Lately, ideas for creative, yet informative, and authoritative content hasn’t been coming my way.  Maybe it is the fact that I am a slight perfectionist and don’t want to create something that nearly everyone else has already posted – I want to have a blog that showcases more than my ability to replicate others’ thoughts.

Blogging is more than just a tool, profession, and anything else you imagine it to be.  It allows you to express yourself.  With this key idea in mind, there are a few additional aspects that I’d like to address before moving on to the post’s main topic.

So, you have the quote on quote – amazing – idea for a blog.  A blog that is able to outpace the competition in monthly growth, to levels beyond that of even the most established bloggers.  While this is rarely ever accomplished, it can be done.  When you begin the process of researching how to start the new project, you find that nearly everyone has already covered the topics you thought people would find “extremely helpful.”

That idea is now down the drain — what’s next?

Solution #1: Solve Problems

Everyone has problems.  It is only natural that we all need solutions to the multitude of problems and difficulties we face in our lives.  Many of the top questions have already been answered, but as many people might say, everything is nearly identical and has already been accomplished.  In some ways, this is true, but in so many other ways, it isn’t true.

With the rise of the Internet, it became even easier for people to find quick answers to their questions.  They simply went to Google or any other tool (such as Yahoo! Answers), typed in their question/keywords, and an answer would be as little as ten seconds away.

Starting a blog, or any new web project, should be viewed similarly.  If you can’t solve a problem someone has, then you shouldn’t count the idea (in a sense, you shouldn’t place as much priority on the individual idea).  New problems (and their counterpart solutions) need to be created by someone each day — you have to be there to solve the problems.

Solution #2: Be Unique in Your Approach

Comedy is comedy.  Many comedians can’t get their stronghold on how people view them for a single reason.  They just aren’t that funny.  You can have the content that you feel is appropriate, targeted, and solves a problem, but the mainstream Internet “user” won’t find what you have to offer any different than others in your field (or niche).

Content is valuable in the sense that people desire a vast amount of it, yet no one can hold the answer to every question.  That’s why it is important to be as unique as possible, especially in areas where there is a lot of competition, or over-saturation of the same relative content.

Solution #3: The Tortoise Doesn’t Always Win

Going back to the old fable, being slow and steady doesn’t always place you first.  Referring to online purposes, the hare often wins the race, as speed is one of the most important factors in your execution.

Some blogs only cover news, whether in the form of celebrity gossip, events going on in a local area, or relating to other niches, you need to deliver on your tagline – providing news.  However, at some point, you’ll encounter ‘burnout,’ which a blogger’s worst nightmare.  Otherwise known as the inability to produce content at the same level that they were once able to.

You might find that producing content more quickly yields lower results (in the form of sales, page views, etc.), so you can’t always go this route.

Solution #4: Don’t Follow the Pack

Putting all other advice aside, don’t follow the pack because a leader tells you to do so.  Be the leader.  Buck the trends and follow your own lead in creating something people want.  It’ll be more work in the end, but there isn’t a doubt that you’ll be able to accomplish it.

Often, the one who follows the pack doesn’t get as far as the one who leaves the pack first and goes his or her own way.  It all depends on the amount of effort you want to put into your cause, and how you execute everything.

Be the leader yourself.

Conclusion

Back to the main topic – hasn’t everything already been written about already?  To some, it has.  In another sense, new content can be created each day (although it will always be based on previous, older content).  Think about new inventions – they are (typically) revisions and better products than previous iterations of the nearly identical ideas.  News is created each day, so someone has to cover that – the news media.  As a blogger, you have the task of creating something that other people want to read (content).

Despite the fact that each blogger appears to be “repeating” what others have been saying for a decade or more, each person brings a unique perspective to the topic, allowing a different group of people to read the content for what it is worth, not for the fact that it is just there.