Blogging: Escaping the Mediocrity

Tasks that are relatively simple to do are relatively difficult to master. This includes:

Card house building.

(vs)

Sand castle building

(vs)

And Blogging. Blogging is extremely easy to do. You just type away at what's pounding at your heart, right? No, that's wrong. It's about typing what's on your heart and commenting other people who are typing what's on their heart, right? This is how most people view blogging. If that's the case, the question arises: How are you different than most people? Chris Roane of montanaprogrammer.com has summarized the issue of mediocre blogging with this simple (and quite memorable) analogy: It seems everyone is blogging these days. In fact, the word “blog” has a different meaning depending on who you ask. It is just as easy to create a blog as it is to have sex (at least in “completing the transaction”). But having the ability doesn’t immediately make you into a master. Becoming a master takes effort, dedication and experience. So are you the Italian Stallion of Blogging? There are a lot of blogs. How many? Technorati currently states it is tracking over 112.8 million blogs written in english. If you want your blog to be successful, you must differentiate. We all have the same tools on our blogs, so it is how we use those tools that determine our success. Since our blog is our product, we can treat ideas that relate to product differentiation to our blog.

Blog Differentiation

According to economicswebinstitute.org's article on product differentiation, the significance of product differentiation is described as Offered under different brands by competing firms, products fulfilling the same need typically do not have identical features. The differentiation of goods along key features and minor details is an important strategy for firms to defend their price from levelling down to the bottom part of the price spectrum. The thing you are blogging about has already been blogged about before. If you believed that not one of the 112.8 million blogs have posted an article concerning what you blogged about, you'd be delusional. The sooner you acknowledge the fact that you have competition, the better. You aren't bringing anything new to the table, but you are bringing a new perspective. How can you go about successfully presenting your perspective? Here are 5 steps to get you headed in the right direction.

1) Know your audience

My blog caters to people who wish to know about the fundamentals of web programming and programming in general. These people are beginners to coding and need articles that cover basics. I know these people exist, because as long as web developers exist, they will have to start somewhere. With the opinion section of my blog, I cater to people who have at least some experience with web development, and I open up discussion on some controversial issues. I know who I'm writing to. If you don't know your audience, your entire blog is just a journal. Take time to analyze who your audience is. If you don't know, you've approached blogging with a backwards mentality. You blog to your audience, you do not blog and then try to find an audience that the post will fit.

2) Give your audience what they want

This is generally a pretty simple thing to do as long as you know who your audience is. Blogging is mostly about authority, having something useful to impart to someone who most likely does not share the same knowledge as you. If you know your audience, then you know their wants and needs. You can occasionally write some things for yourself (irrelevant posts on a subject outside of the blogs topic area that you find interesting), but don't get too comfortable with it to the extent that you neglect the needs of your followers.

3) Be Consistent

Contrary to popular belief, consistent does NOT mean daily, or even weekly. How often you wish to blog depends entirely on you. Quality will always beat quantity, (although putting the two together can yield incredible results). Stick yourself to consistent intervals between posts. Knowing your audience also helps here. Are the members of your audience subscribed to 100 RSS feeds? Most web design bloggers have a lot of subscriptions. If that's the case, you don't want to overload them.

4) Be yourself

Being genuine is so important in every aspect of business. I'm just discovering this myself, so I actually plan on redesigning my company website to better reflect my personality. When you are genuine, you are more creative, you are more readable, and most importantly, you are much more linkable.

5) If you're struggling, reach out to people who are also struggling

Commenting on blogs of people who have thousands of subscribers may provide a decent little back link, but having your link in an article or post is so much more meaningful. Find blogs by people who are also struggling, and you can quickly build a mutually beneficial relationship with that person after leaving comments on 2-3 of their posts. If you two click, you can start referencing the other in your posts, providing links for both parties. (Read Article: Using Relationships to Help Your Blog)

You're different than everyone else.

Let your blog reflect that. You don't have to be a guru to present a different perspective on things already discussed by someone else: You just have to be yourself, be creative, be smart, and be social. March 13, 2010