Attack of the Clones

Editors Note - Welcome to latest edition of “Let’s See Who We Can Alienate This Week”.  Avoid reading further if you offend easily or can't handle well-intentioned criticism. We’ll resume our otherwise good-natured writing shortly.

Tired of tumbleweeds blowing across the sands of your website? Struggling in vain to increase your blog's visitor traffic? After many hours trolling the Internet, I have discovered the obvious solution to your problems.

Start blogging about how to increase your blog traffic.

It’s a method proven to send visitors flocking to your website, hanging breathlessly on your every word. It doesn't matter if your website is about widget manufacturing, or if you know next to nothing about how to ACTUALLY increase blog traffic. Just enter "increase blog traffic" in the search engine of your choice, and blatantly snatch ideas from one of the millions of listings that come back. Which site you choose is irrelevant- a quick read of your search returns will make it apparent that everyone else has done exactly the same thing as you are. Toss your pirated goods into some hastily-written copy and "Presto!"...you've joined the chorus of voices saying the same damn thing for fun and profit. I guarantee that your site’s traffic will improve...because there's a billion other bloggers out there looking for the same quick fix.
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Ok...so perhaps I'm joking, if only slightly. However, this (admittedly snide) example is demonstrative of a larger issue I see happening as more event professionals begin their own blogs. If you're going to invest time in maintaining a blog, you basically have a choice to make. You can hold visitor traffic and re-tweets as your holy grail, and choose your topics based upon what will appeal to the largest number of visitors, regardless of how played out the topic may be. Or you can be a leader and forge your own path, be original, and be fearless in exploring subjects that may not have mass-resonance, even within your field of expertise. Sadly, too many otherwise fine event writers seem to have chosen the former, regurgitating endless variations of the same social media and networking topics that have been written hundreds of times before. I myself have been guilty of this on more than a few occasions, and I hardly consider myself one of the industry’s finer examples of professional writing.

Yes, focusing on these well-worn topics will drive traffic, which is necessary for building your personal brand. But unless you're bringing something new to the discussion, it’s also lazy, and limits the options of those event professionals yearning for new ideas and information. There are literally thousands of event-related issues that can (and should) be addressed - so why do I keep seeing the same things crossing my media feeds over...and over...and over?

The event industry can only thrive with a relentless dedication to creativity and originality. We should hold our blogs to equally high standards, and avoid falling into the trap of lazy repetition simply because it “sells”.