Sangat Pedas

What To Write In A Blog?

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True, the title of this post might be a bit pretentious because I’m not gonna provide you with a list of topics you can write about in your blog. If you want ideas for “what to write in a blog” you can check posts like this and this and good luck with that, it’s not gonna get your blog anywhere.

I’ve started blogging about a year ago out of curiosity and I felt I had something to say and to share. The longer I’m writing on this blog the more I take it seriously and think about it. Obviously the main part of any blog is content so I often contemplated on what to write about on this blog and I guess I’m slowly starting to find out my direction and style. I hope this post will help you find yours.

Blogging requires passion and authority.
Which leaves out most people.

Hugh Macleod - Gapingvoid

One of the blogs I visit pretty regularly is Gapingvoid (check it!) where Hugh Macleod shares and sells his cartoons and his ideas on marketing, life and whatever he thinks is interesting. I first read the quote above about passion and authority probably a year ago and at first I thought it was somewhat arrogant. It makes it sound like blogging is only there for the elite, the ones with “authority”, whatever that means. My first reaction was “who decides whether someone has the authority to blog? Should there be an institute that checks the authority of bloggers?

One thing is for sure, you need to have a passion for blogging. When you start blogging you’ll be happy (or frustrated) to see that after 50 posts you attract maybe 30 visitors per day who leave no comments at all.

So what about the authority? Well, the way I see it he’s also right about that, but it’s not in a kind of elite way. EVERYONE can have authority when it comes to blogging but it all depends on how you chose your topics and what you write about in your blog.

Simple example: if you write about your kids you have the most authority of anyone in the world. Same goes for your sex life, your job, your adventures and you pets. Authority in the context of blogging in my opinion means that you keep it close to home, that you write about things YOU actually deal with, experience and think about in your life.

I see a lot of bloggers looking at the successful blogs like Techcrunch and Mashable and deciding to reblog everything they post but re-edit it a bit and maybe mix their opinion in it. Pretty sure that this strategy won’t work because in this case Techcrunch and Mashable are the authorities and anyone interested in their posts will go to their blogs and not yours.

So what about OPINIONS and authority then? Well, that all depends on the value of your opinion and how interesting or different your opinion is. The value of my opinion on the Indonesian Internet market is for sure a lot higher than my opinion on the financial markets. And if Robert Zoellick would blog about Internet startups I bet no one will give a damn but everyone listens to him when he talks about the financial markets.

Opinions not necessarily need authority but then it helps when they are entertaining or controversial or something to make them stand out. Like Robert Basier does on Reuters “Oddly Enough Blog“, he found his style and definitely entertains me with his posts. Or Dutch opinion site Geenstijl.nl who are famous for their blunt, expressive, sometimes over-the-top and always controversial way they discuss political topics.

Now from an SEO perspective, search engines are pretty much like human beings, they hate copy-cats and duplicate content. If traffic is the only thing that drives you then you might be better off doing something else than blogging.

So if you’re looking for ideas on what to write about, ask yourself the question what you think is interesting, funny or entertaining about you and what goes on in your life!