I am currently going through Seth Godin’s book Tribes and the man is a genius. If you have not heard about his theories on tribes, you need to go buy the book now. It’s a quick read and will completely reorient your thinking about blogging and social media.
I had already heard much about this concept on tribes before ever opening the book so as I am going through the book, none of the content is very revolutionary. In fact, many of the concepts have been fully hashed out in other people’s books whereas Seth is giving us a wide lens look at everything he has to say on the topic of tribes.
Should Seth feel ripped off? How does this look for bloggers that write on similar blog topics?
Originality Is Best
Want to be a thought and industry leader?
Come up with your own content.
Get out in the real world, practice what you preach, and write exclusively from experience. Share your opinion on the topics, but give the facts that you have learned from what you personally have done instead of what others have written on. If written well and what you are audience is wanting, people will run to see what you do next.
The difficulty about originality is that the blogging process is slow. I see too many people making whole posts, even whole blogging series, out of only a tweetable fact that they have experienced and then burying it in content from other people. How great would that same blog post be if they waited a week or a month and the whole post is original? Yet the traffic in the short term is so much better when you post more. It comes down to patience. Can you wait and pull off something amazing?
Reworked Material That Adds Value
By no means do I think reworked content is a bad thing, but reworked is completely different than restated. A reworked piece takes a whole new vantage point on the same topic. It has some value to the conversation that is worth the readers time and improves the quality of the conversation. We are not restating what others said with our own words.
The reason this is used so often is that it is easy to write a blog article after being inspired by someone that wrote on that same topic. I want to see what I can speak into the conversation and maybe get a little bit of money from advertisements when people read my post. Yet, its not your idea, its someone else’s.
Where do you stand on reworked content? For or against it?
Speak your mind...