That is the question on my mind today is: what is originality? What brings this question up is the paucity of originality that I see in my RSS feeds this morning.
The Blogging Game
Blogging tends to be a bit incestuous.
It is common for bloggers to treat other blogs grist for their own mill, as mere sounding boards for their own work, using comments or linkbacks to promote themselves. It’s all part of the game, and we all have participated in it at one time or another.
I suppose it is healthy, as it engenders this idea of a blogging community. (Well, as much of a community that a loose confederation of egotists can be!)
Where the wheels start to come off is when this practice devolves into “Me Too” Blogging.
“Me Too!”
Do we really need another post about how to use twitter to find a job or further your career? Do we really need another list of ways to get started in social media? Do we need another retread of how to weather the recession (Enterprise 2.0).
Don’t even get me started on memes. This week has seen the death of innovation, the newspapers, the media, the american consumer, and the United States. Again.
I get it.
The common wisdom is that you need consistent content to keep people coming back. Inspired blog posts don’t always come when you need them, so you scan to see whatever people are kvetching about that day, and you write about that. Any content is good content, right?
Wrong.
There is nothing wrong with playing the blogging game so long as you bring and original voice to advance the discussion.
You are adding value! Well done!
If the net effect of your blog post is the conversational equivalent of “me too”, then you are not advancing the discussion, and you are not adding value.
One thing all the blogging pundits tend to leave out is the thing that brings people back are consistent HIGH QUALITY posts.
You are not serving your readers one bit if you pad your blog with a bunch of worthless, unoriginal, “me too” posts.
Originality Is A Skill
Which brings us back to my original question: what is originality? Can it be learned?
I was chatting with Amber Naslund about this on Twitter, and the following tweet about originality came out of the aether:
@AmberCadabra It can be taught, and learned. Originality is not innovation. Think of it like stand up comedy. The form has not really changed since George Burns, but each good comic has their own original content and voice. You can teach people those.
(I love when that happens)
That thought is a bit dense, so let’s unwind that.
First, originality can be taught.
We are all individuals. We all have a unique viewpoint. It follows that the people that appear to be original have learned two skills that others have not: how to tap into their personal uniqueness, and how to express it.
That can be learned.
Think about stand up comedy for a moment.
The form itself is extremely simple: a microphone, a wall, a spotlight. The basics of stand up haven’t really changed since George Burns or Henny Youngman’s time: you stand in front of the mic and tell some jokes.
The telling of the jokes is a learned process. It is a combination of elements whose combination produces a laugh: a subject that everyone can relate to, your own unique voice, timing. Every single comic has to learn to bring these elements together to make an audience laugh.
It’s a tough business. You need to have a new or original take on your subject each and every night. If your audience has heard it before, they won’t laugh. If they have heard the same joke from someone else, they will just tune you out. A quiet room is death to a stand up comic.
Listening to comics talk about how they got to where they are, they always say the same thing: they had to learn how to make people laugh. They had to learn what works with their voice, they had to learn the timing, they had to learn how to read an audience.
They had to learn to be original.
If they can do it, so can you.
Blogging is like stand up comedy. You have a website, which is your wall, your post is your mic.
The question is: are you going to put in the effort to be original, or are you going to be facing your own silent room?
The Death of “Me Too” Blogging
Being an original blogger takes effort. I think the effort centers around three core ideas:
- Original Voice. You need to learn to tap into your own unique filter, and learn how to express that in your Blog. Work and rework your posts until your own voice comes through on the subject you are writing about.
- Original Posts. It’s not hard to find new things to write about. My Z-Score series hasn’t been done anywhere else, and it just came as a whim. I don’t know if anyone is reading it. Who cares? At least it is not another introduction to social media post! Make a conscious decision not to do what other people have done.
- Timing. If your original voice or posts are not coming to you, know when not to post. Your blog won’t die because you have nothing to say, it will die because you are saying the same thing that everyone else is.
For 2009, let’s make a concerted effort to kill “Me Too” blogging. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our readers.
And facing a silent room is a bitch.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Incestuous. I think you hit the nail on the head. [Twitter reminds me of an Arkansas cocktail party.]
Your tips are gold, too. One thing I’d like to point out: current blogging trend is to push quantity. Most posts are about “How to Write Fast” or “Post in 10 Minutes.” How can you value blog in 10 minutes?
Good post. Only problem is, we’ll see a landslide of posts just like it.
I am so glad you wrote this post! (Me too! heehee) Really, as a newbie in all things Social Media, there are so many duplicated/cookie cutter blog posts. Sometimes I feel like I am reading the same post, just by a different person.
I decided yesterday to write a unique post, include personal information and my own experience. I was nervous. I’d never gone that far before, always making my “me too” notes. But then something cool happened! I got positive feedback from others. I even reposted it on another site (multifamilyinsiders.com) when requested and got more positive feedback! All of this after not having anything to say for about a month.
Someone told me to cut back on the personal, and then someone said they loved it that I “finally” shared something about myself. I’m excited about my newbie blog for the first time, all because I decided to be original. From now on, I am who I am… like me or not!
)
There is value to the “me too” echo chamber in that not everyone reads Brogan, Kawasaki, Scoble or Godin all the time (or at all). (They should, however, read Amber every day. No question.) My point: Even if it seems like you have 300 marketing bloggers repeating the same stuff their peers have already posted about, the only way to reach as many business people is to do just that: Scale. Even if it is repetitious and seems like a complete waste, every network is different, every network is mostly unique, and the overlap created by posts of posts of posts helps the conversation (and great advice) reach a greater amount of people.
