Never in a million years did I think I’d be writing a post about creative blog writing that referenced Seth Godin and knitting while also incorporating Alanis Morissette singing the Black Eyed Peas song “My Humps”.
It must be a full moon or something :) . Here goes…
If you’re a blogger who is genuinely trying to produce quality content, it’s increasingly challenging to distinguish yourself from the digital herd.
Especially if you’re blogging in a popular niche, how do you make yourself stand out? And if the topic of your blog isn’t exactly sexy, how can you make it more interesting?
As I was pondering this, this quote from Seth Godin hit home with me.
Most marketing is intentional. In this ad I will advertise this product.
So is most writing. A knitting blog writes about…wait for it… knitting.
Our mind is prepared for what we are about to receive. If it’s a sales pitch, we’re ready to ignore it. If it’s on a familiar blog, we’re ready for it to be familiar.
Real memories are created by surprises.
Real change is created by unexpected juxtapositions.
Speaking of surprises and unexepected juxtapositions, let’s take a look at Alanis Morissette signing her rendition of “My Humps” by The Black Eyed Peas.
What is intellectual, deep, emotional Alanis doing singing a song with lyrics like “What ya gonna do with all that junk inside your trunk?”
I had to check it out just to see if it was for real (it is), and I was surprised that when Alanis performs “My Humps”, it hits me on a much deeper level than I ever thought that song could.
Undoubtedly, it’s humorous, but the way she performs it, it becomes a haunting satire/parody.
Execution is everything. The same exact words, sung in a different way can produce a song with a completely different meaning.
It’s the same with blogging. With 50 million bloggers writing, the ideas get recycled endlessly, and it becomes increasingly hard to stand out.
You’ll hear most bloggers singing exactly the same lyrics with exactly the same interpretation as the person before them.
It’s like they think, “This is the song bloggers in my niche sing. We’re all singing the same words, so of course our songs will all sound pretty much the same.â€
This doesn’t necessarily have to be true though.
Really, if Alanis can find a way to bring depth to a song like “My Humps”, then we can certainly bring more meaning to our blog writing no matter how ho-hum, dry or superficial our subject matter is.
Alanis set herself apart by using irony, satire, and unexpected juxtapositions of words and emotions. She contrasted superficiality with depth and emptiness with emotion. The result is haunting, humorous, surprising and memorable.
In art, music, marketing, and blogging, a simple, seemingly superficial idea can be elevated to a higher level if it’s executed with depth and artistry.
When that happens, a knitting blog is interesting even to folks who don’t knit.
Originally posted on April 3, 2007 @ 3:50 am
Sharon, that video is bloody hilarious. Or is that ironic :)
Thing is, if you blog as you, no one can duplicate you, no matter the topic. And you can find your own voice.
Consider this. I bumped into Alanis in Toronto at someone’s record release party in the mid-1990s. The Barenaked Ladies were hanging out and hadn’t quite cracked the American market. Alanis hadn’t moved out of her “disco princess” stage, afaik, at least visually, but had already moved to Los Angeles.
However she did it, she moved out of her old voice and look, and found her own voice to set herself apart. Not everyone likes her, but those that do are loyal. She’s done it with controversy but without flash.
My point, besides namedropping and showing off, is that new bloggers can do the same. Move out of your copycat stage and start developing your voice.
It’s what fiction writers do and there’s no reason bloggers cannot. Write about what you want but give us your spin. Isn’t that what blogging is supposed to be about?
Thus, some of the best blog reading out there fall into surprising categories such as food or travel because they tell a story around the topics.
Hey Raj,
Well, I’m glad someone liked the Alanis video! I found it yesterday and I couldn’t stop re-playing it! It’s just really a unique interpretation.
Yes, Alanis is someone who has worked to find her own voice and she’s incredibly distinctive. One of the things I noticed about blogging that kind of surprised me is that it’s really hard to get to the point where you have your own voice.
I struggled with that a lot myself, because my own blog is a blog that’s associated with my business, and I was sort of trying to tow the line between being professional and being the real me ;) .
In the end, I just got bored with trying to please other people. I got fed up and said “to hell with it–I have to write as if no one was reading”, and I started writing what pleased me.
I also found that Seth Godin quote, and it started to sink in with me that we are our most memorable when we do the opposite of what the readers expect. It’s really liberating when we realize that we don’t have to put the square pegs in the square holes that are put before us.
Not everyone wants to do that. Not everyone feels comfortable doing something different from everyone else. It makes you vulnerable and opens you to people laughing and pointing at you. I think that this is why many bloggers don’t really go out on a limb to find their true voice. It’s just too difficult sometimes.
