Individuality is Fine, as Long as We All Do it Together

I was going through my WordPress app on my phone (BTW if you publish with WordPress, you really need this app, it’s great to keep up with your site, especially when you’re mobile), and came across this world map while checking my stats. This shows every country in the world that sent a visitor to this site in 2017. As you can see, almost every country in the world had at least one visitor come here in 2017.

I think we sometimes lose track of just what an amazing communications tool a blog can be. When I first started blogging in 2005, one of the very first people that linked to my blog (tracked with Technorati, anyone remember them?) was a 13 year-old girl in China. That opened my eyes to the enormous power of a blog to spread your message on a truly global scale.

The reality is, we’ve given up on the promise of blogging. Blogs give everyone a voice. As long as you have access to the internet and the blogging platform, you can share your voice with the world.

But over time, instead of sharing our unique voices, perspectives and personalities, we’ve become better at sounding like everyone else. We study blogging ‘best practices’ and try to ‘improve’ our writing to increase engagement, stats and visitors. It’s enticing, but if you aren’t careful, we all end up sounding like everyone else.

I’m just as guilty of it as anyone. I tell myself I can’t talk about certain topics here or in a certain way, because I always have to be mindful of who my audience is, and what they want.

But lost in that, is the fact that your audience wants to know YOU. They want to hear your unique take, your personality. They want to see something different, that’s how you catch attention. And if the content is good, then you hold it.

I love reading business success stories, learning how a particular company came out of nowhere to stand out in a crowded marketplace. More often than not, the founder or CEO’s explanation for what worked is simply “I zigged, when everyone else zagged”.

Here’s to more ‘zagging’ in the year ahead.  And a gold-star to whoever can be the first to tell me what TV character said the title of this post.