In a cyberworld of hundreds of millions of blogs, you may think, “why bother blogging?”  Well, if God’s called you to blog and you have a desire to, I encourage you to still go ahead. The blogosphere needs your witness and blogging can be a significant ministry.

It’s Okay to Start Small

It may be that only 50 to 70 people read your thoughts on any particular day, but that’s actually worth celebrating! Would you have gone out to a mall or on a campus and had that many undistracted conversations with 50 to 70 people?

Be grateful to learn what you need to learn when you have a small following. Most bloggers want to reach a lot of people, but allow God to give you the ministry He wants for you and that you can handle well. Allow Him to grow your blog at a pace you can keep up with.

If you do want “more of an impact,” I’ll be publishing content on eQuipping for eMinistry over the next several months to help you with lots of tips and how-to’s.

For now, let’s consider three ways to stand out with your blog.

How to Stand Out with Your Blog’s Topic

Remember the Spirit-filled Life

A very small percentage of blogs are written by authors who understand living a life guided by God’s Holy Spirit. You may think you don’t have anything unique or intriguing to write, but your posts as you process life from God’s perspective will be intriguing to many people. Use your blog’s main topic with a goal of discipleship and/or evangelism behind what you write.

Narrow Your Focus

Consider narrowing your focus. Be specific about your blog’s topic and/or the particular audience you’re writing for. This may even involve a bit of research, especially if you want to publish a blog covering a very popular topic. (You’d have a lot of competition.)

You might find the competition a bit harder with a “mommy blog” or leadership blog, so can you consider a different topic or audience?

If you still want to try a “mommy blog” or leadership blog, which are both very common, one interesting idea would be that men are underrepresented in family blogging and women in leadership blogging. If you’re a guy, would you be interested in a “daddy blog” and if you’re a woman, would you feel confident to break into the leadership blog arena?

Let’s try out some ideas to be more specific for these competitive areas. For a mommy blog (or a daddy blog):

• adopting older children
• guiding children to independence
• suggestions for spiritual lessons from home school field trips
• character-building and discipline
• guidance in building faith
• teaching the Spirit-filled life and witnessing skills to children

Here’s a list of 50 top mommy blogs to help you think through a niche for your blog. Read a few and try to figure out why these blogs are popular. I just looked at a number of them and they were all overwhelmingly cluttered. You could make a much more attractive site, I’m sure, with a simple, mobile-friendly look.

For a leadership blog:

• leadership for introverts
• on building a movement
• on leading multi-generational teams
• leading by example
• on vision-casting

I’m sure you’d have even better ideas.

For leadership bloggers: here’s a list of the top 50. How can you refine your leadership blog to scratch a particular itch? Be very specific about your topic.

How to Stand Out with Your Voice

Even though blogs number in the hundreds of millions, many have been abandoned, some may be outdated, and quite a few may be blasé.

On the other hand, many bloggers have a “voice” that is either:

• very well informed and motivating about their content and/or
• written in a great style that draws you in

I love to read blogs where perspectives, and the words used, are beautifully crafted and thought-provoking. Whether or not that describes your writing talent, include a story in each post and end with a question or a call-to-action.

What topic or audience will your blog focus on?

NOTE: The rubber ducky photo is from Daniela Hartmann on Flickr. It’s available under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Creative Commons License.