Like you illustrated with Alanis, sometimes in order to find your voice you have to be willing for people not to like you. That’s a toughie, cuz we all want to be liked. The bright part is that the few people who do end up liking us actually respect us as well, because we took the chance to be different.
Oh, and I too love travel and food blogs. One of my faves is My Marrakesh http://www.moroccanmaryam.typepad.com/. It’s just good storytelling. And I love a post that starts out, “I am on the Nile in a feluka, the Egyptian sailboat…”
Yeah, it’s tough when deciding on your voice for your own business blog. For me, my mindset is that I like to be one on one and I’m mostly interested in attracting clients that want me to write like that. So when i realized that, it became an easy decision.
As for who to write for … one thing that Kurt Vonnegut and other writers have always said is to write for one person that you know would read you/listen to you. For me, depending on the topic and language, that’s often my grandmother or my brother or a select few other people. It seems that has worked for me for the most part.
Raj, that’s excellent advice.
That makes it so much easier to write if you have one or two people in mind, rather than trying to write for all of humanity.
Sometimes I’ve been inspired to write certain posts based on a conversation that I’ve had with someone, and I end up writing the post just for that person.
Surprisingly, most of the times I’ve done that, I get all sorts of people coming out of the woodwork saying that the post touched them personally. This makes sense. When we read something, we like to feel like it’s being written just for us, we don’t like to feel like we’re just part of an audience.
And although each of us is unique, we all have more in common than we realize. To write for one person in particular can make many people feel like we’re writing just for them.
Cool idea. I need to try it more often. :)
Great post, Raj. I’m truly inspired to go play now. Thanks.
If I am not mistaken, Sharon wrote this post while Raj and Sharon had a a great conversation following the post, Dave C. ;)
Finding ones voice online is one of the most introspective discoveries we as Bloggers make about ourselves. When we adjust the frequency ever so slightly within our writing, who knows what could happen and who could turn up reading our Blog(s).
I do write to someone or a group of someone’s. In between I write to myself or draw and paint to someone else.
Nice discussion Sharon and Raj. I enjoyed reading it.
Dave C.–thank you for the compliment on the post (I’m mentally substituting my name for Raj’s in your comment :) ). I’m glad you liked it.
Jessica–thank you for noticing that I wrote the post :) . I should be getting used to it by now tho–with my first post I put up at 901am I started getting trackbacks that said “David Krug has a great post about productivity…” Then I graduated to “Sarah Sarmiento has a post at 901am…”
So, I’ve been doing some accidental ghost writing ;) for David Krug, a fictitious person named “Sarah Sarmiento” and now Raj Dash. Duncan, Thord and Muhammed, you guys are next!
Back to the topic of the post…Jessica, the thing you point out about adjusting the frequency of our writing is spot on. From the first day we start blogging, we’re in a constant metamorphosis. We grow into styles of writing, then outgrow those styles, then tweak our frequency until we find something that expresses our style better.
It is a constant developmental process, which is exciting. It’s not always a smooth ride, but if we stick with the writing/blogging and work things out when we’re bored, frustrated, or confused, then we’re constantly growing and becoming better bloggers.
As Raj and Jessica pointed out, the uplifting side is that the more we can be ourselves through out writing, the more memorable we are.
Too funny. At least they are linking to the proper site. Nice to meet you Sharon :)
I know, I am grateful for that much! A pleasure to meet you as well, Jessica. :)
Thanks for the very helpful suggestions. I think you’re right on with what you’re saying about finding your own voice for writing but it’s also a difficult task.
I think that part of the reason why so many blogs are the same is that when a lot of people start blogging, they’re not sure what to do so they end up learning by watching blogs that have any type of following.
Yeah, Jennifer, you’re completely spot on. I know that that’s definitely how I started out! Good Lord–sometimes I cringe at the thought of anyone looking at the early entries on my blog. They were bad. And I was trying to do what I saw other folks doing.
One of the things that helps us in learning how to be better writers/bloggers (or in learning anything) is to just accept that we’ll suck at first, and there will be growing pains along the way.
Fortunately, if we stick with something for long enough and practice enough, we eventually get better. :) With blogging, though, seems like there’s a lot of folks who *don’t* stick with it, and the blogosphere is just left with a bunch of beginning attempts at blog writing, and this is what leads guys like Bruce Sterling to say that there is no quality writing in the blogosphere (totally untrue, of course).
This is a great tip especially to those new to the blogosphere. Brief but very precise information… Many thanks for sharing this one. A must read post!