In this first in a series of daily tips on how to start a blog, you will learn that researching your potential audience is your key to overwhelming blogging success. You will find out how to do the research and where to do it for your blog. The objective of this whole exercise is to give your visitors what they want.

Three critical things to contemplate and figure out:

1. What fairly broad-ish topic do you want to blog about? It could be about “lifehacks”, “mommy blog” stuff, marketing, writing, poetry, landscaping. Pick one.
2. Search for relevant forums about the topic in #1. It's easy – Google is your friend. Look for your topic and add “forum” to the end when searching in Google.
3. Find a problem (or series of problems) and deliver one solution for each. You will quickly find out from Step 2 what the prevailing problems or issues are. Fill the void – provide the solution. If you can't, move on. If something already exists that's super effective, see if there is an affiliate program for it.

This “One Problem, One Solution” method works wonders for your blog. Knowing what you want to deliver and to whom (and the reasons why they need YOUR solution) is critical for you to know at the outset of starting your blog.

Then you can plan your blog posts and pages, categories and tags, and everything else that you'll put into your blog, like videos, graphics, presentations, PDFs, and other materials. Your imagination knows no bounds.

For more great tips, stay tuned here. There will be another How to Start a Blog Tip tomorrow. And also watch out for my Kindle book called “The Ultimate Guide to Blogging: Laying the Foundation Part 1“. It is the first in a series of Kindles all about blogging.