Some weeks, it's easy to feel foolish because it seems impossible to predict what are popular topics for blog posts. That's when I start nosing around more to discover apparently popular topics on other blogs. In the interests of sharing, here’s a completely unscientific study of what seems to work for other bloggers in creating highly popular topics:

  • Admit you’re failing or incapable of performing a task
  • Use a lot of curse words
  • Put a number in the blog post’s title
  • Express outrage for the sake of expressing outrage
  • Be outrageous for the sake of being outrageous
  • Say something ridiculously contrary to what everyone knows and understands
  • Write an opinion that’s obviously misguided and off the mark
  • If you’re an attractive woman, work your most prominent physical characteristic into the blog (extra points if it's a pictorial reference)
  • Go out on a really shaky limb with a point of view
  • Share something intensely personal, that really is TOO much information
  • Get all preachy about how you’ve gotten screwed over (even when it’s clear you haven’t been)
  • Write about your family pet dying
  • Cover social media topics every single day
  • Promise outlandish success with very little work
  • Self-aggrandize on an epic scale
  • State the obvious - as if you discovered it before anyone else did

That’s my starting list of what makes blog topics popular on other websites.

Unfortunately perhaps, most of these popular topics won't ever work here because they're not things I'd experiment writing about even in a creative pinch.

For those of you kind enough to share your time with the Brainzooming blog, what types of topics are popular with you? - Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we’ve developed  integrated social media strategy for other brands and can do the same for yours, and let you pick the blog topics that work for you!