I’d like to welcome Glen Stansberry from LifeDev (feed) to Problogger. Glen has offered to write a series of posts looking at how to use creativity, productivity and organization to improve your blogging skills.
With the blogosphere ballooning to gigantic proportions, more and more blogs are springing up in every single niche. While it’s great for the reader to see a wide spectrum of opinions, it makes the blogger’s job of standing out that much harder. Any blogger can read a bit of news in their topic, and regurgitate it on their own blog with little thought. But that doesn’t do anything to help our readers, other than give them one more reason to unsubscribe from Mr. RSS.
It’s quite easy to get lost in the sea of voices. However, there’s one often-overlooked way to instantly grab attention: thinking outside of the box.
Case Study: 37Signals
Lets take a look at a quick example of what we’re talking about here. 37Signals runs a great blog Signal Vs. Noise.
In this blog the software company’s founders spend most of their time writing about the 37Signals mantra: great web software is simple, fast and elegant.
But what makes their writing so compelling is that they hardly ever write about software.
Huh?
That’s right – What makes their writing great is that they are able to take pieces of seemingly unrelated topics and link them to their mantra, like how comics relate to web design. Or film concepts and branding. They know how to breathe life into a concept, to let the viewer see an idea in a different light.
Apply, Rinse, Repeat
This technique not only adds a new dimension to your writing, but it also shows how knowledgeable you are on your topic, Obi-Wan. The deep understanding you have of the concept means that you can show correlations previously unheard of. Can you smell the linkbait? :)
And the best part about this strategy: you can start using it immediately. And it’s really not that hard.
It all starts by changing the way you think about information.
Try reading news about topics that interest you but are completely unrelated to your niche. Or read less news, and allow your brain more time to think.
In short: start becoming more aware of how everything relates to your blog’s topic, in some way or another.
You may not get ideas from your feed reader either. That’s OK. Odds are it will be better if you don’t anyway. You’ll want to use as little “influence” from other sources as possible to help ensure originality and to get the creative juices flowing.
[One word of caution: Don't get too abstract on your readers. Clarity is key in making this work. You never want to have your readers scratching their heads at your writing.]
There’s something that puts a well-crafted post ahead of the rest. By wrapping your posts in fresh perspectives, you’ll instantly improve your blogging, and your readers will thank you for it.
This is the first part in the series Cutting Above the Rest, a series focusing on how to use creativity, productivity and organization to improve your blogging skills. Check out Glen Stansberry’s blog LifeDev (feed) for more tips to improve your creativity.
About Darren Rowse
My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from blogs like 
Great stuff, Glen. As a LifeDev subscriber, I’d expect no less :)
One thing I find interesting is applying good eLearning and storytelling techniques to the art of writing blog posts. Using story, metaphor, and other concepts to get your ideas across tends to make your writing more compelling. You can sometimes see from the blogs you read those that have a background is some form of storytelling – screenwriters, novelists, journalists, or lecturers for example.
Never underestimate the power of a good story.
Not sure how creative they are, but their Basecamp project management system is top notch.
right on with “read less news and allow your brain more time to think”. it might be harder in the beginning, but practice makes perfect.
You know i was having quite a bad day until i saw the title of this post which made me lol, i know it’s not related but it was funny to me, watch this trailer
and you’ll know why i laughed at “outside the box” :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFWQ_Rmcf-Y
Think outside the box is really importat!
Thanx for the tips
peace
Thinking outside of the box is a particular instance of the more general term “don’t follow common sense”. If you follow common sense *always* you will lost many opportunities because of fear, because everybody is doing something in some way and it’s just weird to do it in another way, because you are a software developer and not an athlete, etc.
37s’s guys, by the other hand, are designers turned into software developers, so they don’t follow common sense at all. That’s one of the reasons they are so admired: they have an uncommon approach to software development, an uncommon blog that talks about that uncommon approach to software development, and a pair of uncommon applications that really feel good.
Another well know example is Google. When they started, there were already well known leaders on the search engine industry, and the tendency was that search engines would provide many many more functionalities than just search (they were ‘portals’ do you remember? :)). Suddenly came Google with a good algorithm and an uncommon approach to user interface and boom, an internet star did born.
Thinking outside of the box will not only allow you to be a better blogger: it will allow you to advance in your life because you can’t be a better [whatever] if you continue to be the same as you are now.
Great post Glen ;)
Darren, I finally made the move to my own domain, thankyou to a developer of a Blogger Beta RSS -> Import PHP WordPress script.
Great post. It’s always a good thing to learn to think outside the box, and become more compelling.
D
What a great post Glen! I’ve just been thinking about this lately and have been doing some of the steps you’ve listed here with really satisfying results.
By inviting eaders into an experience that’s unlike any other, we ignite their genuine curiousy and interest, which makes them want to come back to our blogs every day to see what we’ll throw at them next.
And approaching the writing of a blog as you describe is oh-so-much more enjoyable than simply regurgitating another bloggers posts. I’m looking forward to seeing your future posts on this topic :-).
Cheers,
Sharon
I’m definately going to start implementing this, and I’ve begun with todays post because there’s no time like the present.
Thanks!
Very good topic.
I have a ton of interests that I’d like to write about, but lately I’ve been trying to tie said interests into the overall theme of the blog. And I agree completely, when it comes to news, sometimes less is more. Sometimes much, much more.
This is an excellent post, a great perspective on writing. I must admit, as a new blogger, I’m guilty of the regurgitation post, but I’ll definitely keep this in consideration from here on out.
If you are looking for some good adive on “Thinking Outside the Box” try checking out what Gary Busey has to say about the topic.
I stumbled upon this the other day.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNjhXSd-LP8 …it is hilarious. Plus there are 40 more of these videos of him to trying to talk about the world of business.
Interesting piece. When i started my blog I was up in the air about what I should write about. I wanted to concentrate on publishing my books – but I found a gazillion blogs about that – each one practically dead with few if any readers.
I found my way only by admitting to myself what I was – a political junkie. Now I know politics are boring to most, but to me it’s like a grand chess game – I love it.
I do try to think of different ways to present politics and I will certainly take you advice on-board
Thanks!