Sunday Musings: Blogging, Authenticity and the Human Factor

There's a truly stunning volume of advice out there, concerning the entire issue of "How To Blog."

And not just blog, but also vlog, create memes, build a following, and goodness knows what else.

I'm sure all this advice is ultimately well-meaning, but 20 years of experience also tells me that the most successful participants in the blogging/writing/content creation space have in common precisely that what they offer the world is not formulaic.

Around here, we also spend a good bit of time discussing what sort of content is best for the community. Do we reach consensus? Is there a magic formula? Hardly...

That said, it inevitably holds true that the Special Sauce among the best of the best is The HUMAN Factor.

I have said this before, on these pages: we can only get so far on an eternal stream of Bitcoin technical charts, or photos of the same bush from 43 angles, or recipes for chicken parmigiana.

Perhaps this is not a great revelation to anyone that the personal angle matters... but even when I am reading about how to replace a dodgy ABS Control Unit in my aging Volvo, I don't just want IKEA style schematics of "connect A to B," I want that person's personal experience of where the possible shortcuts are, and where my knuckles will get skinned, and how to test the new unit without the benefit of a dealer's diagnostic computer.

That's just an example.

It could be the subject is completely different, like how to overcome depression without pharmaceuticals, or something.

I want your experience, not just THE experience.

I think about some of my favorite contributors here in this community, and there's almost often a common thread: Whatever each person might be sharing, they do so in such a fashion that I feel like I know them, and was right there with them. As part of the content sharing experience, they make us care not just about the subject, but about them as individuals.

Now before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, I'm not talking about that nebulous thing we call "Quality Content," without really knowing or understand what that term even means.

I'm talking about something that could be quite simple:

The difference between the same photo of a cute puppy playing, with one captioned "Beagle puppy" and the other captioned "Snoopy, my new puppy, being adorable!"

See the difference?

We humans have a very long tradition of story telling. And story telling matters, everywhere. Story telling was how our histories were saved, thousands of years back. When we were in grade school, having the teacher tell a story for the last 10 minutes of class was our favorite thing. When I was in college, my history professor taught through personal anecdotes... and he's the one I remember.

And guess what? I'm not alone in that! When I just looked up Prof. Philpott, guess what I found? A fellow Steemian (who's no longer active) actually wrote about him, back in 2017.

Whatever you may be creating, the things — the content — we tend to find memorable and compelling are the things that include that Human Factor.

Which leads us back to the opening question... and the follow-up of whether or not we are creating compelling content. Do you leave some of yourself on the page, along with the story you are telling? I know quite a few people who do, and they are the ones whose blogs I always come back to.

Thanks for reading!

(Another #creativecoin creative non-fiction post)

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for this platform.)
Created at 20200216 18:31 PST
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