Blogging – You Add The Value

You experience something of interest and write a blog post to share it with others. It may be from a conversation, an event, points made at a conference, or your experience in making something.

If you are merely reporting, the reader gets a pretty flat experience – the true value is absent from the post.

You are the one that creates value for the reader by sharing your thoughts, observations, and the best things learned by the experience. Why? Because your view is unique and insightful for the reader – much beyond the mere highlights of the topic. A case in point...

Recently I heard a talk by Steve Wozniak – the Woz behind the technical brilliance of Apple – with two other prolific bloggers. Same session, same speaker, heard the same things – but here's what each person took away from the presentation:

• Design around the features of the technology, but keep the user in mind when creating process
• Each time Woz showed him the latest project, Steve Jobs said “I can sell that”;
• People develop expertise by making things.

Best thing learned for each – what a broad range of take-aways from his talk. Imagine how different the three posts are about this meeting.

Same is true for other bloggers with large followings – readers read Dana Blankenhorn for his insight about the on-line world, not the reporting about what's new or changing; same is true about marketing and Seth Godin – it is the distilled wisdom of his posts that drives the traffic to his blog.

Bloggers create value by offering their thinking on a subject and what they've discovered. Readers frequent places where they receive value – this certainly applies to blogs as well.

Do you agree?

Check out Blah, Blah Blog at the Web Managers Roundtable, on August 9, and BlogLab, coming August 16.