10 ways blogging is like a food fight

Posted by Ben Barden on January 05, 2009 | Permalink | Hits: 153 

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1. You need to be prepared.

If you're going to have a food fight, you need to prepare yourself for what's to come. Choose your foods carefully. Figure out your tactics. How are you going to play this game?

Preparation is also a key part of blogging. You need to find a niche for your blog, get a good design up, make it easy for people to subscribe, plan your posts and so on.

Of course, you don't always have the opportunity to prepare for a food fight. That's one difference. You do have the opportuntiy to prepare your blog before telling the world about it - use this opportunity wisely.

2. There's a lot of mess and noise.

By their nature, a food fight involves a lot of rowdy, noisy behaviour. Food gets thrown around, people start yelling and vowing to seek revenge on whoever just got them in the face with a big pie. Not to mention the mess all over the floor.

Blogging can be messy when bloggers venture too far out of their comfort zone, trying to cover every topic under the sun or trying to write about things where they don't know the subject. And there's certainly a lot of noise, with everyone fighting for attention and trying to be noticed.

If you can throw one item of food and score a direct hit, surely it's better to do that than randomly throwing dozens of items and missing on every attempt? With your blog, if you're not going to write a great post, why write it at all?

3. Some ideas stick, others just fly right by.

Even if you're right in the middle of a food fight, a lot of food will miss you completely. How can this be? How can people be so far off the mark? It's because they're not aiming at you - which means you're not their target.

If you want to write a sticky blog post, you have to know your target audience. If you don't know who to target, how can you aim precisely? You can't. If you manage to come up with a sticky blog post, it may well be a fluke.

Figure out who you're aiming at before you throw your ideas out there.

4. The first person is the influencer, the rest are just followers.

Ever noticed the person to start a food fight becomes some kind of legend? I don't mean they become extinct and are soon forgotten... more that they are widely regarded as, well, a top guy/girl. An influencer.

The same can be said of blogging. The people who lead the pack are the ones who try new things, who innovate, who create stuff, who write original content, the ones who get everyone really excited about something.

Which would you rather be, an influencer or a follower? We can't all be influencers, and it certainly won't happen all the time - but if you want to stand out, you need to influence people.

5. Sometimes you can't see the wood for the trees.

Once a food fight really gets going, everything is just a blur. So much is going on, it's hard to differentiate one person from the next.

But if you took the time to sit down and eat properly, instead of throwing food around, you'd have a better chance of digesting the events.

It's a bit like walking into a crowded room where everyone's talking. Sometimes, you have to observe for a bit, or perhaps tune yourself into one particular conversation (or one section of the food fight) so as to aid comprehension.

6. Some people go too far.

A food fight is going to be pretty crazy no matter what, but you do have to be careful. Certain types of food might cause injuries or discomfort. Imagine getting chilli pepper in your eyes!

As a blogger, you may see plenty of criticism, and for some people it's all too easy to jump on the bandwagon. Whether it's a post criticising another blogger, a software platform or a company, it's best to do it professionally. If you go too far, you may end up in big trouble. In particular, be careful with blogging about your job, as it could come back to bite you.

7. If you're not there from the start, hold back.

With a food fight, if you're late to the party, it's usually best to sit on the sidelines, watch, listen, and choose your moment to get involved. If you jump right in without looking around at what's going on, you may be an easy target.

As for blogging - you can set up a blog in a matter of minutes and write your first post. But is it a good idea to start without a plan? You might get lucky, but I think it's better to be prepared (see #1, above).

8. You need to see the big picture.

In a food fight, sometimes you'll see pairs of people attacking each other, blissfully unaware of what's going on around them. They might just miss a group of people who are about to cover them in custard.

With blogging, you can get carried away in a one-on-one debate that may reel you in for a bit, but why not get some outside opinions? For instance, if a blogger attacks you and you attack them back, are you providing compelling content for your readers or do you just have an axe to grind?

9. Do it too often and it may lose its shine.

Hey, that food fight was fun, let's have another next week! Except it's not quite as much fun the second time, because it's just the same as last week. Still the same wasted food and mess. It's even less fun if you arrange a food fight, instead of it being spontaneous.

And hey, I just wrote a great post that got loads of comments, I'm going to write a follow-up in exactly the same style! Except it's just more of the same, and the idea isn't new anymore.

If you're going to keep doing something over and over again, you need to find ways to make it interesting each time. If it's always the same, you're going to tire of it pretty quickly, and your target audience will, too.

10. The ones who reflect on the event live in the shadow of those who were in the thick of it.

With a food fight, there will be people who come to clean up the mess after everyone else has moved on.  Those people will always live in the shadow of other participants, trying to relive the glory days of fallen heroes.

With blogging, if the influencers write the great content and you just feed off those posts, you'll always be three steps behind. You'll never get ahead.

Want to stand out? Do your own thing, be yourself, write original content. Be proactive - don't just say it, do it.

What do you think?

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