Quality IS NOT A Differentiator For Blogs
October 18, 2006 – 10:01 amby Darren
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I think this statement might come as a surprise. But if we consider the words of marketing maven Jack Trout, then we believe that “quality is not a differentiator” for any product, even blogs. It’s an interesting though, because most bloggers probably consider it a very important part of their job to “write quality posts”. Why would high-quality writing make our blog different, and somehow better, than other blogs? Here’s a few reasons it wouldn’t:
1) Because “quality” is subjective, and extremely hard to define
2) There’s no evidence that popular blogs are high-quality
Quality is assumed. Everyone has it.
We’d like to believe that it takes a great deal of precision and professionalism to make your mark as a blogger, but clearly it doesn’t. It just takes striking a chord with readers. If the chord resonates across a large enough audience, then you’re popular. If you’re popular in blogging, then you’re a success, and probably even thought of as a “high-quality” blogger. But it’s really your audience size that matters to most people.
Grow your audience = Succeed
If you can gain readers, then you must be doing a good enough job. If you start with 0 readers and end up with 10, 20, or even 100 at the end of the first year, you’re doing something right, especially if your advertising budget was zero or very low. To me, that’s one simple way of determining how well you’re doing.
If you sell products, you can judge your quality, in a sense, from your increase in sales. But without some sort of concrete definition of what you’re attempting to achieve, “quality” is an elusive concept to define.
How do you define quality when it comes to blogging?
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6 Responses to “Quality IS NOT A Differentiator For Blogs”
Well, if you take a look at the top Technorati blogs, many of them depend on quantity more than quality. Some of these blogs are updated even 30 times a day.
I agree with you that ““quality” is subjective, and extremely hard to define”.
By Razib Ahmed on Oct 18, 2006
Quality is not important? I don’t know. Maybe the demand for the top notch quality is not there, but definitely there must be some quality. How do you grow your audience with one of those blogs out there that simply aggregates posts from related blogs?
I think people read blogs because they want to hear someone elses opinion. The blogger needs to think and write some content, at least.
By Kian Ann on Oct 18, 2006
I won’t say it’s not important. But it’s not ‘enough’ to separate you from the other blogs.
In fact, HIGH QUALITY is a given. If you’re a professional blogger, your quality HAS to be of a certain level. The problem is, so are your competitors. I.E., no differentiation.
By Darren on Oct 18, 2006
“The blogger needs to think and write some content, at least.” This is the conviction , Kian Ann, I too have been holding dear to my heart despite coming across posts elsewhere which are auto-generated with only a few words added irrelevently and yet showing high readership on their sitemeters. Those blogs achieved their target of making good money all right. If that is the yardstick to define success, that kind of blogging needs to be redefined as ‘mlogging’ (coined out of moneymaking+blogging).
By satish on Oct 20, 2006
Well, I feel that we have to follow our heart… I mean, yes, maybe these blogs will make money - but how long will they last? Let me put it in this way. If you were Google, will you let these blogs rank high in your SE?
I feel that there is always a “war” between what is considered a black hat or white hat practise. Its so easy to find content on the internet, but if everybody starts quoting wholesale from each other, its going to be a mess.
Seriously, I don’t know.
In my sense of the “ideal google world”… these blogs should not have high readership in first place.
Look at the top 100 blogs in technorati. How many do not have a lot more original content than quoted content?
By Kian Ann on Oct 20, 2006