How to start a blog for the benefit of the Ummah

How to build a solid foundation for great writing.

Jun

Apr 25, 2025

Today’s topic was suggested by

Faizan Jalal 🍉🌿

Beyond Carbon

. You can suggest a future topic in the FREE community chat here.

Before even writing your first words it’s a good idea to think about why you want to start a blog or newsletter.

(I suggest starting a newsletter because of the power of email.)

If you follow what I’m about to tell you it will give you a solid foundation for your writing and make your life a hundred times easier.

So here we go…

“For the benefit of the Ummah.”

How do we benefit the Ummah? It starts with clarifying a couple of things:

Who are we targeting?
What do they desperately need?

Who are we targeting?

The Ummah is 2 billion people.

I hate to break it to you but you are never going to write for 2 billion people.

So you need to narrow it down to as small an audience as you can.

And I mean small.

Focus on a target audience of around 1000 people. That’s it!

Not what you were expecting? There’s logic behind this:

The aim is for your words to resonate with a loyal base of true fans.

If you try to please everyone… you’ll please no one. And your writing will be all over the place.

But if you write for a focused audience your writing will also be focused and…

The BENEFIT you want to convey will reach the hearts of your readers.

Here’s an important tip:

Write for one person. Preferably a real person. Someone who best represents your target audience.

That person is often you… and this works great.

Once your 1000 true fans find your content you simply need to keep writing for them—you will get more readers anyway.

Your readers don’t see the back end of your website.

They don’t see the thousand other readers. They only see you.

Every new reader will feel as though you’re speaking directly to them. And this is how you benefit more people with your writing.

You can narrow your audience by thinking about the type of person you want to reach. Such as:

Male or female
Age
Occupation
Location

And you should take one or more of these and increase the level of specificity. For example:

Muslim men who work in education
Muslim men who work in education in a senior position
Muslim men who work in education in a senior position in the European Union

Don’t be afraid to get specific—this won’t limit your reach in any way.

Think about it:

A lot of Muslim men and women are interested in education.

Muslim men working in education but not in senior positions are probably trying to move up the career ladder.

Muslims working in education in the UK are interested in what’s happening in the EU.

Get it?

Making your writing ultra-focused doesn’t hinder your reach.

It sparks curiosity in those who fall just outside of your audience. And attracts readers of similar interests.

But perhaps most powerful of all… I gives readers something to aspire for.

What do they desperately need?

Once you’ve narrowed down your target audience it’s time to think about why they would want to read your writing.

What are they struggling with?
What keeps them up at night?
What does the future hold for them?
What do they fear most?

People are more likely to find and trust someone who understands their most pressing needs.

The trap most people fall in—especially true for Muslims—is they take a loose idea and try to make it “for the Ummah” by peppering in religious language.

But is this really what your audience needs?

“10 ways to pray at school”.

“Reflections on Surah al Mulk for school administrators”.

Can you see why this doesn’t work?

If you want to benefit your audience find out what they desperately need and help them get it.

You’re a Muslim. They’re Muslims. Your writing will naturally reflect this without needing to sound religious.

It’s also not so helpful to be just another dawah page. There are so many of them already.

It’s not that it’s wrong to make another generic dawah page. But if you set out to solve a specific problem for a specific audience then you should avoid sounding like everyone else.

Your audience can get their dawah fix from dawah pages.

What they’re lacking is your voice.

In the education example above… maybe there are changes to the law that will affect jobs. Or a certification school administrators need to know about.

Nothing to do with religion yet something this audience would benefit from.

Muslims are real people with real problems:

Money
Health
Relationships

These are the three main categories of problems people face. Where does your target audience fit?

The stronger the need the stronger and more valuable your writing will be—that’s how you benefit the Ummah!

And you can come up with unlimited writing ideas even if you find you can only address only one or two pressing needs (I’ll show you how to learn this skill at the end of this email).

You might think your writing will become boring if you only address a couple of needs.

This is what makes people go on tangents in their writing. But it only pushes your audience away.

What benefit do you think you’ll provide if your writing is aimed at helping Muslim men in education but most of your posts are about masculinity or morning routines?

Focus on the most pressing needs!

Two points to consider:

There are millions of people directly in or adjacent to just about any given topic of interest. Even if you are only able to reach 1% of them it’s still potentially hundreds of thousands of readers. You only need one thousand!
No one knows who you are. It’s foolish to think just because you said something one time your entire potential audience will have seen it. And even if they did… how many would have read it? How many read in full? How many took action right away? How many said they would take action then forgot?

Ideas—especially great ones—need to be repeated. And they need to be repeated often.

But how do you find out your audience’s most pressing needs?

By writing.

Consistently.

And asking for feedback.

Put yourself in front of your audience every day. Read their comments. Engage with them in direct messages. Ask questions.

Write the answers to those questions.

Repeat.

Don’t assume your writing will benefit your target audience from day one. If you want to benefit the Ummah… you must spend time to really get to know your Ummah.

Putting it all together

Narrowing your audience not only makes your writing more powerful… it makes your life so much easier because you don’t have to think about a hundred and one angles to cover.

And by focusing on the pressing needs of your audience you greatly increase the relevance, value and benefit of your writing.

And guess what?

This framework—as I always write in Strategic Sunnah—is universal. It also applies to building products, services and solutions.

You can use these ideas to produce stronger marketing or simply become more trusted and persuasive in anything you set out to do.

So remember:

Narrow down your audience as small as possible.
Focus on what your audience desperately needs.
Write every single day to sharpen your message.

If this helped you think differently, save time or move forward—consider leaving a $5+ tip.

LEAVE A TIP HERE

Your support keeps high-quality life strategies accessible and helps sustain this work for even more goal-oriented Muslims.

How to start a blog for the benefit of the Ummah

You probably realised I haven’t talked about how to actually write or how to set up a blog.

That’s the easy part.

The message I want to convey is if we want to benefit the Ummah with our writing we need a lot more of us doing this and…

Each of us must divide the task of helping the Ummah based on the specific needs of specific Muslims.

And the easiest way to do this is to write about what you already know.

We each have areas of interest and expertise. And at the very least we have things we are trying to learn about ourselves—this one is potentially the most interesting for your audience.

Because ultimately the reason your readers will stick with you is for YOUR unique voice.

Set up your blog or newsletter with the solid foundation I’ve suggested in this email.

And if you want DETAILED step-by-step instructions on how to start a blog or newsletter as well as how to earn an income from it… check out the Halal Income Guides.

You’ll learn:

How to come up with your unique topic.
How to create unlimited ideas to write about.
How to set up your publication.
How to become an impactful writer.
And more…

The guide has SEVEN PARTS and I’ll be adding more over time. And I just made the first part available to free subscribers to help you get started. Check it out here: