Avoid the temptation to write something popular
The world of blogging sure does seem to be getting more and more…echoey. Whether I’m looking at blogs I’m subscribed to, blogs I happen upon, or blogs I’m connected to in other ways, the following seem to be the main areas of focus:
1. Content Marketing – any angle of content marketing!
2. Pinterest
3. Google – whether it’s G+, SEO, etc.
4. Facebook timeline
There’s certainly nothing *wrong* about any of these topics. They’re all important. Well, Pinterest I’m still debating about, but generally, they’re all important. They all could be useful. But there’s just SO MUCH about each of these 4 topics. I find myself getting kind of bored.
Of course, it’s easy to understand why this happens. If you look at any of these posts, they seem to get a lot of comments, a lot of “buzz.” They are the hot button issues of the day, so Google loves them, the retweeters love them – it’s easy to get traffic when you’re writing about a topic that (in an MC Escher kind of way) is already on everyone’s mind. Even more, if a big name blogger has blogged on the topic and you link to their post, you might get on that person’s radar. It’s a self-fulfilling echo chamber of a problem.
In the face of all of these similar posts, I’m finding that I want to write about something entirely different. If my readers can find 15 posts in a second about one of these topics, do I really need to add a 16th for consideration? And am I really going to do a better job of covering something like Content Marketing when there’s a whole host of people writing for the Content Marketing Institute? Somehow, I am thinking maybe not.
At some point, writing the popular post may become the same thing as writing a post that isn’t the most valuable thing you have to offer. The information can get more and more diluted. A quote of a quote of a quote can get tired and meaningless. You might get more traffic, but the readers may be less appreciative of that which you are offering.
Is that a good trade to make?
Now of course, everyone has their own perspective on things. There’s a lot of debate about Pinterest. There’s a lot of debate about Google and Google Plus. There’s even a fair amount of debate about how useful Facebook’s Timeline feature is. But with so many people offering their perspectives, is it essential that you add yours to the mix? Will that extra drop of water change the ocean for the people you are trying to serve with information?
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like the blogosphere is becoming more about outdoing each other on the same topic rather than actually offering information about … something else. Maybe that’s just the nature of the beast, but it seems like diminishing the value of our own content just to get more eyes on that content is a silly trade.
What do you think?
Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bertozland/33402924/ via Creative Commons
43 Comments
Leave a Reply Cancel Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Spot on, Margie. A lot of “me too” posts. Not to say there isn’t room for another opinion, but my main takeaway? ” At some point, writing the popular post may become the same thing as writing a post that isn’t the most valuable thing you have to offer. “
@berkson0 Thanks Alan. I think it’s easy enough to tell when someone really is wanting to get a point across versus a person writing about something because they feel they need to in order to maintain status. In the former category, you may see an angle or perspective that is new and refreshing. For example, I read a post by Shelly Kramer yesterday regarding content marketing, but it was about the history of the concept, and it was a good reminder that content marketing is not a new social media fad. I think that stuff is great. But, “How to produce great content for your marketing campaign?” Kind of been done, I think. It’s a case by case, fine line judgment, as is the case with so many things.
I don’t mind opinion pieces because I seek out different opinions to compare and contrast to my experience. Sometimes, I’m just curious as to what a person think, since I’ve already made a connection to that person (whether on their blog, Twitter, FB, or whatevs) (oh yeah, I just said “whatevs” – must be all the coffee).
That said, I understand your point about these kinds of posts being another drop in the bucket. Maybe it’s more about being in a rut, chasing after that that same ol’ same ol’ SEO snipe that everyone else is chasing, ’cause one doesn’t have any ideas of their own. Yeesh. (I certainly don’t mean to imply this about anyone specific, eh? No h8erade here.)
Perhaps the happy medium is to do a ‘catch-all’ piece once a week. One of the reasons I listen to This Week in Tech [podcast] is to hear the opinions and analysis from relatively reliable sources on what happened in the previous week. If you feel the need to address the issues of the week, that’d be one way to scratch that itch/feed the beast/shoutout to the echoes.
@TomRedwine I’ve been talking to Joel Fortner and Sherree Worrell over in Facebook world and mentioned that curating posts seems to me to be a good way around this. Instead of writing your own post, introduce your readers to what other people have said – expose your readers to posts you think are really good.
Of course, the problem with THAT approach is that a lot of people have sort of contaminated content curation by curating posts just from folks like Liz Strauss, Chris Brogan, and Seth Godin. Not to say they don’t write good stuff, but you have to wonder about link bait and comment bait at that point. So…ultimately, you have to have faith that your readers won’t think you’re being a turd.
*gulp* 🙂
Well it all depends on the audience for whom the blog post is intended. I’m writing for my customers and prospects who are anything but marketing, let alone social media, experts. So when I write about Content or Google+ or any topic, for that matter – I’m thinking of my customers and prospective customers and writing for their benefit. It wouldn’t surprise me that other marketing professionals would find my blog posts repetitive or simplistic.
@DWesterberg I think your blog is a great example of a site that can cover some of the hot button topics but in ways that are highly specific to your audience. All of your posts are very clearly geared towards your customers and every post reflects your desire to educate that niche audience you have. You’ve established that as your approach and it shines through.
For people that write on the hot button topics in the most general of terms (with ideas like, “If you aren’t doing this you’re really behind the 8-ball,”) it gets a bit harder to accept that they have a specific objective apart from traffic in mind.
Make sense?
@margieclayman To answer your question, as Omar would say, “Oh indeed!” 🙂
@DWesterberg Ah. I love that guy 🙂
I unsubscribed from the blogs of a few folks I used to admire and read because of this very thing, Marj. You can tell just by their headlines what the post is going to be and, yes, it’s usually just a poor excuse for traffic generation.
Fine, if that’s your goal. But don’t be surprised when the readers that make you think harder drop off and you’re left with an empty shell of Yes Zombies.
@DannyBrown That’s what I’ m worried about in some cases, Danny. I fear we’re losing our dialog in the social media world. It seems there are a few basic scenarios you can encounter these days.
1. People are writing things that you can’t really argue with. For example: Content Marketing is important. Yep, it sure is. Next…?
2. People are writing things that are demonstrating a frightening lack of understanding about the worlds of business and marketing, and attempts to educate the blogger or the blogger’s audience result in hateful turns to the conversation
3. The call-out post (often on the tails of #2).
That seems to be how posts are categorizing themselves these days. Not a lot of good options for that famous concept of actual “engagement” it seems. Very sad.
Couldn’t agree more, Marjorie. Everything seems so derivative. But I agree with DWesterberg that most of us who cater to an audience outside the SM echo chamber are delivering informative, original work.
@BobReed Amen to that, Bob!
@BobReed Absolutely, Bob. And I’m not saying that if you write a post about Google you are a stinky human or a bad blogger. But if you write post after post about how to circle people on Google Plus, I’m going to start to wonder what else you have in your bucket. Or if you write a post about Pinterest and quote every other big blogger who has written about Pinterest, I’m going to scratch my head a little bit.
Like I said below, it’s not a “Paint with the broad brush” sort of thing. But you know the posts by feel that are just written to get the traffic in, and there seem to be more of those these days.
Hi Margie,
I guess attracting eyeballs could easily become an obsession, huh? I didn’t get into this to game the system, but that is kind of what it feels like to me, as an observer … a gaming obsession.
I would love to learn more about the latest favorite, Pinterest, but I don’t have the time to even check it out. Although I do feel intimately familiar with it, as I’ve read so much about the favorite of the day 😉
Glad you slipped in MC Escher 🙂
@Craig McBreen Thanks Craig. Time is a factor for me as well. I just don’t have enough time to explore the time-suck that is Pinterest. It doesn’t seem like it would be particularly useful to my clients, so it would not be time well spent. Simple as that.
