Sometimes its writer's block, sometimes its plain old procrastination. Either way, all writers at some point or another have found themselves saying variations of these words “I don’t have a topic to write about”

How to pick a topic for an article

Should you find yourself in a similar predicament and you do not know what topic to write about, what do you do even for academic writing? The following are some simple, easy to follow steps on how to pick a topic for an article: 

1. Find the goal of your article

The first thing to do is to think about the purpose for the article you would like to write. Is it to be informative? Funny? Both informative and funny? Is it a factual article that you would like to convey serious facts in? Should it be SEO or just a free flowing story?

Answering these questions will help you decide on a direction to take. This will make it a lot easier to pick a topic and stick with it.

2. Look at who your audience is

Another thing to look at on how to pick a topic for an article would be your target audience. This is important to know since it will help you pick the topic of interest to the said target audience. An article that is targeted to an audience if people between the ages of 18-25 will not be the same as one written for people above the age of 35. The same way an article for a gaming or tech blog will not be the same as one for a fashion blog.

Looking at who the target audience is will help you weed out all the other ideas that might be rattling around in your head and you can actually focus on writing.

3. List out your ideas

So you have decided on what the purpose of the article is and who the target audience are. By now, you have a few ideas going. The next step is to list them out. Take out a notepad, or just open the one on your computer and list out your ideas.

Listing things our help in prioritising them in a manner that makes sense. Listing out ideas will help you flesh them out and see which ones would turn into a good article. With a list, you can cross out the ones that don’t make sense or would not make engaging content for your article.

4. Pick one and write

You made a list, whittled it down and now you have a list of ideas that could work for you. From this list, it is time to pick something from it. The best way to do this is to look at the following: 

• What is your area of expertise?
• Which would make the most captivating article?
• How many words would you like the article to be and which idea gets you there without losing its edge or taking you out of your area of expertise?

The idea that answers all those questions and satisfies the criteria gets picked. The next step would be to write it out. Write out the idea as the words flow in your head. Once you have written it out, you can go to the last step of the process, the review.

5. Review

This is the last but not of the least importance. You have gone through all the steps and finally come to the hardest part, the review. This will help you look at the article and decide whether if it what you would like posted. The review will also help you see whether your thought process flows.

Those are 5 easy to follow steps to help with the problem of how to pick a topic for an article. Now get your self together and write.