December 11, 2007
Trend Marketing Case Study Part 1 - How To Find A Topic For Trend Blogging
In my last post, I talked a bit about what I’ve done so far with my blog. And I listed 5 things I’ve completed in order to launch the blog.
Today, I want to address how I came up with a topic to center my Trend Marketing blog around and also touch a bit on how I actually uncover these current events.
Ok, so before you actually set up a blog, you need to find out what topic(s) you want to cover.
Trend blogging is very similar to the whole Authority Site Building concept of Jack Humphrey, with the exception that you don’t necessarily niche down the way you would in Authority Site Building… but like with the building of Authority Sites you would want to choose an area that you have some interest in. By the way, Trend Blogging and Authority Site Building are the only two times I actually recommend that you choose a topic that you at least have a faint interest in.
This is because you are going to be posting to your blog with a relatively high frequency, and if you aren’t interested in what you’re writing about you will soon lose focus and it will become a chore.
So, if you like sports you may want to do a blog on this topic (there’s plenty of buzz on this topic alone). For some sports you could even create separate blogs since they can drive a ton of traffic on their own… like Baseball, Basketball etc. The downside is that many of these sports are seasonal, which means the traffic on your blog will die down during the off season.
If you are a news junkie, i.e. you watch CNN like your life depended on it, you might enjoy creating a "world news" or a "financial news" blog.
You could even create a blog all about product reviews… writing about products that are HOT at the moment.
There are a TON of options, but I would recommend that you choose a "broad" topic (unless you have your finger firmly on the pulse of your chosen niche). That way you won’t run dry of current events.
If you are stuck and don’t know what topic(s) to cover, have a look at DMOZ.org and check out my video below.
As for finding current trends, here are some of my favorite resources:
- Google Trends (Trends.Google.com)
- Yahoo Buzz Index (Buzz.Yahoo.com)
- Lycos Top 50 (50.lycos.com)
- What’s Hot on eBay (pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html)
- eBay Pulse (pulse.ebay.com)
- eBay Pop (www.mpire.com/ebayPop.ivk)
To get a better overview of the process of selecting a topic for your blog and how you can find the latest trends, check out the video below:
In part 2 of this tutorial, I will be going over how you can set up your Blogger blog (in case you’re unfamiliar).
Tags: blog marketing, authority sites, jack humphrey, trend blogging, google trends, authority site building, buzz marketing, blogger, affiliate marketing, trend marketing
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6 Comments on Trend Marketing Case Study Part 1 - How To Find A Topic For Trend Blogging »
December 11, 2007
Chris @ ComicHacks.com @ 6:34 am:
Stephen,
Great post!
I like Blogger. It’s what I used to start blogging, but I don’t like the fact that I can’t postdate posts and have them automatically post at a later date like I can with WordPress.
Do you know if there’s anything out there that can solve this problem for me?
Thanks!
Steven @ 5:30 pm:
Hi Chris,
Thanks.
As for post dating or scheduling posts for Blogger hosted niche blogs… I use Easy Blogger Creator Pro (http://easybloggercreator.com/) for that.
However, it’s not terribly useful for Trend Blogging, since you never know what’s going to be hot from one day to the next.
Hope this helps,
Steven
Chris @ ComicHacks.com @ 7:53 pm:
Steven,
I’d never heard of that tool before. Thanks for telling me about it!!
It seems with Trend Blogging that you need to be sitting at your computer ready to blog, but I’m sure that I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying.
How often do you post to the blog?
And sorry for misspelling your name before. That was rude and I apologize.
Thanks again!
Steven @ 8:08 pm:
No worries Chris.
Yes, Trend Blogging does mean that you need to keep tabs on what’s going on during the day… but I can ensure you that I don’t sit glued to my laptop all day long.
My trend blogging frequency varies, but generally I post 3 - 5 posts per day (depends on my mood). Doesn’t really take long either… perhaps 20 - 40 minutes.
What often happens (at least to me) is that while I look for the most current events, I find a few things I’d like to write about. So I end up writing two or three posts in one sitting.
I generally blog three times per day. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once in the evening.
Once you get into the habit, it’s not really difficult to do. It’s sort of like working out…
/Steven
December 12, 2007
Buddy @ 7:56 pm:
Steven and others,
I am a bit late to the WordPress thing but Blogger I love simply because I can setup my blog to receive emails from my BlackBerry device. Coupled with the Alerts I used to receive I believe what you have shown use is pretty powerful without having to stay in front of the computer 24×7.
My Blog died a horrible death due to my job being eliminated and my BB device was returned to the company…sniff…sniff…
I miss it!
But you can bet that when I get one back your system will be implemented on a whole new level.
Later and good luck!
Buddy
January 16, 2008
Joy @ 3:48 pm:
Your post is really helpful..I’ve tried doing some blog before on health and weight loss issues but I stopped posting new topics now.
I agree with what you’ve said..we need to have an interest on the topic that we are blogging about so we won’t grew tired of it easily.