I try to slip in some Escher whenever possible, but he’s kind of a tough guy to work into a blog topic…:)
I don’t know Margie. I think the perception of folks like you and me is really darn whacky because we’re too close to the situation. So instead of us worrying if folks like you and I are hearing too many echoes, what are actual business owners and day to day marketers (or fill in the blank) thinking?
It’s my feeling that many of our peer writers and bloggers just happen to have their shtick and that’s where they focus the most. For example, I write about inbound and content marketing…with some personal development here and there. That’s what I do.
I don’t really write about Facebook…rarely about Twitter…and I’m not on Pinterest…so I’m certainly not writing about it.
But I don’t think my readers or “tribe” or “peeps” or whatever we should call them expect me to have major diversity. They know I talk about observations I see in my little world.
Honestly, I don’t care about how much CMI or Copyblogger or anyone else wants to write about content marketing– at least in terms of how it impacts me. The last thing I want to do is NOT write about my passion simply because I feel everyone else has already touched on the subject. Plus, a huge majority of my readers aren’t following Copyblogger, CMI, and others.
Does that make sense?
Now granted, I don’t like it when people write about things they know nothing about. That bugs me. But if someone has just started using Pinterest and wants to write the 100,000th post this week on the subject, I strongly feel they should, because now they’re teaching us what life has taught them. So no matter how many times a subject has been brought up, if it comes from the view of personal experience, I’m attracted to that.
Again, I hope I’m making a little sense.
One final thought about the echo chamber—Let’s say I send out an email to my list tomorrow and asked: “Are there too many people online talking about content marketing?”—Do you think the majority would say “yes”?
I submit they would not….because they’re not in our world.
OK, enough of me yapping. I hope you know I come here because I love the way your write and voice your opinion. That, to me, is much more of an “issue” than over-saturated content. 🙂
Marcus
@Marcus_Sheridan Great response, Marcus. Thank you!!
I see your point, and again, I think it comes down to the way you write the posts, how you approach your blog and your readers in general, and other factors like that. If you’re really passionate about something and that’s “your thing,” I think that will come through. When I first started here, my “thing” was helping people who were, like me, new to the online world. I got really bummed out at one point because a person tweeted out a post with my title and it turned out to be another person’s post that had been written BEFORE mine – we had not only chosen the same subject but even the same wording. I figured, after a bit of pondering, that I still had my unique voice and that was okay.
And maybe that’s true.
However, I think there are some bloggers out there who just ride what’s popular. Their passion is not really evident. Their audience is not really self-evident. It’s just, “Oh, this is hot now so I’ll write about it.” And you sort of can see a formula develop in how they approach these topics. And then the responses they get start to become formulaic, and…it just gets boring!
I guess I’m approaching this topic not only as a writer but also as a reader. I approach the social media world through the prism of my B2B agency experience, and in my quest to find information that would be helpful to me, I’m not finding a whole ton of new and interesting stuff. Given that, I’m being lured more towards researching the content I would like to see rather than weighing in on issues that are already gaining a lot of attention.
Does that make sense?
@margieclayman @Marcus_Sheridan Margie, your last graph is where I’m challenging myself to find and write about something new, hence my informal conclusion that not enough is being written and shared about what “others” outside the consultancy realm are achieving through social.
Marcus, completely agree with your assessment. You’re right; the people who don’t live in our worlds will likely find value on the umpteenth post about developing content.
@margieclayman I don’t think it’s a problem per se to write about popular or hot button topics as long as you can answer the “who cares?” question. Back from my days in journalism school, I had professor who religiously asked “why should people care?” whenever anybody pitched a story idea or blog post. I think if you can answer that truthfully within 30 seconds or so, it’s going to have relevance and context, and will make it a valuable read (even when there are already dozens of posts on that topic).
@jessicamalnik I think that’s probably a good litmus test. I’m just feeling like a lot of posts wouldn’t pass that test these days. But that could just be me. A blogger certainly can’t please everybody all the time!
@margieclayman I don’t think it’s about pleasing people. Heck, there would be a ton of really really really boring blogs if bloggers only cared about pleasing people. It’s about delivering value- whether that’s relevance, context and/or timeliness. The “Who cares” test is generally just a good litmus test to figure out if the idea or post has added value.
