How to Choose Useful Content at the Beginning of a Blog Empire
Your blog will need a theme unless you are a great newspaper columnist or a well-known actress who can get a lot of readers just because of who you are. One example is "Libertarian politics in the Massachusetts Governor's race." "Art that is about life and love" is a broad meaning. No matter what your blog is about, it will keep people coming back if it has the useful information they expect. Not by chance, it will be something blog on technology are interested in and won't be tempted to leave.
There are so many blogs out there that good ones only appeal to one type of reader and do it well. The reason is simple: even if a person likes model trains as much as you do, they might not like fine wines. He might not care about your trip to Paris. He might not be interested in your new car unless you are really close. So, you need to choose a topic and stick to it. Politics, spirituality, society and culture, rants, business, hobbies, technology, art, news, and references are all good places to start.
Technorati.com, a well-known blog search engine, says that a large number of the most famous blogs are about politics. This shouldn't be a surprise, since political views are some of the most strongly held and highly debated, even more so than religious views. Political views provide good blog fodder. But there's a catch: everyone has an opinion, but not all of them are worth reading by millions of people. One thing that the left-leaning Daily Kos, the right-leaning Red State, and the law-focused Volokh Conspiracy all have in common is that they give serious political junkies facts, not just views. They can give you information about rumors, high-level political ties, or their expertise. If you know a lot about what's going on in the world and have connections to politics or the law, a political blog could be your Blog Empire. Blogs about science, religion, and hobbies are all the same in this way. Successful blogs are run by experts who can tell readers about things they want to know. That's why we're going to build your empire on your own knowledge.
But there are popular blogs that aren't run by professionals but by people with great ideas. As of this writing, Post Secret has links from more than 25,000 other blogs, making it the third most popular blog on Technorati. Post Secret users send in a picture that shows a secret they want to share anonymously with the world. "I once made a student repeat a grade so I could flirt with his father for another year," for example, or "I find it funny when my blind dog crashes into furniture." The pieces picked are always presented well (the blogger is good at finding interesting things to write about), so readers can relate to them, cry, or laugh. But perhaps the most important thing is that they keep coming back. Post Secret shows that all you need to start a blog business is a good idea that gets spread around well.
News, link, and reference blogs require a constant interest in one topic and the determination to find relevant, up-to-date information. Serious news junkies trust them because they do a good job of covering their topics. One great example of this kind of blog is Zero Intelligence. Zero Intelligence gets every relevant story on the "zero tolerance" policy for drugs and weapons in public and private schools and then comments on the reports. It acts as a reliable clearinghouse for important information and keeps up with events until they are solved or go away. Another useful blog is "Literally, a Weblog," which talks about how the popular press misuses the word "literally." "Literally, a Weblog" can be used to show how "literally" is used or abused in the arts or media.
No thought is too small, stupid, or full of itself as long as it makes your blog a useful resource. If you're really interested in one topic more than others, a news, link, or reference blog might be the best place to start.