Are We Thinking Big Enough?

mappa_blog (Photo credit: francescopozzi)

One of the things about following blogging expert’s advice is that it narrow’s your focus.

If you listen to them, you need to post every day, have a commenting strategy, a promotional strategy, and a blog business plan.

Which is all good advice, but because we are all busy people with limited time and attention, we quickly get bogged down in the tactics and lose sight of the big picture.

Big picture thinking, no matter what the market or nice, requires time, and attention. Time to consume related content, time to keep abreast of trends, time to digest and analyze them.

So, we settle for doing the minimum viable blog, shooting from the hip on whatever event the Internet is upset about that day, and calling it a day.

No wonder so few blogs make money, and so few blogs survive.

We aren’t thinking big enough.

Opinions are easy.

Reporting the Tech, Social, or Business events of the day? Also easy.

Anyone can pass news along.

Everyone has an opinion.

What’s rare is analysis. What’s rare is investigating the trends, connecting the dots, and filling in the big picture.

In The NOW Revolution , Amber Naslund and Jay Baer talk about “the fog of real time business”. For most businesses, that fog is real. For most individuals, with whatever problem your blog is trying to solve, that fog is also real. The future is always uncertain, and insight helps to dispel the uncertainty.

Analysis helps lift the fog obscuring the big picture.

Umair Haque has an interesting take on this.

A while ago, he discussed the difference between “Thick” and “Thin” value.

“Thin value” is anything that is disposable, easily consumed, and generally is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. In the blogging world, think TechCrunch, Mashable, Social Today. Whatever content they push is dead in an hour. It might inform, but it doesn’t enrich anyone’s life.

“Thick value” is anything that provides real and lasting value, enriches the reader’s life, help society or culture move forward, or generally makes some dent in the world. Think Copyblogger, Julien Smith, Seth Godin

You have a choice when you write about what sort of value you provide to your readers. You can either push content that has thin value, or you can push content with thick value. It’s really up to you.

My take is that in order to be a successful blogger, you need to think bigger. You need to take the time to analyze. You need to dispel the uncertainty in your reader’s future. You need publish content that has thick value, and not settle for thin.

You need to think bigger.