How to Value-Add Everything (Even the Little Stuff)
Photo by Computer Science Geek.
To finish the trio of posts on the importance of value (for now) I want to put forward the argument that you can value-add every type of content you produce, from news to links.
Earlier in the post series I explained why I believe value rules the attention economy and secondly, how to harness value to grow your blog or website.
I have no doubt that throughout the series some of you were saying: “That’s all well and good, but what about content that is deliberately intended to be short and pithy, rather than value-packed?”
In answer, I want to suggest that even short and pithy content, news, or content pointing elsewhere, can be value-added. Here’s how.
Is your news worth it?
One lesson I’ve learned over the years is that you can’t break news that’s already broken. When a big story breaks in a particular niche a whole slew of bloggers feel compelled to report on it.
If you’re doing nothing but reporting a story that’s already broken, the choice becomes this: paraphrase or plagiarize.
Most won’t go for the latter, so you end up with dozens of paraphrased reports, usually ending in [via Engadget] — or another hyper-prolific top blog.
In fact, I suspect this is one reason why news blogs dominate the upper echelons of the Technorati Top 100. Blog posts that look like this:
What Engadget said (paraphrased).
[via Engadget]
If you’re covering a niche and you want to include news in that coverage, you don’t have much choice other than to repeat the above. A single blogger or webmaster can’t compete with an extensive network of industry insiders and a full-time staff of writers.
The choice seems to be this: ignore the news, or create paraphrased content. To avoid neglecting our duties, we usually pick the latter.
There are a few severe problems with this approach I’d like to warn you of:
- If you got the story ‘via’ a popular blog in your niche, you can bet most of your readers are already subscribed to it, and have already seen the story.
- People respect the original source of news. They’ll link to your ‘via’, rather than linking to you.
- Social media users respect the original source of news. They’ll vote up your ‘via’, rather than linking to you.
Unless you break news, this kind of content is useless to you. It will cripple your growth. I can speak from experience on this, as it’s a mistake I’ve made in the past. Your blog or website will start to serve as little more than an advertisement for the more popular blogs you get your content from.
I think some of you reading this will be seeing your own situation in the above description. It won’t be easy to acknowledge. The good news I want to share is that it’s a situation you can rectify without abandoning your news coverage.
Adding value to the little stuff
Those of you who aren’t reporting news are probably doing something similar (some of the time) by creating content which points to other content. For example:
What Lifehacker said (paraphrased).
[via Lifehacker]
You can see how that sort of content is just another incarnation of the above problem.
So, how to solve that problem? You need to add value that can’t be found at the original source. Here are some suggestions for how you can start doing that.
Analyze why the news/link is important
I can convert Wikipedia articles to audio. So what? You can add value to your content by answering the inevitable “So what?” question. Why does it matter? What does it mean? What will it allow you to do? You’ll notice this is the most common value-adding method of big blogs like Lifehacker and Engadget.
Predict what its future consequences will be
The ability to convert a website’s articles to audio might not be that astounding or useful, but what if the technology could some day allow you to get your feeds via PodCast?
That’s not a great example, but I hope you can see where I’m going with this. By using your expertise to outline future developments relating to your news/link, you might just create a story more noteworthy than the original.
Explain how it could affect readers
The primary worth of a link or news story as measured by your readers will be: how does it affect me or the things I care about? If you take the time to explain how the content could influence or impact on your readers, you’ll be value-adding straight away.
Explain how it will affect you
If readers like you they’ll be interested to hear how certain things affect what you do. Darren Rowse, for example, seems to get an enthusiastic response whenever he talks about how he expects new make money blogging developments to impact on his earnings.
Occasionally this kind of coverage can be a bigger story than the development itself. People are interested in the ends rather than the means. Your own experiences can create the real story.
Place the news in its wider context
Sometimes any news development or article can be overshadowed by how it sits in the greater context of things. One recent example of this was the firing of a games journalist from video gaming website Gamespot.
The firing in itself was news, but the story became much bigger when it was placed in its wider context: the journalist had written a negative review of a game that was being advertised on Gamespot, which seemed to be the only logical explanation as to why he was fired (and has since been proven to be the cause). All it took was someone clever enough to put two and two together.
Draw together different points of discussion
When news breaks or a groundbreaking article is posted, the blogosphere reacts. Reactions and commentary are linked together by incoming links to the source article.
All it takes is a Technorati search for that URL and you have the collected conversation in one place. By collecting and presenting the best excerpts and analysis you’ll be creating a linkable resource for anyone interested in the discussion.
Take a different angle
You can add an original twist to reports on any kind of content by approaching it from a different angle.
- Other sources might be talking about what the development means for one group of people, but what might it mean from another perspective?
- An article might share advice meant for one type of people, but can you explain how it applies to another group just as much?
- Is there an untold element to the story?
- Is something being neglected in the coverage?
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list (nor does it intend to be). There are many ways to innovate in how you add value to your content.
Add value to everything
The aim of this post is to show that if you consider certain types of content impossible to value-add, you’re short-changing yourself. Your content’s length doesn’t matter, not does its focus (even if it revolves around a news story or article somewhere else).
The key is to provide something you can’t get anywhere else in every article you write — whether it’s a links post, a news report or a quick note recommending something you read elsewhere.
Injecting each article you write with your unique perspective will help make everything you write worth talking about.
If you’re interested in expanding on the ideas in this post, I’ve touched on them before in the following two articles at Skelliewag.org:
“Your readers can’t build a relationship with information. They can build a relationship with you. In this post, I want to discuss how we can de-sanitize our web writing and leave a big, colorful, human smudge on our words.”
“By signing content with your own signature — your thought process, your experiences, your stories — you’re ensuring readers can only come to you and you alone for the content you provide.”
