If you’re a long-time blogger you, at some point, have inevitably looked at a blank document on a computer screen and thought to yourself, “I have no idea what I’m going to write about.”
And if you’ve never been a blogger it’s likely you haven’t even fathomed the idea of, you know, sharing your thoughts with all of “those” people on the Internet, let alone knowing what to write about. This is a topic I’ve addressed with a number of individuals during the past few months, and imagine it will continue to come up time and time again.
When the “What do I write about?” question comes up I quickly start brainstorming and within minutes can develop a number of topics for the individual to write about.
My method isn’t rocket science.
It’s also not some wildly colorful secret that you’ve not been told. It is one thing though, and I’d like to share it with you: Common Sense.
Everyone is an “expert” about something. What we fail to do is to realize that what is easy and common sense to Person X (you) may not be common sense to Person Y.
What happens is that people do an inventory of the knowledge floating around in their brain and convince themselves that, due to their expertise, “that’s nothing special” or “everyone already knows that.” And that’s a big mistake.
I recently built a website for someone and the following exchange happened via text message.
Her: “Is my site mobile phone friendly?”
Me: “Yes. Very.”
Her: “Cool! How did you do that?”
What immediately came to mind after seeing her question was, “It really isn’t that big of a deal. I simply customized a mobile responsive WordPress theme.” When I look at that short thought through a different lens, I can quickly see two blog posts develop: one about the importance of creating a mobile friendly website, and another that discusses mobile responsive WordPress themes and how they easily make mobile friendly websites.
That simple exchange, followed by what came to mind for me, is a great example of how we constantly take our knowledge and our life experiences for granted, dismissing it as ordinary content. However, what’s simple for you very well may not be simple for someone else.
