by Skellie
Photo by roland
I spent some of today listening to a talk by Mac productivity leader Merlin Mann. One quote in particular won’t seem to work its way out of my mind. It went something like this:
“It’s amazing how many people will read a blog about productivity that updates twenty-four times a day.”
While funny, it’s also poignant. Another irony wasn’t lost on me: that I’d spent an hour and a bit listening to a talk on “Attention Burglars & Time Sinks”, which I found via Lifehacker (the hyperactive productivity blog in question) while reading feeds when I should have been writing a post very much like this one. I was, effectively, wasting time learning how not to waste time.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who procrastinates by reading blogs about productivity.
But it speaks to a bigger idea. I don’t want to call it a problem or an issue, because I’m not yet sure that it is.
We’ve now arrived at a point where aspirational marketing reigns supreme in the blogosphere. I can’t visit my feed reader without seeing at least one post that promises to solve all my problems, turn me into a master at something, make me wealthy, make me fit and otherwise put me on the path to success.
It’s actually quite amazing — not because every post in this mold sticks out at me like a sore thumb, but because of the opposite: aspirational marketing is so ingrained in today’s blogging culture that I was being ‘marketed to’ in this way on a daily basis and, without realizing it, using aspirational marketing methods in my own posts and headlines without even thinking about it.
Aspirational marketing says: buy this product and you’ll be more attractive, or fitter, or richer, or more productive, or smarter, or more enviable, or the best at something. This book will help you become rich, or become the best at doing ______, or solve all your problems. That sort of thing. It’s all too familiar.
The kind bloggers consume and utilize isn’t too different: read this post and you’ll be more attractive, or fitter, or better at _____, or smarter, or more enviable, or a master at something. This blog will help you become rich, or become the best at doing _______, or solve all your problems. Each niche will have its own familiar variants.
Is that a bad thing?
Not necessarily. I’d rather the blogosphere be consumed by aspirational marketing than mediocre posts about nothing important — even though a majority of those posts which bank on your aspirations won’t do most of what they claim for most people. If a thousand visitors read a post called ‘15 Ways to Become Wealthy’, it’s unlikely that the post alone will make any one of those people wealthy.
Having said that, you might occasionally find a really cool tip or a useful bit of advice buried in-between the stuff you know and the stuff you don’t need to know. The tips probably won’t change your life, but they can be quite useful. (And yes, productivity blogs have made me more productive).
Our aspirational marketing habit does present a few potential problems, though.
Real Value vs. Comfort food blogging
(Note: comfort food here’s means the stuff some people eat when they’re feeling crappy to make them feel temporarily better, i.e. tubs of icecream, big slices of cake and so on.)
How many bits of advice do you read, versus the amount of advice you actually act upon?
The honest truth: aspirational marketing is not pervasive because all bloggers are manipulators. It’s pervasive because it works like a charm.
Combine something a lot of people aspire to with a post addressing that aspiration and you’re likely to get comments, links and traffic. I suspect this popularity hinges around two points: 1. it appeals to our desire to better ourselves and 2. with so much content to choose from we have little time left for anything that makes modest, seemingly insignificant promises.
The danger I see is this: if we’re suckers for aspirational marketing at every turn it becomes easy to start treating those posts like comfort food. We feel as if a given post or blog is worth the time investment because it makes us feel like we’re becoming better at something, but if you never actually do anything as a result of what you’ve read, if you don’t make changes and act on advice, if you’re not inspired or meaningfully informed by it (meaningfully being information you later use), you’re doing the digital equivalent of eating a bucket of ice-cream.
In fact, I’d guess that at least one blog you read regularly is digital comfort food. It produces content you think is important, but when you judge it by the above criteria, you come up blank.
Photo by FeastingMadeEasy
There are two possible traps you can fall into: reading comfort food and writing comfort food posts.
Reading comfort food
Posts that use aspirational marketing methods aren’t all comfort food. In fact, posts in this mold have the potential to be some of the most useful and helpful you’ll read. When aspirational content delivers on its promises with solid, non-intuitive advice, the result can be nothing short of amazing.
With that in mind, here’s a simple three question test you can use to identify comfort food tips and advice blogs:
- Have I ever changed a habit or had positive results because I followed a tip from this blog?
- Has it ever changed the way I thought about something?
- Has it ever inspired me to create or do something?
Ask these questions honestly and boldly of every blog you read regularly. If you can’t truthfully answer yes to any of those questions, you should unsubscribe. If you’re very worried about comfort food taking up too much of your time, you can make the criteria even more stringent and ask whether a given blog does any of the above often enough to make it worthwhile.
By using this process to prune my feed reader, I discovered that a number of blogs everyone seems to love were nothing more than comfort food for me. I stress that because what is comfort food for one person could be life-changing for another.
Writing comfort food
I’ll admit — this is a tricky one. Comfort food content can be very popular and, as stated above, not everyone will derive the same value (or lack of value) from content.
A truth: most people don’t have any idea that the post they just read, linked to and voted for on social media is comfort food. This kind of content won’t cripple your blog. Readers often enjoy comfort food and it may even be enough to gain you a new subscriber — or many.
You will find, though, that your blog’s most stellar aspirational content will be the stuff that motivates people to do one of the following:
- Act.
- Think differently.
- Create.
You’ll know it from the comments. People will say: “I’m going to try tip #2,” or “I never thought about it that way. That makes a lot of sense.” Or, something which can be best of all to see — you’ll discover a trackback from someone who was moved enough to build on your ideas in a post of their own.
I’ll leave you with a few things to think about:
- Do I need to cut some comfort food from my diet?
- Am I creating comfort food content?
- Are there effective alternatives to aspirational marketing? (We’re going to need them. Everything gets boring sooner or later and particular formulas lose their punch.)
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
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31 Comments, Comment or Ping
Mark McGuinness
Thanks Skellie, a very thought-provoking post. One of the things your blog has inspired me to do is to trim some of the fat from my own blog - i.e. not to worry about posting so often, but to try and pack as much value as possible into fewer posts. I’ll add the questions you raise in this post to the list of things I consider before hitting ‘publish’ in future.
And you’ve reminded me that my feed reader could do with a Tim Ferriss-style low-information diet.
Feb 20th, 2008
Rob in Denver
http://www.52novels.com/archives/when-do-they-have-the-time/
Great minds, no? Although I just appreciated the irony.
Feb 20th, 2008
Mark Dykeman
Blogs are like TVs shows and movies. Some inform, many entertain. Some blogs are infomercials.
If you’re trying to budget your time wisely, then your suggestions on what you read are valid. However, if you’re more interesting in seeing a broad swath of what’s going on, you’ve got to have some junk food.
Feb 20th, 2008
Brad
You’re right on Skellie!
I’m a yoga instructor, and one thing that I try to bring to my students is that a lesson learned in one area of life (for instance learning patients a yoga posture) can usually be applied in other areas of life (patients at work or with the family…). I find that when we are aware of this, we grow in all areas of life.
One constant topic point for me and my students is diet and the use of comfort foods. I hadn’t really considered what you’ve posted until now, but it rings as true as what I try to show my students. In most ways, the way we feel is a result of what we consume. Another lesson learned!
I’m happy to have read this. Becoming more aware of one’s self is alway a step toward true growth.
Thanks!
Brad
Feb 20th, 2008
April
Very thought provoking, Skellie. I was wondering the other day, with the proliferation of so many “top 100 ways to dry your hair” style posts, if the formula would eventually get old. The thing is, some of them are incredibly useful. They may concentrate a huge array of tools in one location, making it easier to find a resource that will be helpful. On the other hand, I do get the feeling that many of them are either: 1) stating the obvious or 2) comfort food.
There is a time and place for comfort food, I think. Take personal finance blogs, for example. If you are trying to make changes in how you run your finances, it can be helpful to read encouraging posts that are supportive of the decisions you are trying to make. Reading the same kinds of ideas over and over means that no one individual post will change your life. Collectively, however, they can have the effect of helping you “brainwash” yourself, so to speak.
On the other hand, I do think that thoughtful posts (like this one, ironically) that connect the dots in new ways or that ask questions that help people gain real insight are especially valuable, and much rarer.
As for writing, I’ve noticed that it is much easier to write a formula post. Just a matter of doing the research and legwork, but you know that if you do it, the post will come together. It is much more difficult (or maybe just scarier) to rely on writing the really creative posts, because you are dependent on your brain being able to come up with insights and innovations. You feel much more dependent on a “muse”, it seems, and it often requires a good bit of thinking time to fully develop an idea. Plus, it can be a tad demoralizing when you do come up with a brilliant insight, and it is virtually ignored because it doesn’t promise to bring about world peace.
I am very intrigued by thinking about alternatives to aspirational marketing. Why else do people read blogs, than just to learn or become better at x? Well, entertainment would definitely be one. But I think that would mostly fall in the realm of comfort food, too. Hmmmm. Maybe there are just more and less helpful ways of doing aspirational marketing? I’m not sure - need to think about this some more!
Feb 20th, 2008
Parth
Interesting. It has mad me act, think differently, and create.
Feb 20th, 2008
Johny B. Goode
To be honest those desserts are so distracting, it won’t be possible to post for a while….
Feb 20th, 2008
Pat
This is so incredibly insightful, and so maddeningly relevant to my particular niche, that it makes me want to scream.
I don’t know if you can really get away from aspirational marketing. It’s really all about promising the reader benefits, right? That’s the aspirational part. The hook that gets them to read it. Marketing 101 says to push the product benefits, not the product features.
Promise and deliver, promise and deliver. Value-packed posts. That is the goal. Thanks for the constant inspiration, Skellie.
Feb 20th, 2008
Martin
Excellent post Skellie, and so very true - I’ll unsubscribe from your blogs immediately… oops, maybe that’s not quite what you meant
Seriously though, you’re spot on - all blogs have these kinds of posts, some more than others - one of the things I’ve been working on lately is how best to scan through the headlines and only read the posts that I know I’ll find interesting or will get something out of. Some articles I’ll read the first paragraph and stop there if it doesn’t resonate with me.
In saying that though, there are a lot worse ways to procrastinate than read a bunch of blog posts (comfort ones or otherwise), it’ll help add to your experience and let you grow as a blogger - sure, you can certainly overdo it, but a little bit everyday can’t be a bad thing.
btw, when reading this post it made me think about whether I really get any benefits out of this blog in particular, and it made me realise that your post on using Flickr images is one that has really helped and is something I use all the time now… as long as some gems like that are spaced around the comfort posts then the blog has value IMO.
Feb 20th, 2008
Evan
A good point well made.
I try to ensure all my posts are value laden and not comfort food (not claiming I always succeed).
The most annoying thing I find about the aspirational marketing trip is that if I then write sensibly and realistically about something this is regarded as under-selling. It’s difficult to get attention if you don’t make inflated claims because this has become the standard. Not sure what to do about this - other than the long haul of developing relationships.
The other side of the story is gossip. We like to feel we are part of a group and gossip helps this (we can all see what the weather is like and we like to know trivia about others). This is part of the reason for non-value comments on blogs I think. Saying “yes I agree” helps us feel part of the group.
Then there is the need to raise our technorati (and other) ratings. This encourages leaving lots of comments and making lots of links.
I do think there is a difference between short and long-term. I wish there was a measure for how long users stayed subscribed to a blog. This could be a rough guess at whether the blog sustained valuable content. That blogging is so new means there are many new subscribers around at any time. So sheer number of subscribers may not mean much other than short-term attraction.
Feb 20th, 2008
shooperman
Skellie, thanks for putting up such a good post and re-emphasizing your support for real value blogs! I’m very sure this has already started ripples in blogosphere forcing bloggers to take a good hard look at the work they are churning out.
I would also add to this to say that ‘trust’ is the prerequisite before readers think different, act and create. How is trust established between readers and writers? Does subscription imply trust?
Feb 20th, 2008
CatherineL
Skellie - this is a great point. Sometimes I think if I’d read a fraction of the self help books I’ve read and concentrated on putting that advice into action, I’d have benefited far more.
As for blogging comfort posts - I’m guilty there too. The trouble is, you often don’t know you’re doing it until you get feedback. And as you said, it’s much more rewarding to read comments where people are actually planning to put your advice into action.
I’m off to review my blog and figure out the type of posts that seem to have motivated people most. Thanks.
Feb 20th, 2008
Mrs. Micah
Read my blog and you will be out of debt in 15 days and a multi-millionaire in 15 more.
Wait. Oh.
Excellent points.
