Joining the Blog Herd vs. Being Your Own Cow
With the advent of tools like Techmeme, TailRank, digg and Technorati's Discover pages, it's easier than ever to find the hot discussion of the day in a given subject area. This means as a blogger you're faced with an important choice. You can follow the heard and join the big conversation du jour or be your own cow (or even a little of both).
Some days I love running with the bulls (I got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell!) Other days I prefer to be my own cow and hang back. There are pros and cons to each. Lately, I have been avoiding the heard. I find I prefer to be a leader than a follower. Other times, I flip flop faster than Bill Clinton and all I do is hop from herd to herd. I go in phases but it seems to work for me and it mixes up the content.
Surfing a meme is certainly fun. You get to add your perspective to often important conversations that align with your area of interest. However, if this is all you do with your blog, then it's not going to be very well read. There are a few rare exceptions. For example, Nicholas Carr seems to surf a lot of memes. It works for him. He gets noticed because he's incredibly controversial. However, more often than not, unless you start a stampede every so often, you'll be trampled under the memes if you don't add value.
A more viable model for success (at least for generating attention) is to start your own stampede. First, you need to pick a high interest subject. Second, I wouldn't launch your stampede the day Google, Yahoo, Apple or Microsoft make a big splash. Finally, you have to break news or put a big idea out there. Find stuff that no one is linking to. Get it early and put a strong POV out there. There are lots of simple ways you can automate this process with RSS. Your "find" doesn't need to be a top secret site. It can be the important news article that everyone missed.
What's your view? Do you like to ride the herd or be your own cow or both? Has the rising popularity of memetrackers changed how you blog? I think it's made some of us more lazy, and others more creative.