I’m with you, seems it’s the same verbage just formatted different – words different, but saying the same ole thing. I really don’t read reports/opinions on those topics anymore! The only one I may is Pinterest due to copywrite or spam issues.
@dabarlow Yeah, keeping up-to-date on issues like the problems with Pinterest is good, and that information is useful versus a, “I think Pinterest is AWESOME!” post. Again – it’s that darned line 🙂
Thought provoking post Margie!
I believe that the popularity of “opinion” posts is aggravating the echo chamber problem. It’s easy to sit down and offer an opinion about any of the hot-button topics. It’s also easy to write the contrarian posts about all of the other opinion posts. As a whole, this stuff is boring and personally nauseating.
I live by the notion that you have to fulfill the needs of your audience. My audience is stacked with “doers” who don’t have much use for my “perspective”. They want practical tools for using and evaluating the latest blogging and social media strategies. They want the Why, What, How, and What if? info delivered authentically and with integrity. This type of information never get’s old. That’s why I can read Kristi Hines, Oli Gardener, Rand Fishkin, Marcus Sheridan, Pat Flynn, and other nose to the grindstone business thinkers all day long.
I guess any blogger should ask two questions – “who cares?” (awesome jessicamalnik ) and “is it useful?” I’ve erased many a cleverly disguised rant because they didn’t deliver a good answer to these questions.
@Stanford I think opinion posts can be good if they are unique and if they offer insight into you as a blogger. I think that even integrating that aspect into a “how to” post can add a certain depth and personality, as you do so well. However, we do get caught in these catch-22s of people writing an opinion piece, then writing another one to defend the first one, then calling out a person who disagreed with them, and around and around we go. Who does that serve? Who cares if you disagree with a-lister blah blah about this that or the other thing. If said person is giving out information that could be misleading, sure, treat that. That could be helpful. If you have a strong opinion about something that you think could guide your readers, cool But blabbing on a hot topic just to get the traffic in bugs me something fierce.
Thanks for coming by, Stan 🙂
News is news, is this any different than for major TV shows carrying their version of the same story? I’m just waiting for forklifts to go viral. Someday we’ll be as viral as posts about Klout or Pintrest. We look forward to our day in the sun.
@ToyotaEquipment Great comment, Kyle. Here’s my take on that analogy. I want to be the PBS Newshour of the blogging world. While the big stations are trying to break news the fastest and are trying to compete with each other, PBS Newshour covers a few topics in-depth – often topics that the other stations aren’t covering as much – and they may use footage or information gathered by those other bigger news shows.
See what I mean?
What drives me crazy are the people who can’t accept that some people disagree with them. It seems like many of them resort to ad hominem attacks or engage in the online equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears.
Why does their have to be one way of doing things?
@TheJackB I don’t know. That’s part of why I’m working on my “myth” series. People are making a lot of proclamations about things they don’t understand, which is fairly human, but then if you try to correct these things it often gets ugly. It’s a real problem.
I know I can be socially naive at times, but guess what 4 topics you will never see me write about? And you can throw SEO and keywords in there as well. At least I have that going for me, huh?
@bdorman264 That and much more 🙂
I think I’ll stick with the subject I know best about…. me! Oh, yeah, I’ll write about the Northern Lights, the Grizzly Bears, how much I DETEST climbing mountains and the indescribable rewards there are when I reach the top…. I have noticed much of the same, Margie.
When I was so much newer, it was barely enough… I needed as much input (on the same subject) as I could possibly get, just to be able to fully understand. Now? I find I want to know more about EVERYTHING! But really? I want to know more about the people that have drawn me to them with their own voices in writing.
Keep writing! You are one I count on..
@girlygrizzly That’s a good point, dear lady. I agree, when I first started doing this “social media stuff” I couldn’t read enough (or write enough, to be honest) about how to navigate these tricky waters. What do you do if your blog has tumbleweeds rolling across it? Man, I read a ton of posts about that. So, maybe it’s just that while you keep moving, some bloggers keep targeting the same audience, and you move on. I don’t devalue posts that teach people how to do things, but I guess I’d rather point to a post i wrote two years ago rather than write a new one now. So long as the technology is basically the same and I still agree with myself, why add more noise?