I think one solid comforting aspect of personal finance blogging is keeping people going and building a support structure. Some posts help you understand a financial point better. Others give you new ideas. A lot just help you keep going.
Finance can be such a slow deal, it’s not like going to a chiropractor who just pops the right place and you’re good to go forever. It’s slow going. but reading PF blogs every day helps me feel that it’s worthwhile, that I’m not alone…and while they may not offer me specifics to improve my life, they offer me something great in general.
Feb 20th, 2008
JD
I’m not sure yet whether I read some posts because they’re less filling or because they taste great!
As a blog author, I think it helps when we:
1. carve out action from reference/insight.
2. chunk things down into nuggets
3. turn insights into action
As a blog reader, I think it helps when we:
1. Always ask, “how can I use this?”
2. Count our actions (counting your actions improves awareness)
3. Share our lessons learned (Success snowballs for yourself and others)
What’s interesting is that We’re actually biologically wired to resist change. Anything you do repetitively gets wired into your basal ganglia. Luckily, you can make this same pattern work for you. One of the most effective ways to learn a new habit is repetition with a checklist. The air force uses checklists to share lessons learned and to build experts from scratch.
Personally, I use a few tools to make continuous improvement a way of life:
1. 30 day improvement sprints
2. improvement scripts (focused checklists)
Feb 20th, 2008
Linda
This is another superb post in my opinion and this will be my first but hopefully not last comment on your inspirational blog.
I have a problems with my feeds, I get very stressed seeing that I have 100+ feeds awaiting and more saved. I always think I will find time to read the saved ones but honestly it never happens. Your questions above are great and I will go and remove some of my feeds straight away.
As far as if you write comfort food or not; let me tell you that you have made me wanna throw out my crappy blogspot blog and get my own domain and pursue my writing career. So I guess that means I will not unsubscribe to your blog
Feb 20th, 2008
Lani
When I first started reading blogs, I came across “the blog in question” and after digging around in it in for a while I wondered why so many people were reading the same advice over and over again. That’s not intended as a criticism of the blog in any way: The advice found there is good.
But it is also largely common sense so I’m not sure that aspirational marketing is the problem. If a post doesn’t call us to action, is it the post’s fault or our own?
Perhaps we need to think not about what we are reading, but how we are reading. Are we reading complacently, as though knowing and doing are the same thing? Or are we reading because it supports what we are actually trying to do?
Feb 20th, 2008
Hunter Nuttall
“It’s amazing how many people will read a blog about productivity that updates twenty-four times a day.”
Aaaaaaah! I said the same thing in the guest post I just submitted to ProBlogger for consideration. Well, it’s good to know I’m not the only one who thinks that.
Feb 21st, 2008
Corinne Edwards
Sorry, Skellie -
I think you have to throw in some “comfort food” once in a while just to keep things interesting. Or, funny. Or, human.
The main thing I ask myself is, even if it is a little frivolous, am I still on general topic?
We have to have a little fun in this blogging game!
Feb 21st, 2008
The Crazy Colombian
Skellie,
this is my first post on your blog, so ‘Hello’ and thanks for creating such a fantastic resource!
When I started my blogging, one of my first posts was called “Are you a knowledge junkie?” I formatted it tongue-in-cheek along the style of a Cosmo quizz. The post covered 5 questions, and asked you how many self-help books, do you have; how many have you read; How many seminars have you attended; and how much $ have you spent on them.
The ideas was to get my readers to question the value of all this self-help, self-improvement activity. Like you, I had the suspicion that in many cases we ’stuff ourselves’ with comfort food, and don’t make the time to get the quality meal served perfectly, savoured a small step at a time, and remembered forever.
Like some of your other readers commented, I do believe that sometimes we want comfort food/reading for the pure entertainment value; there are a couple of diary-style blogs like that in my Bloglines feed, and I plan to keep them there for a long time.
Yet your suggestion to consciously make that decision is a good reminder to stop, re-evaluate our choices, and adjust course if/when necessary.
Thanks again for your thought provoking words, and keep up the good work. I am one of those subscribers that actually reads almost every post you write religiously, and get a lot of value (ie. I change the way I do things) out of this activity.
