog about square-shaped tomatoes with as much vigor and persistence as you like, and you’re never going to take off, because… nobody cares.

In fact, the range of blog topics where you can expect to both get substantial traffic and monetize is relatively narrow. Some blog topics that seem plausible from the outset, such as freelancing, actually don’t have a prayer of success.

In other words, your choice of what to blog about is critical. If you make the wrong decision, you can execute every traffic and monetization technique flawlessly, and none of it will work, because having the right blog topic is critical.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your blog topic:

Step 1: Choose a Popular Niche

Before you write a single post, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question:

Is anyone in your niche getting significant traffic?

If not, what makes you think you can be the first?

For some reason, people are happy to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours into publishing content without stopping to consider if anyone else has ever been successful. Worse, they believe that competition is bad. They take pride in being the first person to write about a topic and believe that’s an opportunity.

It makes me want to cry. Not only is that perspective flat-out wrong, it’s tragic because it leads you to invest time into projects that never had a prayer of success.

So, how can you tell if a niche is popular or not?

The easiest way is to reference a research library like the one we have in Freedom Machine. It does all the heavy lifting for you by giving you a list of successful blogs, their most popular posts, and examples of how they monetize.

But let’s say you don’t have that. What can you do?

There’s no exact science to it, but here’s the process I recommend:

Find a List of Popular Blogs in the Niche

This is trickier than it sounds.

Let’s say you’re blogging about how to trade stocks. Does that put you in the “stock trading” niche, the “investing” niche, or something else?

My advice: go to the broadest category that makes sense. In the case of trading stocks, that would actually be the “personal finance” niche, assuming you’re targeting people who want to trade stocks for themselves (more discussion about this later).

From there, just run a simple Google query like “best personal finance blogs”, and chances are, you’ll find several lists to browse through:

From there, you just need to dig a little deeper and find out how popular those blogs really are.

Plug the Blogs into Ahrefs to Uncover Their Traffic

One of my favorite things about Ahrefs is it gives you both social and search data. Let’s go through an example, and you’ll see what I mean.

In their Site Explorer, you can type in any URL to pull a report on the site:

You’ll get back a report with an enormous amount of data. Going back to our trading stocks example, let’s say I found out that Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular personal finance sites, so I plug it into Ahrefs. Here’s what comes back:

And that’s just a sample. In the left sidebar, there are lots of additional reports where you can go even deeper.

If you want to look at social traffic, for example, you can click the “Top Content” link, and here’s what you get back:

There’s all the content on the site, sorted by total shares. As you can see, the top 10 posts all crossed 2,000 shares, so it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is doing well from a social traffic perspective.

Personally, I like to see at least five sites within the same niche with at least five posts above 1,000 shares. That’s usually enough to start guessing what readers in the space want to read more about. More on this later.

A Word of Warning about Popularity

Stop for a moment and think about another question:

What’s your end goal for building a blog?

I’m guessing it’s not just to get a bunch of traffic and feel good about yourself. You want to turn that traffic into money somehow, right?

Well, some niches are dramatically easier to monetize than others. You can get a lot of traffic writing about the daily activities of celebrities, for example, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make money blogging about it.

Some niches can only be monetized through advertising. A good example is the news. Every time you read an article on a news site, they get paid a few cents for an “impression.” That’s how they survive.

If you do the math though, it takes a lot of traffic to start earning enough from advertising to quit your job or do anything meaningful. Like… hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

For that reason, when my team evaluates popular niches, we also look at how the blogs are monetizing. Ideally, we want to see people selling some type of products and services because those genuinely have the highest ROI on blogs. If all we find are popular sites stuffed with ads, it’s a bad sign.

The bottom line?

Popularity is good, but it’s not enough. When you’re doing research, also pay attention to how blogs in the space are monetizing.

Step 2: Choose a Single Tribe That’s Hungry for Content

When you’re researching a niche, you’ll notice blogs seem to focus on different types of readers.

In the personal finance niche, for example, blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar focus on fundamentals like secure investments, living frugally, and so on. At the same time, there are other blogs like I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Mr. Money Mustache that focus much more on how to increase your income and improve your lifestyle.

If you feel like those sites are fundamentally different, you’re right. While they both occupy the personal finance niche, they serve different “tribes.”

Here’s what I mean by tribe:

A tribe is a group of people who congregate online around common interests.

In the personal finance space, the two biggest groups are “save and invest” people and “increase your income” people. Neither tribe is right, but they don’t really mix well with one another. You won’t find a blog focusing equally on both tribes.

So, how does this help you?

It allows you to narrow in on your target audience. Here’s what to do:

Name the Tribe for Each Popular Blog in Your Niche

Earlier, we talked about identifying at least five blogs with more than 1,000 shares on at least a few posts. Now let’s go back and figure out which tribe they are talking to.

For instance, here are the popular posts on Mr. Money Mustache:

Do you see the pattern?

Mr. Money Mustache is clearly positioning himself for getting rich and against extreme frugality in some of his most popular posts. In other words, he’s speaking primarily to the “increase your income” people.

So, go through your list of five blogs. Based on their most popular posts, who are they resonating with? If it’s not immediately clear, here’s how to figure it out:

Skim through their popular posts for patterns.

Read at least a few of them to get a better idea of their philosophy.

Based on what you’ve learned, assign the tribe a name.

