Whether you are a budding content creator, an established influencer, or a business, you may be considering starting a blog. But obviously you are questioning whether or not it’s even necessary. Blogs can be time consuming and extremely difficult to start up. So the question stands…

Do I really need to start a blog?

Simply put, yes, you need a blog. It does not matter what industry you are in, you need a blog if you are trying to make money through selling products, services, or monetizing your content with affiliate links. But this is a loaded question as it also brings up other questions about why you should make a blog and how.

Why do I need one?

When people are looking for something, they are using a search engine to help them. They are typing words into a computer and hoping for an answer. That answer will not be found on your social media page. It will be found on your own website. Social media is great for fleeting engagement, time sensitive information, or sharing something fun. You may recommend to your followers how awesome a certain vacuum is, but within a week, your audience probably will forget the model you were talking about. And if they weren’t a follower of your page, the odds of them finding the answer with you is slim to none.

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Having your own website with blog content ensures that those searches find their way to your door.

What do I write about?

It’s easy enough to say that you can “write whatever you want”. But that’s too vague and mostly untrue. You need to write things that are 1) in your wheelhouse, and 2) relevant to your audience. For instance, I don’t have kids and as such you won’t see content about “what to pack in a diaper bag” on my blog. Because that is not in my wheelhouse of knowledge. I also don’t write about “the best plays by the Kansas City Chiefs” because that is not relevant to my audience.

So I will say this: you can write whatever you want within reason.

What shouldn’t I write about in my blog?

Like I have said before, people everywhere are looking for answers to questions. It will be your job to answer them. I can tell you from personal experience that writing about your personal experience will get you nowhere. I am not sorry to say this, but no one cares about how much fun you had in Utah. No one cares about how difficult it was during your breakup. No one cares about the list of books you read this year.

Instead, you should be writing content like this:

• “Fun Activities to Do in Utah”
• “How to Get Through a Rough Breakup”
• “30+ Books that You HAVE to Read This Year”

People are searching for answers for themselves. They are not going to type “what did Chelsea do while visiting San Diego”. They are going to search “what to do on a short trip to San Diego“. Obviously to answer these questions you will need to have personal knowledge on it. But your content should be geared towards helping someone else. Nothing is more painful than looking up a recipe for snickerdoodles and having to scroll through paragraphs and paragraphs of that person telling us about their life history with their grandma. I’ll say it again for the people in the back – no one cares about YOUR experience. And as such you will have to spin your blogs to make sure it is directed towards what other people would be asking.

Blogs are meant to answer questions. Even if they never formally asked them. Write your content in a way that helps to answer a question that they may not have even known they were trying to ask.

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So stop waiting. You need to start a blog because you need a blog. I personally recommend WordPress. It has helped me start at the level that I wanted for free and as I saw growth, they had upgrade options to help me do that. I love the amount of customization you can put in the blog content itself. You can also install plug-ins to help advance your blog further. A lot of the plug-ins I use are free too! This year, I was even able to use one of the plug-ins to make my own app! (Check it out – it’s available for iOS and Android!)

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