Cheers,
-The Crazy Colombian
Feb 21st, 2008
abby ives
On the whole, I’m not opposed to comfort food once in awhile because it does just what the name promises; it comforts, which is not a bad thing. I’m also a big fan of repetition. As a psychotherapist, I know how very hard it can be for people to change, and that often people have to hear the same thing over and over from different sources before they are willing, or able, to do something differently, or to take a risk. But it is probably a good thing for everyone, reader and blogger alike, to consider the time to value ratio and to decide what is truly of value and what is just another tub of ice cream filled with empty calories. I’m not sure a post has to lead to action to be useful, but it surely needs to add value in some way for me to keep reading a blog. This one does, btw.
Feb 21st, 2008
Latarsha
Skellie,
Thanks for your insight! It IS amazing how much time we can waste on going to blogs that end us costing us so much time.
Which is why I loooved your blog-readers point: I need to make sure I focus my time on those blogs that bring me more than comfort.
Thus, I focus on those that will enable me to become a better decision-maker because they give either make me “Act, Think Differently, or Create.”
Thanks for sharing!
Feb 21st, 2008
skellie
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I can see from the depth of a lot of the comments here that the post has made people think, whether they agreed with it or not. That’s a good thing!
I suppose, to clarify my point in a nut-shell, I’m really trying only to talk about comfort food in relation to posts that promise to make you better in some way. Entertainment, humor and opinion posts are really a separate category, so I wouldn’t class them as comfort food (though I’m sure they have their own equivalent — such as reading people write opinions you already hold, hehe).
My main piece of advice when writing posts to make people better is that you focus on making it as easy as possible to make changes based on your advice by giving attention to the actual process of making change.
I.e: replace ‘this is what you should do’ only posts.
With ‘this is what you should do’, and ‘here’s how to do it’ posts.
But I do agree, sometimes comfort food is inevitable and sometimes readers will enjoy it. Like everything, it’s important to develop a balance, and maybe consider the kind of balance you’re creating on your own blog.
Feb 21st, 2008
Peter Knight
Thank you Skelliewag, a comforting insight. Just starting to blog with serious intention : Become incredibly rich, save the world from take-your-pick evils, and doing just about anything better - even the things you never thought of doing before and so on.
Obviously confused about ‘niche ‘and seeing what’s out here is disheartening. This makes sense. A comfort. ‘mostly by knight’ has to focus more. Food for thought
Peter
Feb 21st, 2008
jim
This is a really interesting way of looking at things and I hadn’t thought of so many of these posts being “aspirational marketing.” I agree with you that it’s very much like comfort food, maybe I need to cut some of it out! It’s always important to re-examine things… very thought provoking, thank you.
Feb 22nd, 2008
Tiffany Monhollon
Love the aspirational marketing tie in.
I think the hardest thing for me is my personal diet - there’s so much information out there, it’s hard to control what I consume. So I really like the metaphor of comfort food, because it helps me see that too much of a tasty thing isn’t always good.
As far as creating content around these ideas, I’ve started to give myself permission to focus on posting more vlaue-add things and the responses have been outstanding. It may mean I write less, but I get more responses, better traffic, and see a lot of those aha! moments happening in my community.
Feb 23rd, 2008
Tibi Puiu
I’ve asked myself those very questions numerous times, not only when clearing my rss feed, but also when pondering what kind of content to write about in my blog and in which direction to take it further.
Feb 25th, 2008
Nick's Traffic Tricks
The worst part of it all is that the reading of blogs can be filed under “research” and this makes it all seems so valid and a justifiable use of time. The reality is, if we would just stop and absorb one good blog a day and use that information, we would be further ahead in our quest to be the most popular and most read site on the internet.
Mar 9th, 2008
Michael Martine, Blog Consultant
Skellie, this is one of the best posts you’ve ever written. Amen and bravo! The blogosphere is full of this kind of bullshit and I’m getting sick of it. Trying really hard to writing the read deal, not creating comfort food. Love the metaphor! You just made into the next “overheard” post.
Mar 23rd, 2008
BillinDetroit
<— in the minority, again.
I don’t know how well I am succeeding yet, but my goal is to to get adults to look at life differently. I want them to get off the treadmill and actually THINK about what is going on around them instead of just consuming what is spoon fed to them.
I’d make a good fanatic.
Mar 26th, 2008
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