It seems to be a question worth asking – why even bother creating yet another website in the first place? After all, considering the vastness of the online world, aren’t there enough blogs already?
Mention to someone that you are considering starting a blog, and almost certainly the first response you will hear is this – “Cool. What will it be about?” To this I would suggest that I am not so much concerned with what the site is about as much as I am with what it actually does. Which means what exactly? Well, first consider the notion that a blog needs necessarily to be “about” something.
When I Google the words “blogs about” in the search tab, Google’s query expansion offers the following options – blogs about love; blogs about life; blogs about books; blogs about writing; blogs about anxiety.
When I take this exercise one step further and provide the first letter of the blog topic, Google offers five options beginning with that letter. As such, this theoretically creates an opportunity to observe some of the most popular searched blog topics, listed alphabetically. This exercise yields the following diversity of topics, by corresponding letter:
A – anxiety; addiction; adoption; autism; art
B – books; blogging; being single; bipolar; beauty
C – college; cancer; cats; college life; cheating
D – depression; dogs; divorce; depression/anxiety; dating
E – education; everything; essential oils; everyday life; empty nesters
F – fashion; food; family; fitness; friendship
G – God; grief; gardening; gastric sleeve surgery; growing up
H – health; happiness; hair; heartbreak; history
I – Italy; Iceland: internships; interior design; Ireland
J – Jesus; Japan; journaling; joy; Jamaica
K – kindness; knitting; Korea; Key West; Kauai
L – love; life; lifestyle; losing weight; leadership
M – marriage; music; moving; mental health; money
N – New England; nature; nursing; New York; nutrition
O – organization; Orlando; online dating; OCD; Orlando shooting
P – parenting; politics; Paris; planners; photography
Q – quotes; quilting; Quebec City; quitting drinking; quitting your job
R – reading; running; retirement; real estate; racism
S – sports; saving money; social media; self love; summer
T – travel; Trump; teaching; technology; The Bachelorette
U – Uber; unemployment; unrequited love; ulcerative colitis; unhappy marriages
V – volunteering; video games; Venice; volleyball; vaping
W – writing; weight loss; work; wine; wellness
X – Xbox; Xbox 360; xenical; xforex; xanax withdrawal
Y – yoga; Youtube; yourself; your life; your 20’s
Z – zika virus; Zurich; Zanzibar; zombies; zen
While I am aware how wordy and exhaustive this list appears, holy crap is that a lot of blog topics. And these are just search options with a first letter. When I Google “blogs about ba-” the following options result:
BA – babies; Bachelorette; basketball; Bali; baking
The purpose behind this little exercise is to establish the plain fact that if you can name a topic, there is likely a blog or two (or a hundred) out there already dealing with that topic. I understand that the list above only refers to search queries and not actual websites, but it seems likely that if a topic is subject to public curiosity, it has likely also inspired someone to write about it. Just Google “blogs about gastric sleeve surgery” for proof.
I’ve come to consider myself to be someone who knows a little about a lot, but who knows a lot about very little. There’s no way that I could keep a blog about any one subject that could be as good as one that already exists. But that is beside the point. The question that I would ask myself would be “Why are people Googling all of the blog topics listed above it the first place? What is their motivation?”
If you are looking for a blog about gastric sleeve surgery, you might possibly be considering the procedure for yourself and are looking for information. If you are looking for blogs about weight loss, it could be that you are unhappy with your current weight and are looking for support to lose a few pounds. If you are looking for blogs about zombies, well, presumably you’re just into zombies. And if you’re looking for blogs about Trump, then masochism is probably your thing.
In any event, people may read blogs for one thing or another, but what seems obvious is that whatever they are looking for has some measure of value to them. This is what was alluded to at the start of this post – regardless of topic, delivering value is what the blog ultimately does for the reader. And as such, this is properly the focus when answering the question of why yet another blog on the internet might be viable.
With this focus in mind, the challenge is how to consistently deliver value that is equal to or (hopefully) greater than the time the reader has invested. It’s hard to know how this might be achieved, though time may certainly tell, but I’ll assume that if something can be either interesting, informative, inspiring, or entertaining, then it can deliver value. That seems as good a template to start with as any. Next time, I’ll try to flesh this idea out a little.
BP
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