Going through sites from 9rules submissions, I see something that happens often and I want to talk about it a bit. Let’s look at a real word example first, then apply it to blogging.

When I got to the club there are always a few people who stand out. They want to be “big”. They go into the club buying bottles. For that night, for a short period of time, to them they are “big” because everyone is looking up to them. Not because they are respected. Not because they are good people. They are the focus because they bought their way in – they control the liquor and leeches feed off of that. There’s just one problem – these people aren’t big and their behavior makes it loud and clear they aren’t. Why? The “big” person doesn’t buy stuff for everyone because it is not necessary. The people who made it big, and want to stay big, have to cut off the leeches. They don’t buy people stuff – they surround themselves with people who can roll with them and if they are with people who might not be able to afford the finer things the very last thing they do is buy them their drinks. The “big” person knows how to say no because they have to say it often. The person trying to play the part of being big will never be big because they don’t know how to play the game and because of that, they do everything wrong.

Now let’s apply this to blogging. I see many bloggers who see the A-List bloggers (the big people) and want to be like them and they copy the style of their admired blogger just the person walking into the club copies what he/she thinks “big” people do. Here’s the deal: you aren’t big yet, so it’s not going to work. Copying someone else’s style rarely works and most times you’re doing it wrong.

Because no one is better at being you…than you.

Web 2.0 is a popular niche right now. Let’s say you have an interest in Web 2.0 so you start a Web 2.0 blog. You do some research and you see the features the top Web 2.0 sites have and you make sure you have those minimal features. There is just one problem – the site can have all the features in the world but to be “big” in that niche exclusives are needed and you have no contacts to get those exclusives.

You’re real passion is skateboarding. You’re awesome at it and you skateboard as much as you can in your spare time – which your Web 2.0 detracts from. Why not have the skateboarding site where the true passion lies? The more passionate a person is about a topic, sport, etc. the better the blog will be. The person that is into skateboarding has access to exclusive content – for example videos on how to do different jumps. Put the videos on You Tube to draw the You Tube crowd to the site, embed the videos on the site…do you see the difference? Between the two sites (Web 2.0 and skateboarding) the skateboarding site, while not as popular, is the stronger of the two. With the skateboarding site, the potential to be “big” is much greater than the Web 2.0 site.

But people will usually go with the Web 2.0 site trying to make it big just like the person goes into the club buying bottles trying to be big. Both usually fail.

Stop pretending.