The Jungle Book

Let’s face it. Sometimes it’s hard to not reblog. A very short post “Jesus is back, news at eleven” found on another blog, a classic “post-void filling” YouTube Video, a funny picture.

But if you post the content as-is, and quote the source (please quote the source, it’s only fair) soon your visitors will identify you as a reblogger, and will add the source’s feed to their own RSS reader, and forget about you.

The secret here is: Add something. Don’t just post a video, post your impressions. A 5 minutes search will find lots of new info about anything. When I reblog something at MeioBit, the largest Brazilian technology-oriented blog, I do my homework. Usually a Digg story points to a lame blog with a single headline and two paragraphs of text.

I use it as a starting point. If it’s a story about some Japanese robot, I Google for the firm that created the robot, use Google Translate to catch more info, and presto: New and original content, a improved version of the press-release everybody else is reblogging. Do it yourself. Choose a story in Engadget, try to find more info than the original post. It’s easy, don’t take a a CSI to accomplish.

Next time, your readers will not click on the source, or will do it only to realize how lame its content is, compare to yours.

Technorati : content, enhanced, reblog