You don’t need a blog topic. Just start writing.

Everyone who reads ProBlogger and CopyBlogger and IHave78MillionSubscribersBlogger knows the conventional advice about blogging is to write insanely useful articles about a specific topic.

But you know what? When I look back over my (small) successes as a blogger, there is no evidence that writing about a specific topic has had anything to do with my blog’s growth. Because I don’t write about a specific topic, unless you want to count my life as a specific topic. And I don’t even always write about that.

So when a new client I spoke with last week asked me how I have 700 subscribers, I stuttered. A lot. Then I babbled to cover it up. Totally embarrassing.

I had no idea how to articulate what it was about my writing that makes people want to read – at least not without sounding like a self-absorbed jerk, basking in my own awesomeness. How do you explain that you don’t know why you are successful without coming across as a fluke?

Nisha Chittal gave me even more to think about when we met up for coffee this weekend. She pointed out that bloggers who advise you to stick to a specific blog topic don’t do so themselves, and the biggest reason they have huge blogs is probably because they’ve been around so long. In other words, the sheer number of posts on the site combined with writing about the topic first is what contributes most to popular bloggers’ success.

I tend to agree. The only thing I would add is these guys are also good marketers who were in the right place at the right time, and capitalized. Sure, there are exceptions to this rule, but those are the Steve Jobs’ of the blogging world. And trust me; most of us are not even close to a “Steve Jobs.”

I think there is one other element that makes a good blogger. Voice. If you write with a great voice that people fall in love with, they won’t care what you are writing about.

People don’t write about how critical voice is to blogging though, I think because you can’t teach bloggers how to have a good voice that people will like. You can only teach bloggers how to have a unique voice, and What Not to Wear shows us that “unique” does not guarantee “stylish.”

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know that I am sorting through how to change the topic of my blog to focus less on Generation Y, mostly because I think the topic has been beaten to death and the term has bad connotations associated with it (not that I’m happy about that – I still drink the Gen Y kool-aid, I just recognize when the market is saturated and I don’t want to limit my audience). I’ve considered plenty of alternatives, from starting a whole new blog to simply ending this one for good.

But maybe the answer is to stop pressuring myself to fit within the confines of a topic. I basically don’t have one anyway, I just pretend. And it kind of works, so why season the cheese when aging seems to flavor it just as well?

I’m not entirely convinced though. I don’t know any successful blogs that don’t have a topic, or at least that don’t say they have a topic. One of my favorite pieces of advice about blogging on a topic comes from Penelope Trunk; she says to “Find a very popular topic and then write at the very edge of that topic. If you write in the center, that’s where everyone else is and it will be hard to present something that is unique.” And she is the master; every week, she somehow convinces 30,000 people those posts about her love life, plastic surgery, and sex have everything to do with their careers.

Here is a new suggestion for people who struggle with fine-tuning their topic. Write about what you’re learning. Sometimes that will tie to the topic you started your blog with – sometimes it will take you in a new direction. Because blogging is an evolution of whom you are, and the online space where you “live” should reflect that – the same way your wardrobe reflects the changing seasons (and hopefully, the changing years, too).

What do you think about blogging about a topic?