My blog covers the latest in Social Media, Branding and Using Content.
This sentence summarizes my goal for Ad Rhetorica, which is my blog covering the above things. It seems relatively simple to say what it is your blog covers,but for a lot of people (especially for the people in today’s #blogchat,) it’s the most difficult thing in the world. With so many topics to cover, and so many interesting things, it’s hard to define what it is your blog is about, and as much as you want to, you’re not gonna be able to talk about everything to everyone. If you want an audience, you’ll need to pick some topics, and to do that, you should summarize what your blog is all about.
With that in mind, let’s create your Blog Summary Sentence
- Write down all the topics you cover on your blog - Think about all the things you write about, or want to write about. Let’s assume that you’ve got a political blog. Your blogging topics may consist of things such as political campaigns, scandals, debates, and a few other things. However, some people may have blogs that act as a drop for everything, such as parenting to political thoughts to chess tactics. In any case, list down every topic you’ve covered, whether it’s concerning one entry or several.
- Remove topics you barely cover – Count each time you discuss one of your topics in a blog. Do you tend to be a marketing blogger but find you’ve covered digital music once or twice? Or perhaps you don’t really know what you cover the most of off-hand, but you’ve noticed a trend of some articles being covered more than others? These arguably are what you’re all about, at least on this blog. Pick the 2-3 topics you cover the most, then drop the rest. (You can still write about them, they’re just not what your blog is about.)
- Write a sentence with the topics in them, as small as possible. Ultimately, you want you be able to explain what it is your blog does with one sentence, with the sentence being as small as possible. The best way to find a workable sentence is to go on twitter and work on your sentence using the tweet box. When it’s 140 characters or under, it’s good to go.
Keep in mind that this is NOT an elevator pitch. While it can be the basis for one, you are trying to develop your blog’s purpose. Determine why you write, and the pitch will follow. You’re trying to give your blog an identity.
And don’t worry. If you decide you want to work on a different niche or specialty, you can always change your blog summary sentence later.
Homework
Do the above steps for your site, then report back. What is your summary sentence?