There’s a peculiar anxiety that grips bloggers when they sit down to write. It whispers: “Everyone already knows this. Why bother writing about it?” This fear of stating the obvious has silenced countless valuable blog posts before they ever reached an audience.But here’s the truth that will transform your blogging approach: nobody knows everything, and what seems obvious to you is revolutionary to someone else.
Consider the blogger who hesitates to explain what SEO means because “surely everyone in digital marketing knows that by now.” Meanwhile, there’s a small business owner who just launched their first website last week, desperately Googling that exact term. Or think about the cooking blogger who skips explaining how to dice an onion because it feels too basic, not realizing that somewhere a college student is moving into their first apartment and genuinely doesn’t know where to start.The internet isn’t a single conversation happening in one room where everyone has heard the same information. It’s millions of simultaneous conversations with people entering at different points, with different backgrounds, and different levels of knowledge. Your “obvious” content is someone else’s breakthrough moment.
This matters even more when you consider how people actually find content online. Search engines don’t care whether you think something is obvious. They care whether you’ve answered the question someone is asking. That seemingly basic blog post about how to reset a router might feel beneath you, but it generates consistent traffic month after month because people genuinely need that information. The advertising revenue doesn’t know the difference between sophisticated content and straightforward answers.
There’s also something liberating about embracing the obvious in your writing. When you stop trying to only share groundbreaking insights, you remove a massive creative barrier. You can write more frequently, more naturally, and more helpfully. Some of the most successful blogs thrive not because they’re always sharing cutting-edge information, but because they reliably answer common questions in clear, accessible language.
The assumed knowledge problem plagues every industry and niche. Experts forget what it was like to be a beginner. They use jargon without explanation, skip fundamental steps, and build elaborate arguments on foundations they never articulate. When you deliberately state the obvious, you’re building a bridge for new people to cross into your field.Moreover, even experienced readers benefit from obvious content more than you’d think. Sometimes people need a refresher. Sometimes they learned something incorrectly the first time and your clear explanation finally sets them straight. Sometimes they knew something intuitively but never had the language to articulate it until they read your post. These readers won’t always comment or share, but they’re absorbing and appreciating your work.
The click factor cannot be ignored either. Clear, straightforward headlines about common topics perform reliably well. “How to Tie a Tie” will generate more consistent traffic than “Advanced Windsor Knot Variations for the Discerning Professional.” Both posts have value, but one addresses a much larger audience with an immediate, pressing need.This doesn’t mean dumbing down your content or never writing advanced material. It means recognizing that a healthy blog needs content at multiple levels. Your expert analysis can coexist with your beginner guides. In fact, the beginner guides often serve as the entry point that builds an audience for your more sophisticated work.
There’s also a compounding effect to consider. That basic post you wrote three years ago continues working for you, bringing in new readers who then explore your archive and become regular followers. Obvious content is often evergreen content, maintaining its relevance and traffic long after publication.The fear of being too basic often stems from comparison. You see other bloggers in your niche producing what appears to be highly sophisticated content, and you worry that anything simpler will look amateurish. But you’re not seeing the full picture. You’re not seeing their analytics showing that their most basic posts often outperform their complex ones. You’re not seeing the grateful emails from readers who finally understood a concept because of a straightforward explanation.
When you state the obvious, you’re also building trust. Readers appreciate clarity over cleverness. They want to understand, not to feel impressed by your vocabulary. The blogger who can take a complex topic and explain it in simple terms demonstrates mastery, not weakness. You prove you understand something deeply when you can teach it to a complete novice.
So the next time you have an idea for a blog post but dismiss it as too obvious, write it anyway. Someone needs exactly that information today. Someone will Google exactly that question tomorrow. And somewhere, someone will finally understand something they’ve been confused about for months because you weren’t afraid to explain what seemed obvious to you.The obvious isn’t obvious to everyone. And in blogging, meeting people where they are will always be more valuable than impressing the few who already know everything you might say.