When you’re finished, you should have a pretty good idea about who’s interested in reading what. From there, you’re ready to…

Choose the Tribe That’s the Best Fit for You

Not all decisions can be made with spreadsheets and numbers. To succeed at blogging, you also need to consider what you enjoy talking about. The sweet spot is the overlap between your interests and everyone else’s:

For instance, let’s say all of the blogs you studied were suddenly interested in having you take over as Editor-In-Chief. Ask yourself…

Based on your own approach and philosophy, which tribe would be most excited to have you as their leader?

Which tribe do you feel like you could help grow and achieve their objectives?

In other words, you’re looking for an existing blog and tribe to serve as a model for what you want to build. It’s already built a following, so it’s clearly viable, and you feel like you could also contribute in a meaningful way.

That’s what I call the Zone of Magic. Ideally, it’s where you spend all your time.

What to Do It If You Don’t like Your Options

Before we move on, there’s one important question we need to address:

What if you’re not a good match for any of the existing tribes in your niche?

Approximately 60% of the students who go through our flagship course, Freedom Machine, find themselves in this exact situation. They have zero interest in writing about any of the topics they find on other popular sites in their niche. Even worse, they feel like those bloggers and their tribes just “don’t get it.”

If you find yourself in that situation, here’s a little tough love for you:

If there’s not an existing tribe who’s clearly interested in the same things you are, and you start a blog anyway, you’re essentially telling people they are wrong and need to change the way they think. In general, people don’t respond well to this. Not only will they refuse to share your posts or buy your products, but they might send you some hate mail as well.

The better, safer, and ultimately much more rewarding approach?

Go back to the drawing board and find a tribe whose interests align with yours. Instead of fighting them, just figure out where they want to go and show them how to get there.

Here’s how…

Step 3: Write About Their Proven Interests

Which would you rather write about: topics you think your readers might like, or ones you know will get traffic, because you have proof of those topics being popular in the past?

Obviously, it’s better to have the proof, right? You might as well invest your time where you have the best chances of success.

In this section, I’ll show you how to uncover those proven interests, as well as put your own spin on them. Let’s jump in.

Drill Deeper into the Site Stats

Earlier, we used Ahrefs to examine the most shared posts on Mr. Money Mustache. Let’s go back to that:

In general, the highest-quality shares are the ones from Facebook, so I tend to sort posts that way instead of by overall shares. Save these for later by running a custom export of the first 20 rows and saving it to your computer.

The next step is to dig into the keywords driving the most search engine traffic. You can find those by clicking on “Organic keywords” in the left sidebar.

The default sorting by traffic is fine, but if you’re a beginning blogger, I would recommend eliminating all keywords with a keyword difficulty (KD) over 40. Again, do a custom export of the first 20 rows and save it to your computer.

You should go through the same process for all the most popular sites serving your tribe. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a list of dozens or maybe hundreds of posts proven to be popular with your audience.

Choose Posts Where You Can Add Value

So… now you have a big list of popular posts on other sites serving your tribe. That’s obviously useful information, but here’s the big question:

How do you use that information without sounding like a copycat?

You didn’t get into this to regurgitate the ideas of other writers. You want to publish content that’s uniquely you.

Here’s how:

Copy the topic, not the advice.

For instance, one of Mr. Money Mustache’s most popular posts is Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero in One Blog Post. The topic is getting rich, and the advice is to live simply and frugally on half of what you make.

If I were to write a post on the same topic, I would talk about getting a remote job where you can live in a cheaper country like Mexico but continue making US dollars. In other words, I would give completely different advice on the same topic, and I would interweave my own story of moving to Mexico into it.

I’d also choose a different headline like, “How I Became a Millionaire from My Wheelchair.” Again, it’s the same topic, but an entirely unique headline. No one would accuse me of being a copycat.

You can follow the same approach with the most popular topics in your space. Scan through the list of posts you exported from Ahrefs and choose the ones where you can write about the same topic but give your own unique advice.

Write a Better Version of That Post

Okay, you’re almost ready to write your post. Finally!

Before you start scribbling down your thoughts, consider two final questions:

What made the post you studied on the topic popular?

What can you do to create an even better post?

It’s like the old saying, “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” When you find a popular posts model, you always want to know why it worked, and you want a good idea of how to improve upon it.

At some point, I’ll write a post detailing exactly how to do that, but here’s the short version. There are five ways to improve upon any post, and they all begin with the letter ‘D’:

Detail: make your post more detailed (or comprehensive).

Design: include an infographic or organize your points in a more useful way.

Data: include unique stats or examples to back up your points.

Drama: amp up the emotion by infusing your post with personality and stories.

Distinctions: give advice based on your unique perspective as an expert.

For instance, the Getting Rich post on Mr. Money Mustache is pretty short and lacks a lot of detail, so if I wanted to compete, I would probably write a much more comprehensive manual for getting rich, clocking in at 3000+ words. I might also add in my personal story, giving it extra drama.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the bottom line:

Your goal is to write the best post ever published on a proven, familiar topic.

Is it easy?

Hell no. Usually, it’s a lot of work.

But this is how you win.

You stop writing about whatever you want and limit yourself to proven topics.

You study the competition.

You create content so much better than theirs, that it makes them want to call their mommy.

‘nough said.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

The post What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/what-to-blog-about/