Is There Room for One More Voice?

You’re into marketing and inspiring others to make a difference, so you read Seth Godin’s blog every day, and tell yourself you could do that.

You’re into technology and venture capital, so you read Fred Wilson’s blog every day and tell yourself you could do that.

You’re into social media and and believe in the value of hard work, so you watch Gary Vaynerchuk videos and tell yourself you could do that.

So you give it a shot; you start writing a blog or create a YouTube channel. You pour your heart into it, creating original content that you are proud of and that you want to share with the world.

So what happens if after building it, nobody comes?

Here are some cold, hard facts:

• According to Blogging.org, there are 31 million bloggers in the United States and 500,000 new posts every day on WordPress.
• According to YouTube, there are more than one million channels earning revenue from the YouTube Partner Program and 300 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
• Seth Godin has 488,000 followers on Twitter; Fred Wilson has 473,000, and Gary Vaynerchuk has almost 1.2 million.

How do you get people to start looking at your content? People are busy, and if they are already getting what they need/want from Seth, Fred, or Gary, then why do they need you?

Is there room for your voice, and if so, how do you stand out from the crowd?

Do you just tell yourself you’re too late to the game; that Seth, Fred, or Gary have already captured the audience that you want?

Well here’s some additional facts, just looking at the venture capital blogsphere..

Charlie O’Donnell started writing his This Is Going to Be Big blog about venture capital in 2004, a year after Fred Wilson had started his blog. Apparently Charlie thought there was room for one more voice, and he now has over 32,000 Twitter followers.

Brad Feld also started his venture capital blog in 2004, noting in his first post, “I’ve been following many of my VC colleagues blogs and others for some time… I’m still not sure if the world needs my musings, but because you have complete control over whether or not you decide to read this, here goes.” Apparently a lot of people have decided to read, at least measured by his 214,000 Twitter followers.

Chris Dixon started his WordPress VC blog in 2009; he currently has 186,000 Twitter followers.

None of these people thought “Well Fred Wilson already owns the VC space, so I’ll just work on something else.”

They all had something to say, and were willing to share their thoughts with the world through their blogging.

There are certainly advantages to being the first to market with a new product, service, or idea. But that does not mean their isn’t room for more products, services, or ideas.

It does seem however that one of the keys to success in social media, at least using the people noted above as examples, is that they had already achieved success in their profession (marketing, venture capital, wine sales), and then started sharing their “secrets” to success on their blogs.

Perhaps that’s why I only have 740 followers, but it’s an improvement from 250. You’ve got to start somewhere…