Lsn #2: What to Write About...

ANSWER THE PUBLIC.
I am asked this question every single time in a classroom, "What should I write about?" And I hear preposterous things like, “I don’t know anything.”

How can anyone say that?

So here is a good rule of thumb… what is your career? What is your hobby or interests? In fact, I recently received a magazine subscription list from my Girl Scout niece. I immediately realized that it was a fabulous list of topics to get your blog ideas from. Click here to see a scanned copy. If you see a magazine title you would read, then you've hit on a possible topic to blog about. Also, if you have 20 years of experience in “anything” then you are an expert of that thing.

I happen to have 20+ years of computer use. Guess what? I’m an expert! Does that mean I’m the smartest computer person in the world? Absolutely not. But I’m an expert to someone with only 2 years experience.

If you asked me to give advice about any random topic right now, surprisingly, my advice would have nothing to do with computers. My advice would be, “Don’t gossip. It will do more long term damage to YOUR reputation and not hurt the other person at all.” And then I would follow with a relevant story to illustrate my words of advice.

At the end of my story, I would have a blog post ready and I would name it “How to Gossip to Ruin Your Reputation”

And today's second topic on “What to Write About…” is that your title is vitally important. It should be catchy, more than 3 words but less than 10, Each Word Capitalized. Let's say I am scanning through blog titles because I have to teach on the subject at church next weekend and I’m looking for examples to bring up. The titles I see online are:

“Gossip Is Unhealthy”
“Gossip Is Not Biblical”
“Gossiping Will Hurt You”
“It Is Bad To Gossip”

And then I see this one…

“How To Gossip To Ruin Your Reputation”

Now that one is interesting enough for me to click on.

An old way to find related ideas for your topic is by using Google's Wonder Wheel. Crazy name and it no longer exists.  It's been replaced with http://answerthepublic.com/. It's an awesome tool to find subject matter that's talked about online.

Go to http://answerthepublic.com/, type your topic in the search box choose your country, and click "Questions".  View the very cool results - which may vary depending on the topic.
Then click a second topic to see other relevant topics.

Lesson 2 Assignment: Give me some advice. Write it down in your blog and click “Publish Post”. In fact, be an overachiever and write 3 posts on the same subject.

We have to have words in place before we can move onto the money making portion. The more posts you have ready, the more words will be found by the advertisers.

Get writing… then go on to Assignment #3 where you will learn how to see if people are reading your prose.