First time blogger question?

It depends on value you provide on your blog.

You can learn from Linkedin. You usually send me an email about:
- Discover people who are looking for your profiles
- You are top 5% profiles in Chicago
...
Those email drives people to open and login your website to check it out.

One great way of getting blonde topics would be to go and look at blogs that are dealing with the same topic. You can just search for a list of the top innovation or creativity blogs on Google. Ironically, they are blonde posting on internet about the top blocks of particular natural subject readily available. Just pick one of the top rated blog sites, search on that blog site. Blog post, and read what the blog post about and the feedback to that block. This will give you some idea of the top topics that people are discussing concerning the creativity or innovation Market. Also you can search for the top rated books and materials dealing with creativity or innovation sold on Amazon Andre the user feedback. That also give you understanding what to write about for your blog postings. Most importantly, you can always take what you see and restructuring to your focus. You and your insights is what's going to guarantee your ability to be successful. Any research you do is just simply designed to give you an understanding of how to approach and apply your idea.

For user retention, of course you need to have good content with regular update on your blog. List building is a must so that you can communicate closely with your readers.

Format your text to be read. Something similar to backlinko or Neil Patel's blog.

You need to use LONG FORM content but make sure you write in an engaging way and use lots of photos and diagrams.

Maximize dwell time by 'stringing along' the reader by interlinking long pages using DRAMATIC text anchors

If you have any further questions, just ask me.

If your blog is focused around creativity and innovation, it has to be brilliantly creative with super great content, preferably with interesting images and videos for making the readers too curious to create account for further reading...

This is a great question. One thing you will want to make 100% sure of with the blog is that you will stay with the blog for at least a year..FOCUSED. It takes time to build a following with a blog, but it comes down to providing excellent content and a good writers voice; ie..someone that the reader can adapt/relate to. You will want to build a subscriber list and provide some type of free content that will build value to you and your brand. I personally use Pinterest as one of my traffic sources and find it very valuable for not only free traffic, but targeted traffic per my niche. Lots to speak on this subject, but best thing you need to do is just begin writing content. I would concentrate on getting around 10-20 blog posts created before you start marketing your blog so that the blog can get indexed stronger etc.

Anyhow lots too this, have fun and enjoy your new blogging journey!