Real Estate, Marketing, Software

OK, maybe when you think of something tasty, you don’t instantly think of bran.  This one correlation might be a bit of a stretch.  For my sake, just go with it ok?

Tasty crunchy morsels.

The last two posts in this series have dealt with crafting your content, and naturally this one builds on that.  Because really, that’s the primary focus of your blog … great content.

Want to know a great secret about blogging?  Not everything you put on your blog has to be 100% original content.

Warning: Please don’t take this to mean that you can just go and use someone else’s content as your own.  Because I definitely do not mean that.

Here’s what I do mean.

Knowing, as you should if you’ve read any of the other posts in this series, that you need to speak to your readers as yourself; it is important that you actually know what you’re talking about.

Sometimes, that’s just not possible.

For me, I fully accept the fact that I don’t know the in’s and out’s of every new tech gadget.  When I was writing a recent post about the new Apple iPad for real estate I knew that my level of savvy on this topic was basically non-existent.

How can I write with authority and personality about something I know nothing about?  I can’t.

So I didn’t.

I let the rest of the experts do the talking and writing.  I still wrote a blog post.  In that blog post, I admitted that I wasn’t the expert, but was able to provide our readers some valuable information about the iPad by sharing a list of links to various other experts’ discussions.

Those sort of tasty, crunchy flakes of goodness are gold.

You don’t have to be the expert to be credible.

You may have noticed that throughout this entire series I’ve been linking off to other blog posts and articles written by experts in all types of bloggery.

My linking to their awesome posts doesn’t make me less credible.  It’s also not about my being lazy or unoriginal.  (And that thought would never enter your mind, right?)

This is more about embracing the spirit of Web 2.0, as cliché as that sounds.  Being open and honest.  Sharing and collaborating on information.  An interchange of ideas.  Establishing connections.  I could go on…

My point?  Referring to other sources helps build your credibility and helps you maintain a level of transparency.  You’ve done your research and you’re going to ensure that the people you’ve learned from receive the credit they’re due, too.

It gets even better.

You are sharing with your readers the wealth of information out there that could help them, and that they might not have stumbled across on their own.  But you’re not only sharing content, you’re sharing who wrote the content.  In a way, you’re showing respect and building a relationship of sorts with the author of the content you’re linking to.  And Link Love is a great thing.

It could even mean linking to someone who could be perceived as your competitor.  That might seem like a foolish and scary move, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Read This:

• Why Linking to Other Blogs Is Critical

There you have it.  Another compelling reason why blogging is like bran.  Stay tuned for the 5th and final post in the series, coming soon.

I strongly encourage you all to click-through to the Read This links I’ve suggested in all these posts.  The people writing those tips and suggestions are blog geniuses and know their stuff.  I have learned (and continue to learn) so much from reading what they write.