Use this brainstorming method and chart to help you figure out blog topics and content
Thinking about starting a blog? After considering the costs of starting a blog, one of the next things you should consider is your blog niche. What is it that you want to blog about?
You’ll need to brainstorm blog ideas on the kinds of topics that you are most interested in and want to write about. If you also plan on monetizing your blog, these topics should be things that many other people will be interested in too. When I started creating this blog, I came up with a neat little trick to help me organize all of the topics I wanted to talk about. I call it the Blog Niche Tree.
In this post I’ll show you how to make a blog niche tree, and how to use it so that it can help you brainstorm topics as well. At the end I’m including a blank printable Blog Niche Tree so you can get started on making one of your own.
Finding Your Blog Niche
When you start to write a blog, many people will tell you to find your niche. Particularly if you want that blog to be monetized. If you’re considering ideas for that type of blog, Entrepreneur.com has some excellent tips. To get you thinking in the right direction.
And while all of that’s great advice, how exactly do you go about doing that? You have to sit there and put some real thought into what you plan to talk about, and it’s not enough to just say “lifestyle”.
That’s a fine topic, but if you leave it that general you may find it hard to actually come up with blog posts or any other content surrounding your blog. Time and time again you’ll sit down with no plan and have to figure it out all out from scratch before you can get to creating.
Or, if you’re like me, you’ll have so many topics that you enjoy and want to talk about, that you won’t be able to decide on what to write next and it will feel so disorganized.
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A Helpful Tool for Brainstorming Blog Topics
That’s why I came up with an orderly way to categorize my topics by making a blog niche tree diagram. And, once I began putting my topics into groups, I discovered the added bonus of having even more material to choose from than I had originally thought.
Now at a glance I can see where I have the most ideas, so I know what I need to focus on if I want to come up with more in a certain area. Or, I can even narrow down my niche if I find I have a lot of ideas in just a few areas.
Creating the Blog Niche Tree
So you’ll want to start with the name of your blog. If you haven’t thought of one yet this is a great time to do that. Otherwise you can just leave a placeholder for now.
Moving down to the next level you should start with your main blog topics. These should be your most general, top level ideas that serve as the umbrella over all of your blog topics.
You can be really niche here and just have one, but usually two or three are recommended, and definitely no more than five. These are large topics, so it’s okay if they contain multiple concepts. Here’s mine:
You may notice that some ideas you have could overlap with more than one of your categories. That is totally fine! The goal here is to keep you blogging about topics within a similar niche, so things that work under multiple topics are actually better! You are in charge of categorizing, so don’t worry about rigidly putting them into strict boxes.
After your first level of general topics, move down to make the next level of more specific topics. Mine look like this:
As you can see, even if you just chose a few topics, you should quickly have many topics branching from that. If you find that you are struggling to come up with ideas, your first topic may already be too specific and you should go back and try to make it broader.
Customize Your Blog Niche Tree Ideas
By the time you reach this next third level of topics, you should have plenty of material to pull ideas from for things like blog posts, Instagram stories, email list content, freebies, etc.
You can list these all at the bottom if you like. If you feel like you want to go one more level, you can do that too! This is your blog, so use tools like this just to guide you, not to limit you.
Here’s a blank template that you can use to fill in for your own blog ideas however you decide.
Keep this handy with your blog planning materials, and any time you’re ready to start creating you’ll have this already laid out with organized topics to pull from. You’ll be able to keep things on track with your blog and ensure it stays mostly cohesive. Happy Blogging!
Final Thoughts on Creating a Tree to Choose A Blog Niche
Finding your blog niche can sometimes be the most challenging part about starting a blog. But if you use an organizational method like the blog niche tree to get your thoughts laid out it will make the task so much easier. Let me know if you’ve tried this and/or what worked for you in the comments!
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