Start a Blog that Matters (New Version 2!)

Initial Content Strategy

This content is for Fizzle members only.

We have our reader journey map and our popular content research, and now we’re going create our initial content strategy.

Some people just blog about whatever they want whenever they like, but content strategy is what the pros use: a plan of topics to write about in order.

Because you need to know this: the topics you choose for your blog posts are actually a huge part of how your blog grows. It’s what you write about as well as how you write about it that will make your blog great.

So, you’ve already done the journey map and the popular content research, and now we’re going to come up with at least 10 content ideas that you could use for your first blog posts. You don’t have to stop at 10, if the juice is running and you feel like it, write down more, as many as you can!

But don’t stress too much about trying to come up with the only the best ideas. These post ideas don’t have to be your 10 viral hits, or your 10 deepest cuts. However, you would do well to spend a little time thinking about this strategy. Think about what your audience needs right now. Are there any topics that are big enough you could break into a series of posts? Which ones do you think would be most helpful for your audience in the beginning.

You should have more than enough raw ideas coming from the previous exercises. Now it’s time to make a list of 10 or more blog post ideas. Follow the action box and when you’re finished I’ll see you in the next lesson where we’ll talk about one of the most important elements of a blog post.

Actions for This Lesson

Your exercise for this lesson is to write down at least 10 ideas for blog posts, that you could write about soon.

For each idea, you should write down a sentence or phrase to describe the overall concept plus several bullet points about the main concepts of the post, so you don’t forget later.

You have three solid sources to pull ideas from already: what you know about your topic and your audience, your reader journey map, and the popular posts research from the last lesson.

These sources should easily generate more than 10 ideas for posts.

In addition to the well of content ideas you hopefully already have, here are a few other kinds of posts you might consider adding to your ideas list:

For even more help in generating popular content ideas, check out episode 86 of The Fizzle Show — How To Reverse Engineer Massively Shareable Content

What if I can’t come up with 10 ideas?

After using these methods and relying on ideas you may already have, if you aren’t able to easily come up with 10 ideas for blog posts, this could be a red flag.

You either need to do more research or consider either changing or broadening your topic.

Is this topic really deep enough to build an entire blog around? Do you know enough about this topic to be able to publish every week indefinitely?

If you’re stuck, you may need to do more research on your chosen topic. Can you find some examples of books, blogs, podcasts and videos that relate to the subject?

Pay attention to what other authors are publishing. Make sure you’re able to come up with 10 blog post ideas before moving on.

OK, you should have plenty of ideas swirling around your noggin now. Write your list of at least 10 post ideas. You’ll get bonus points if you organize the list in the order you would like to publish them in.

When you’re done, I’ll see you in the next lesson.