Gimme your USP and I'll subscribe to you

Before I start, just think about this in relation to the reams of text that you shove into the arteries of the web each day/week/month... what's the Unique Selling Point of your blog?  OK, on with the post...

A short-sighted hippie, that's me

Recently I was mocked for admitting that I only subscribe to 30 blogs while people such as Scoble subscribe to 1000 or more!  At the time I kicked-up and said that nobody has enough cycles to be processing that much data by hand.  Well, over the course of the week I've thought about it and I think that I can see what a short-sighted hippie I am.  I've decided to change my ways!!!

USP

Now, back to Unique Selling Point.  For those of you who don't know what it is, it's kinda the thing that drives a lot of marketing energy and is used to develop a pitch / value statement.  Basically, you develop one so that you can let your customers know - within the space of an elevator ride - what it is that you have which distinguishes you from your competitor.  Most companies really don't know what their USP is; in fact, I'm sure that many of you have been in the situation where a product was "pulled" because all of a sudden people started asking "why do we build those?".

Tell me yours

Anyways, I'm going to increase my blog subscription over the next little while from 30 to 200 by adding 5 blogs per day to my blog reader and I'd like some help in choosing which ones I subscribe to.  If you have a blog which has an interesting USP - or know of one which does - then, either e-mail me or leave as a comment a short spiel about it.  If I'm enticed I'll add the feed and then each day I'll blog about which  post an entry about which blogs I subscribed to and display their USP.

So, writing something likelike: "I'm cool and I write about cool shit" probably won't entice me to be a customer of yours; it's gunna have to be something more interesting, maybe something like: "In my musings I mix my day-to-day ASP.NET experiences with my wholistic approach to Zen, feng-shui and karma..."

Anyways, think about it... USP.  If nothing else, it's a good creative excercise to take a look at your product.

15 Comments

  • So, easy. Larkware is the blog you subscribe to so that you don't have to subscribe to those other 200 blogs, since part of my job is to keep an eye on them and pull out all the really useful stuff and consolidate it. The fancy name for this is "meta-editor" though personally I prefer the term "bird dog".

  • The USP is that Flirting underpins not only social interactions, but business, political, and even religious structures in our society. The best way to learn about flirting is experientially. Thus, a blog on flirting.

  • Ummm.... ahhhhh.... I guess your list just dropped to 29.. :)

  • I have a USP tailored to your plans: I don't write much. If I write three posts a month it's a lot. The good thing about this is that if you subscribe to blogs like mine you can go around telling everyone you know that you read hundreds of blogs every day, which will provide you with incredible status in the blogosphere. About 27 times out of 30 however, reading my blog daily amounts to not having to do anything. In other words: free status upgrade!

  • My unique selling points is that my blog doesn't have a lot of content you have to _wade_ through. i.e. stuff about me that you really don't care about and wish I hadn't posted on a blog that is hosted by a site like DOTNETjunkies.com.



    I occassionally will post what I think is interesting about computers and what is going on in my area and related to my .Net User Group (since I'm one of the officers), but I try to make most of my posts a short tutorial explaining something that took me a while to figure out. Because of this, I like to post code samples and not just a long paragraph of explanations. Over time, through my post hit counts, I've learned what topics are of particular interest to my readers and what topics noone cares about.



    Finally, my last point on why you should subscribed: I rss you! :)

  • Why should you add my blog to your collection? Well, from my perspective, it would benefit me since I created a couple of T-shirts last week that I, and apparently a few other people, find funny.



    As for USP? Well, I try to keep my blog informative and entertaining at the same time. I generally only write about projects and/or ideas I am, or have worked on. I also try to convey to my audience why I think the way I do, even if others don't agree (hey, that's what blogs are for!).



    As my blog continues to mature, I hope to have created a useful place for people to find information on IT Design and Architecture, targeting the .Net framework. That was the main reason for starting my blog. The second reason was to have a place to reference my trials and tribulations as I learn more about IT Design and Architecture.

  • I feel a blog needs more than a USP. You need to really subscribe to a mainfeed somewhere and find out the better blogs that match your tastes there.



    For example, if someone talks abotu Sharepoint - that topic might not interest me, but it is still a good blog, just not good for me.



    We at codebetter try and write good quality blogs and try and stay away from (too much) airtalk. If there is a correction needed, we do it. Our readership has been increasing exponentially, and we've been around for only a month or two.



    I suggest you subscribe to our mainfeed -



    <a target="_new" href="http://codebetter.com/blogs/mainfeed.aspx">http://codebetter.com/blogs/mainfeed.aspx



    or



    http://codebetter.com/



    And don't be disheartened by Geoff's post that starts with two big holes in his teeth. :).

  • Hi Darren,



    My USP would probably be short and sweet - I might just know something that others don't... maybe.



    Geoff thought that I should ride the 'I live in Canberra' train, but I think that's lame. :P

  • I'm no MVP and I don't work for Microsoft, but just check out my blog and see if you like it... a wide variety of topics covering Content Management Server, SharePoint, business &amp; blogging, Sarbanes Oxley, Information Bridge Framework and a lot more...

  • I think it's interesting...I've never thought of &quot;marketing&quot; my blog to others. So...My USP...



    My blog is pretty diverse. The primary goal is development-focused content, especially related to what I'm doing for work and fun, from loading bitmap graphics from a resource file to setting up CruiseControl.Net for the first time. But I branch off into the occasional rant, which many find funny and some find offensive, marketing and business topics, a sprinking of sports and the not-so-occasional meme.

  • I tend to do stuff on the Web that works, and I like to talk through what worked for me, and how, in between more newsy bits about geek stuff, technology and webmastering.

  • Occasionally humorous and witty, and with a penchant for solving real-world problems my blog focuses on a wide variety of .NET / programming topics. Ranging from the 'Every Developer Should Know This' arena to the 'Obsure and Arcane Corner of .NET', my content is sure to please. Not to mention that I have a rating system that allows you to rate posts, comments, trackbacks, any anything else you want.

  • Darren,



    This is an interesting one. I'm not sure that I have a USP for my blog. I'm not sure if blogs should be &quot;subscribed to&quot; at all, well mabye some should, but not very many. Honestly, I'm subscribed to too many blogs already, and am hoping to pair it down.



    I'm starting to like the community aspect of blogging a lot. I read our main feed at Codebetter.Com, because I know the bloggers there, and when I post something I know that the other CB bloggers will read and comment on my post. This makes my blog better.



    So I guess that would be one USP for me, but really is a USP for the CodeBetter.Com main feed : Our blogs gets read and our thinking &quot;sanity checked&quot; by the ohter bloggers at CB.



    But, I find that more and more I use sites like technorati.com to find out who's talking about what. I may subscribe for a time to a blog, but there are only a handful now that I will check daily.



    As search engines get better, subscribing to blogs will become a thing of the past. People like Scoble will really have to have something new to say to get hits.



    By the way, I'm subscribed to you... :)

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