Educational: Uniqueness in Blogging: uniqueness amount Cameroonian bloggers

Dear friends and fellow bloggers I must express my joy for the proliferation of Cameroon blogs and bloggers. I remember when I started this adventure in 2009 I could bearly post my articles on my personal facebook page. I rather at the time stick to my server comunity which was wordpress and Google Blogger. Infact as a Cameroonian I was ashamed of calling myself a blogger among ourself; but this wasn't the case when in the midst of Western friends and those from Asia; I felt they were the only one who understood this culture. But then one day I got encouragely kicked in the butt when an african blogger made it to Forbes #lindaijekiblog and one other from South Africa (which was obvious). However I still felt a stranger; but today I say it no more; as I am amoung many of "my own". Monetising for your blog and eventually maybe making it to Forbes shouldn't the fundermental reason; but rather passion should be...!

However I believe we should flag higher as a whole. As a blogger I have made mistakes and still is...! But for a long time now I watched us all make one common mistake which seduced me in making recently regular series of posts that will explore the principles that I learned and exhibited in my persued of being a successful blogger.

Today I’d like to focus on the principle of –UNIQUENESS

Almost every time I’m questioned about blogging I’m asked whether I think it is too late to get into the medium. Isn't it too crowded, cluttered and noisy to start something that gets noticed? On some levels there’s real truth to this. How will your single blog rise above the rest? Isn’t it all just too hard?

For me one of the turning points in my own blogging journey was the time I decided to stop trying to be someone that I wasn’t – imitating the style of others did help me learn about blogging, but it didn’t help me set my blog apart from the crowd. Part of being unique is being yourself; hence the birth of my Blog name: Empower Success in Africa; and my blogging style.

How to Be Unique as a Blogger

Of course teaching someone to ‘be unique’ is a challenge. Uniqueness by definition isn’t something that I can really tell you how to be – your blogs uniqueness is something that needs to come from your own uniqueness as a person – at least to some extent.

Having said that – some of the ways that blogs tend to be unique and stand out from the crowd often start with:

Voice – your style of writing. Manolo the shoe blogger was the first blogger I remember reading with a really unique voice (he writes in the third person).

Topic/s – Manolo again an example of uniqueness in this – his two topics when he first started were ‘celebrities’ and their ‘shoes’. John Chow perhaps is another example – who ever heard of a make money online blogger who documents his food and talks about cars?

Design – the way your blog looks is a great way to make an impression, grab attention and stand out from the crowd.

Being First – not easy to do but if you can be one of the first blogs in a niche it can help you stand out. ProBlogger would be my own lucky example of this – at the time no one else was blogging about making a living from blogs.

Your Blogs Name – sometimes it is just the name of a blog that makes it stand out whether it be by being confronting, funny or otherwise.

Being a ‘Character’ – the Fake Steve Jobs blog comes to mind as one blog that was unique not only by the content being great but by the blogger blogging as Steve Jobs and keeping his real identity secret.

Depth of Content – a number of bloggers that I follow set themselves apart by producing content that obviously has a lot of thought put into them. Instead of quick and short posts that do nothing much more than link to other sites they carefully and thoughtfully ponder a topic and produce content that is deep and thought provoking.

Frequency of Posts – (I must say recently i ha e been mediocre at this) it strikes me that some of the most popular blogs product A LOT of content. This high frequency of depth content posting makes them prolific and means that if a story is breaking certain that you re covering it. On the flip side some blogs take the opposite approach – their new posts become so rare that people value them highly and share them prolifically.

Vaults of Resources – some bloggers become successful because their blogs are just filled with such rich resources. These bloggers might not have as much original thought but they are passionate about gathering information and resources from others and sharing it with their network. People read them because they save them time by researching and gathering the information that the rest of us need but don’t have time to find.

Community Focus – some bloggers go above and beyond when it comes to their readers. They put the rest of us to shame by the way that they pay personal attention to everyone, interact with every comment and seemingly know every person who reads by name.

Opinion – one of the easiest ways to make your blog is to share your opinion. Your opinions won’t always be unique but the combination of them and the way you express yourself will be and will often set yourself apart from other bloggers who just report news.

Usefulness – some blogs are insanely useful. Useful blogs build themselves a solid foundation for success.

Originality – its amazing how some people just have an ability to explore a topic that everyone else has talked about but put a new spin on it! I sometimes feel this way about Seth Godin’s blog – his ability to make me have light bulb moments around simple concepts is amazing. 

Personality – I’m finding this one hard to define but some bloggers just ooze personality. Perhaps another way to describe it would be that they have Mojo or are charismatic. They are just infectious with the way that they write and interact.

Personal – as you read some blogs you sometimes get a spooky feeling that its almost like the blogger is there in the room with you. They blog in a way where you can almost hear their voice and feel as though you’re in a conversation with them. They share on a level that goes beyond just the transference of information – they share of themselves.

There are of course an almost unlimited list of other ways that bloggers set themselves apart and rise above the millions of other blogs. Thanks for reading and I hope the information in this piece will help us all conquer and flag higher as a whole. #empowersuccessinafrica #empowercameroonbloggers