I try to pay attention to questions from all over the blogging world. From businesses and individuals. From long-time bloggers to those that are thinking of starting a blog. One of the basic strategies for writing a blog is to answer questions people are asking.
And one question I get a lot is about starting a blog when you’re not necessarily and expert on a topic.
For example, you just started golfing. You find that you really love doing it. You want to start a blog about golfing, but you know that you’re not an expert. You just started playing. What could you have to offer others interested in learning about golf and being entertained by golf?
Here are a few things you can do…
1. Interviews
Lots of podcasts are in interview format. But blogging has also long been an interview format as well. Today there are a good number of posts that are interviews. I remember when I started reading blogs over a decade ago that it was common for people to write posts that were interviews. They would send the guest a list of questions, get the responses and organize it nicely for a blog post.
There are lots of different ways to format it. You could post a simple question and answer. You could also do the interview and then organize it like a regular post while giving credit to the person for all of the expert information. This would be kind of in guest post format, but instead of the guest writing and formatting, you just ask them questions and take their information and organize it nice and neatly into a regular blog post.
You could even start with a podcast. And instead of posting transcripts, take the content from the podcast episode and turn it into a written blog post.
2. Documenting Your Journey
Another way you could go about your new blog is by documenting your journey. You see this often on YouTube channels. Perhaps someone wants to document their journey in becoming an expert gardener. They are a novice. They want to learn. They decide to document the entire thing via video.
Well, you can do that via a blog. In fact, this was common in the early days of blogging. Many parenting blogs started this way with the parent documenting their journey from pregnancy to infant to toddler and beyond.
You don’t need to be an expert in something in order to be helpful. We learn different things from all kinds of different people. And even experts can learn from novices by reading about real life stories. It can provide an entirely different perspective.
Imagine a top golf instructor that works only with professional golfers. I would imagine that then working with a total beginner would bring an entirely different set of challenges for the coach.
3. Co-Hosting
Another option to consider is co-hosting the blog. You can bring two different perspectives to the topic. Maybe you’re the beginner and the other person is the expert. Maybe you’re both beginners. Maybe you’re both somewhere in the middle or not quite at the same point in the journey.
You don’t need to co-write blog posts. You could write some. The other person can write some. Then maybe you collaborate on a few. There are no rules and the unique perspective you both bring can help the readers with their questions.
Conclusion
You don’t need to be an expert on a topic to start a blog on said topic. It can be good to be an expert. You can help a lot of people with a lot of questions. But don’t let that fact deter you from starting a different kind of blog. Be upfront with who you are and use one of the methods above to create a wonderful blog that many people will find interesting and useful.