Conformity and Blogging In It’s Simplest Form

One thing I have been think­ing a lot about lately are blog­ging trends. You know, what’s “hot” and what’s “not”. It’s always puz­zled me to see that so many blog­gers take other people’s advice so seri­ously that they do exactly as they’re told to do.

So many blogs today defeat the con­cept of what a blog really is. In my opin­ion, just because you install the needed soft­ware for a blog, you aren’t a true blog­ger until you can prove to every­one that you are just an indi­vid­ual try­ing to share their opin­ions and beliefs on a cer­tain subject.

So with all of that being said, what I am I try­ing to really get at in this post? I want to talk about how pretty much every blog­ger (yes, even me) is con­form­ing to already estab­lished stan­dards of what it means to be a blogger.

But I’m Totally Unique!

That’s some­thing that all of would like to think, but we all get a lit­tle over inspired from other peo­ple and try so hard to con­form to the behav­ior that is expected from us. Maybe doing all of that will make your blog suc­cess­ful, and if it’s work­ing for you and you are happy doing it then go for it.

How to know you are not as unique as you thought

I thought this was freakin’ genius when I thought it up, and I want you to do what I am about to sug­gest. So to do that, go to your blog and read below:

1. Look through your posts, and find any posts with lists in them. For exam­ple, num­bered lists like “5 Ways To Do Something”.
2. Count how many items you have in your list. So I went to the list I made, [intlink id=“699” type=“post”]100+ Lists To Help You Become a Bet­ter Blogger[/intlink] and I orig­i­nally made it 100 (some links have been added, so it is now over 100).
3. Now that you know how many items in your list ask your­self “Have I con­formed at all in the mak­ing of this list?”. Really think about the answer to that ques­tion, keep­ing in mind the num­ber of items your list has.

The large major­ity of list posts will have nice “clean” num­bers. For exam­ple, 5, 10, 20, 100, etc. It’s what is expected when­ever a really huge list is made, right? You don’t really see those “odd­ball num­bers” like 34, 56, 74, etc. in list posts. That’s because we all feel the need to meet those stu­pid expec­ta­tions of how many items should be in your list.

So if you have a list with those “nicer” num­bers, then con­grat­u­la­tions. You’re not a unique blog­ger. But don’t worry, none of us really are, and those list posts we all make just prove that theory.

Try­ing to be dif­fer­ent goes questioned

When Janith wrote his guest post over at ThouShall­Blog “49 Tips to Become a Bet­ter Blog­ger”, the one thing I noticed is how peo­ple reacted to the title. With only 49 items instead of a nice even 50, there were mixed responses I want to share with you from the article:

This is def­i­nitely one com­pre­hen­sive post. But, why 49 and not a com­plete 50?

The 50^th is don’t trust what other blog­gers say, do you own research.

Not to hijack your post but I can think of a num­ber 50 for you:
50: Push your­self. Don’t be afraid to exper­i­ment. Write things that you’ve never writ­ten, say things you’ve never said, research things you’ve never been inter­ested in.

I like that you went with 49 vs 50 hehehe stand out from the crowd

what­ever hap­pened to #50, did some­one inter­rupt you and you lost your train of thought?

All through­out the com­ments of that post, I notice that peo­ple will address the title for being abnor­mal. As you can see from the com­ments I posted in the quote above, the com­mu­nity reacted in a num­ber of ways:

• Some ques­tion­ing going on as to why such a weird num­ber was used
• Peo­ple try­ing to add on to it, so it meets the con­formist standards
• Some recog­ni­tion for being unique
• Even a bit of sar­casm about the odd num­ber of items

What can we conclude?

So based on the ques­tion­ing of that “weird num­ber” used in a title, why do some of try to be non­con­formists if it cre­ates such a dis­trac­tion within the community?

In the end, it’s up to you on how you want to blog. Noth­ing I write has ever meant to be lis­tened to. I sim­ply offer sug­ges­tions and friendly advice. It’s how you inter­pret what I, or any­body else says that makes you the blog­ger you are now. Whether it’s a blog­ger who fol­lows what every­one else does, or a blog­ger who try’s not to fol­low the crowd.

A Lit­tle Extra Fun Stuff

Blog­gers who aren’t afraid to show their true selves

These are a few blog­gers that are really just them­selves. You could def­i­nitely learn some­thing from these peo­ple if you’re strug­gling with originality.

• Dean Hunt

Dean Hunt has a really cre­ative blog, and his posts are always infor­ma­tive yet really welll thought out. The coolest thing about his blog is that he offers reviews on his blog for $1 Mil­lion. He takes the con­cept of mak­ing money online through reviews less seri­ous than any one else, and even thought I don’t think any­one will ever buy a $1 Mil­lion review, I think Dean Hunt is the per­son to fol­low if you want to add a comedic twist to your blog.

• Sug­ar­rae

She blogs about some very use­ful stuff, but I think she does some­thing dif­fer­ent then what you would expect from other Inter­net Mar­keters. Besides show­ing off on her blog she is a Bucs fan (ewww :p), she adds some orig­i­nal­ity to her posts by some extra per­son­al­ity. At least, I think she does. Take for exam­ple a tuto­r­ial she does on the The­sis theme enti­tled “Hooks for Dum­mies”. Tuto­ri­als are usu­ally just pure infor­ma­tion, but I think the com­men­tary she adds to some of her points make the post more enjoyable.

• Shoe­Money

Jeremy Schoe­maker is an extremely suc­cess­ful Inter­net entre­pre­neur, and on his blog, he writes about it. I usu­ally find some of his posts pretty inter­est­ing because of his writ­ing style (and he likes LOST). He also has a cool, and unique series of posts where every Fri­day he shows off a shirt he got sent in from some kind of com­pany or web­site. I just think Shoe­Money is a great blog to fol­low because of all of the cool infor­ma­tion that is pre­sented on it, and more impor­tantly how it’s presented

Photo by Ray­mond Brown

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