Trust me, I am 100% in favor of originality and differentiation, but much of what we do has to do with reaching as many people as possible. If I retweet something Brogan, Armano or Naslund wrote about, it is in the hope of either a) introducing that idea to someone who may not have heard of Brogan, Armano or Naslund yet, b) may not have been paying attention earlier that day or that month or that year when they shared their thoughts on that particular subject, or c) to validate their ideas by agreeing with them (and maybe adding something to the discussion that will hopefully be relevant.)
Creating a big daisy chain or rehashed ideas may seem like a waste of time, but it does actually have its value.
As for originality being teachable… I don’t know. I’d like to think that, but I haven’t seen an example of that yet. If you have to hire someone to help you create original content or take your business in an original direction, you probably don’t have the originality gene. But I could be completely wrong. ;D
I’ll have to ask Amber about that. It’s a really interesting concept.
Cool post.
Hi Justin, came across your site via Amber’s Tweet today… In keeping with the stand-up comic theme… I read Bob Newhart’s autbio, “I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This!” and in his book, Bob says (paraphrasing) “every comedian starts off copying someone else before finding his/her own voice.”
So while I agree with what you say, I also think it helps to tell new bloggers to yes, read as many blogs/sites as you can and it’s ok in the beginning to emulate others, to an extent.
You may like the tone of this blogger and the style of that one just like a comic may like the delivery of one comedian and the mannerisms of another.
The key is, as you say, is to be original and NOT to just “pile on” to an existing pile… but make your own!
Good stuff. Justin.
Thanks,
Steve O
At the risk of being a ‘me too’ commenter, I could not agree more with this post. I too share your frustration about articles ad nauseum about how to use Twitter or finding a job using social media. Even Twitter newbies are not new to the web, so I assume they can use Google adequately enough to find the myriad of posts on the topic. And if job seekers don’t know how to harness the tools or network effectively, no 500-word post or gratuitous e-book on the subject is going to help.
Admittedly, I comment on blogs quite a bit to demonstrate — and share — my thinking, but I’d like to believe that I am offering a new perspective or a unique point of view over just serving as a cheerleader for the author. And more often than not, I disagree and use the comments as a vehicle to express my stance.
But far too often, bloggers and commenters are using the medium to self-promote in an attempt to justify their existence in an insanely oversaturated market or elevate themselves to ‘expert’ status by parroting what the ‘A-listers’ say, which most of the time, isn’t all that new or groundbreaking anyway. So, you end up with a bunch of glandhanders spewing hot air bouncing back and forth against the walls of the echo chamber, and ultimately, spreading medicrity across the space.
I sometimes feel like people are afraid to express an original thought or idea for fear of straying from the herd or conjuring up a firestorm if, heaven forbid, their ideas are in discord with the web famous. Unfortunately, as it exists now, I think that the person with the loudest, most far-reaching voice (and daily ramming of the same tired posts with little to no new thinking or value down our throats) is leading the space. And the reason regurgitating the same ideas works is because it resonates with people BECAUSE THEY’VE HEARD IT BEFORE. So,they think, ‘yeah, I get that; that makes sense’ even if it’s the same re-packaged principles that have been around for decades.
Engage in conversation? Build relationships with people? Yeah, that’s how business has been conducted since the dawn of time when the cavemen bartered their first wooden club for a slab of meat. Now we just do it on the web. The wheel’s already been invented. Stop talking about it and just drive it forward.
You make an important point and I am glad to have totally stumbled on your site through a series of Twitter Links ending before you on Amber’s twitter page.
I too have figured that occasionally doing a “me too” might help direct some more traffic my way, but you are right, that if I do not have a unique contribution to a subject, it may not be my time to post at that moment.
Thanks for your energy and enthusiasm on the point, you won me over.
James
James,
Thanks for the kind words.
Looking forward to seeing what you come up with in the future as a result!
Thanks,
JW
Gennifer,
Agreed.
I was reading Reality Check over vacation, and something really struck me about it: Guy Kawasaki never talks about how he scanned the ether for what was happening that day for something to write about. He doesn’t talk about the echo chamber. He doesn’t care if anyone reads his blog or not.
In fact, there is a call to be controversial and bold in the book.
Since all the gladhandlers are reading it (probably only the Cliff Notes version), lets hope they take that to heart.
You can’t drive it forward being safe.
Thanks,
JW
Thanks for using my blog as an example of what the world doesn’t need more of. The post you recommended by the way, was requested by the folks at TalentZoo.com. After it was archived on their site I posted in full on mine. Perhaps YOU don’t need another post on how to use social media to enhance your career or find a job, but there are plenty that do, especially considering the economy. My blog post was written when I was still working and was being called upon as a social media “expert”. Certainly I’ve developed SoMe strategies for a number of global brands, but I don’t know if that gives me the right to the title expert. At the time I wrote the post for TalentZoo, I couldn’t find anyone who had used SoNets to land a job. I found alot of out of work people who had never heard of LinkedIn.
Before you claim all of us bloggers are doing it in an echo chamber, consider that perhaps you are the one writing to an echo chamber. You may have heard it before, but believe me, you are in a very small minority. I too often forget that most people in the world aren’t as tech savvy as those I talk to everyday. I talked to a recruiter the other day who wasn’t on Facebook because: “isn’t that site just for college kids?”. So before you accuse bloggers of writing “me too” posts to drive traffic, or to just regurgitate what other have already said, consider that not everyone has read all of those other blogs that you have. I live in Boston, arguably one of the most high tech cities in the US, home to countless colleges. I have 3 family members in college. I regularly speak at my alma mater. You’d be SHOCKED to know how few use Flickr, Facebook, or even know how to use Google.
Not everyone knows how to use their cell phone to send an SMS, not everyone belongs to a social network. Most of this country don’t. Many aren’t even ready for the switch to digital cable! Keep in mind that the echo chamber is small and hasn’t yet enveloped the entire globe.
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