What to Blog About: How to Write What People Want to Read

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If at some point in your blogging journey you wrote an article jam-packed with useful tips, an article where you put all your knowledge, an article that made you so proud, probably the best article that you have ever written, but when you hit publish nothing happened, no one seemed interested in it and no one read it, don’t worry you are not alone.

Every day millions of blog posts get published but unfortunately, only a small percentage get read.

There are multiple aspects in a blog post that make people want to read it. For sure you need to put value in it, you have to give actionable tips, you have to solve a problem and you also have to encourage people to actually read it, for example using the perfect headline.

But you can do all of this and still not see any results.

You know why? Because you made a tiny little mistake that ruined everything, the mistake that every new blogger makes… you wrote for yourself and not for your audience!

I know, especially at the beginning, everyone tells you to write about what you are passionate about. I’m not telling you that’s wrong but it is important that you find an aspect of your passion that people actually want to read about.

Let’s say that you are passionate about your life (good on you). If you want to write about the walk that you took yesterday, probably not many people would read your post, but if you write on the benefits of taking a walk every day, maybe the number of readers would grow.

This is simply because the number of people who find value in your post grows.

I honestly don’t care if you walked yesterday, but if you tell me that I can take some benefits out of a walk I really want to know.

In other words, you don’t have to write what you want to write, you have to write what people want to read. It’ s absolutely true that with your post you need to solve a problem, but you need to solve your reader’s problem not yours.

But how do you know what to write about?

Don’t worry, I’m here to show it to you!

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SEARCHING FOR

Use a SEO tool

Easiest thing: use a tool that gives you stats about keywords.

If you know which keywords are ranking well you know what people are searching for.

We use two different SEO tools at Tinylovebug: SEMRush and Keysearch.

They are both really valuable but while we use SEMRush for a more inclusive SEO purpose on our blog, I would recommend you use Keysearch for the purpose of this blog post.

Insert a topic or a keyword on Keysearch and check if anyone is actually looking for it.

Keysearch will give you the search volume for that keyword (in other words how many people look for that keyword that month) if the search volume is not high enough don’t waste your time writing about that topic.

You can try some of its feature and capabilities here for FREE. No payment details required.

Or if you would like to try all of its features and capabilities, it only costs $17 per month (or way less if you pay yearly).  You can use my discount code KSDISC for 20% OFF. You can sign up here.

Here you can read the steps to find the perfect keyword using Keysearch

Use Google trends

With Google trends, you can insert a topic and it will tell you how that topic is trending. In other words, it will tell you if the topic that you choose is a topic that people are interested in.

Plus, it gives you some related topics from which you can get some good ideas.

Use Pinterest

 Yes, Pinterest is a search engine, people actually go there to look for solutions to their problems.

And we really want to know their problems so that we can write a blog post with the solutions, don’t we?

So, use Pinterest’s search bar to see what people are searching for.

Type your topic on the search bar. Let’s pretend you want to write about blog traffic

You can see from one of the suggestions under the search bar that people want to know about how to get blog traffic and this is what happens when you click on it:

You will discover that people want to know how to get blog traffic specifically from Pinterest.

This is what you should write about!

GET INSPIRED

Read income reports

Are there some bloggers that you admire and are in your niche? Check what is working for them and get inspired.

Go and read their income reports, not for the income, but mostly to see what has worked for them.

Check which of their posts got more interaction, more shares, more comments and do the same.

Just to be clear, I’m not telling you to copy their post just to get the inspiration that you need.

If you can see that yoga is a topic that works and your blog is about health and fitness write more about yoga. If your blog is about finance don’t write about yoga just because it works.

Do the same thing with your own posts: if your post on “quick dinner recipes” did well, write one about “easy breakfasts” and so on.

 Check buzzsumo

Use buzzsumo.com, here you can find which content performs best for any topic.

Insert your keywords or your topic and buzzsumo.com will show you the most shared headlines.

ASK YOUR TRIBE

 Asking directly from your followers is the best thing you can do.

Not only because you definitely want to serve them well, but also because you get to hear the issues of your tribe in their own words and you can use their language in your blog post to make a true connection with them.

Plus, what’s better than asking directly of those people that will read your blog what they want to read about?

Ask in your Facebook group

 A simple question such as “what’s your biggest struggle as a new blogger?” or “what is keeping you from starting your health journey?” can give you thousands of ideas!

But often you don’t even need to ask, go into your Facebook group and check which questions are asked most often.

Ask your email list

 This is the best place where you can ask for ideas. The people in your email list already trust you, you have a connection with them and if they are there it means that they want to hear from you. So, then what’s better than answering their own questions? Solve their problems and they will read your blog posts.

A simple email where you tell them that you are grateful that they are there and because you want to help them even better, you want to hear from them. Also that you want to know how you can really help them and so you want to know their struggles. This will do wonders.

Ask in your blog posts

 Ask directly in your blog post if they have more questions on the topic or if there is something that they would like to know more about.

Read the comments to your blog posts, often you can find ideas for a new blog post starting from your reader’s questions.

I hope this post will help you in writing about what people want to read not what you want to write.

If you have any questions leave them in the comments and I will make sure to answer them… maybe with another blog post.