Stop Being Selfish with Your Idea – Why Uniqueness is Overrated

Pick any blog evangelist or expert. I bet most likely s/he will advocate that in order to become a successful blogger, your content needs to be unique. You also must have an interesting personality. That’s part of the unique selling proposition.

Some bloggers even go as far as expressing their hates upon other bloggers who have no unique voices. This group of people, as the bloggers say, will not survive in Web 2.0 and beyond. Is that true?

Note: Certainly there are more factors to consider like being transparent but let’s not go that direction in this post.

First and foremost, I feel the need to explain this from my own perspective. There is nothing more important than unique idea and correct execution. That’s how innovation evolves from just an idea and sees the light. The world needs fresh and outstanding ideas. Definitely.

At the same time, there is really nothing new under the sun. Old ideas may morph into a separately new idea. Thousand years old wisdom, combined with new technologies, can as well become brand new as if no one has ever come up with that idea before.

Being unique is something overrated. Every blogger has a different way to convey the same message and that is enough to distinguish one from another.

When some bloggers (and social media experts) complain about the lack of uniqueness, disability to find personal brand and about copying someone else, I bet usually they don’t have something specific to point out. They usually refer to something — idea, product offering, etc. — that is merely a replication of other people’s work.

Or worse still, they have heard about it before so it must have no value at all.

Nothing is further from the truth.

Bloggers who are protecting their ideas rigorously, in my opinion, are selfish. You see, I live in a small town. But albeit its size, we still have at least 20 shoe stores around the more crowded district. None of them in particular is unique, but all of them have been around for years and for that I presume they are making a killing.

Think about it. Even with a small town, there are enough rooms for 20 shoe stores. When people go online, they expect to own the entire market without competition at all, despite the fact that they are playing at the global market.

Let’s see it from another perspective.

Name a company like Microsoft or Adobe. Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop dominate the market, but at the same time, there are other competitions too. For sure the competitions are smaller, but some of them are thriving. Few of them have really unique ideas but people still buy for one reason or another. These reasons to buy are more important to communicate than the so called unique ideas.

That’s what marketing do.

Let me talk about the industry that is close to my heart.

I bet everything that could be spoken about business blogging has been spoken, at least a variation of them. But this doesn’t mean the entire world is already aware about the value of blogging and social media.

There are still a lot of work to be done.

People who are in the blogging and social media business have different roles. Some bloggers are disseminating information about business blogging and making money out of publishing information. You guess it right if you think every day more people are discovering this new marketing and publishing channel. They have never heard about it before.

Others create tools to help adoption of the media. Some more savvy Internet users may contribute by helping businesses with the technical aspect. Consultants work closely with companies who want to integrate social media and blogging into their marketing mix. Publishers publish books about this topic.

Everyone may work with a single idea but find a new facet to build their business around. The idea is one: how being social is the way to go in this so called social web.

Bloggers who want to disseminate their ideas through blogs should not be selfish with their ideas. Even Microsoft needs marketing teams throughout the world to help spread the message about their products. As a blogger, your reach is very limited. One million of RSS subscribers mean nothing really, if you compare to the amount of Internet users, which top 1 billion some time ago.

So yes, even the most boring blogger can survive if they know how to market and deliver their product or service well. I’m the first to admit that if you are looking for uniqueness in my blog, you will not find it every time. Perhaps 9 times out of 10, ideas around this blog are simply rehearsal of older ideas. Being boring is just part of human nature.

But if you are looking for value, you are in the right place. Scattered ideas need hours of work to assemble. Resources take time to build. And this blog saves you time. I have done the labor for you, so you don’t have to.

As long as you have something to offer, there are places for more people. Just that to run a profitable business, you need to reach people effectively so you get positive return on investment.

So spread those ideas.

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