We must be careful here Margie. (Ms. Clayman if you’re nasty).
As the uber-smart Ms Westerberg suggests, repetition is in the eye of the beholder. We tend to live in a bubble of our peers, who naturally are interested in the same themes we are. So it’s natural to see repetition. Those of us in the marketing/consulting world each have our own client bases and followers that look to us for education and direction. We owe it to them to post our experiences, thoughts and views even if that same point has been made by others.
As a blogger, I look at the over-crowded blog space as a challenge to up my game. I’m not going to purposely change my point of view or topics because someone else has written something similar but I’m certainly going to make every effort to be as well researched and poignant – or more so – than anyone else.
As a reader, while I agree that there is a lot of repetition in themes – if not points-of-view – out there in the blogosphere, I found that simply refocusing my RSS feed can dramatically alter this condition. I’m now making an effort to update my RSS list frequently. In fact, I’m erring on the side of curated feeds over specific blogger feeds to ensure I have a wider balance of content to choose from…and not get bored with.
We must be careful here Margie. (Ms. Clayman if you’re nasty).
As the uber-smart Ms Westerberg suggests, repetition is in the eye of the beholder. We tend to live in a bubble of our peers, who of course are interested in the same themes we are. So it’s natural to see repetition. Those of us in the marketing/consulting world each have our own client bases and followers that look to us for education and direction. We owe it to them to post our experiences, thoughts and views even if that same point has been made by others.
As a blogger, I look at the over-crowded blog space as a challenge to up my game. I’m not going to purposely change my point of view or topics because someone else has written something similar but I’m certainly going to make every effort to be as well researched and poignant – or more so – than anyone else.
As a reader, while I agree that there is a lot of repetition in themes – if not points-of-view – out there in the blogosphere, I found that simply refocusing my RSS feed can dramatically alter this condition. I’m now making an effort to update my RSS list frequently. In fact, I’m erring on the side of curated feeds over specific blogger feeds to ensure I have a wider balance of content to choose from…and not get bored with.
@samfiorella Great points, Sam. I guess the people that rub me the wrong way or the ones who don’t really seem to have an audience in mind, but rather who just want to treat the topic because it’ll get them traffic. A lot of the posts I’m seeing are not interesting. They do not seem to offer a particularly unique perspective. It’s just rehashing the same thing over and over again. Sometimes the posts even link to each other, which really seems suspicious.
There are tons of people writing great stuff, and it doesn’t matter what the topic is. But the temptation to write about something because you *know* it’ll do well is I think omnipresent. And that could be a bummer.
[…] reading Margie Clayman’s Avoid the temptation to write something popular, I saw articles on how to get ideas for blogging and how to write a bunch of blog posts quickly. […]
[…] Musings and Other Morsels the other day struck me. Margie Clayman blogged about how we should ‘avoid the temptation to write something popular’. In her post, she lists the 4 most popular topics as 1) content marketing, 2) Pinterest, 3) Google […]
[…] decision to dig this out of the archives was prompted by recent posts by friends and colleagues Margie Clayman and Marcus Sheridan who were, in turn, discussing the so-called echo chamber effect in content […]
http://www.xn--8dbcaika2a4cskmve.co.ilhttp://www.הפצתקורותחיים.co.il/ <A href=”http://www.xn--8dbcaika2a4cskmve.co.il” title=”הפצתקורותחיים”>הפצתקורותחיים</A>. <A href=”.הפצתקורותחיים.co.il/” title=”הפצתקורותחיים”>הפצתקורותחיים</A>.
When I was so much newer, it was barely enough… I needed as much input (on the same subject) as I could possibly get, just to be able to fully understand. Now?
帽子 star dots…
Avoid the temptation to write something popular…
this is the best website…
Avoid the temptation to write something popular…