Blogging Strategy: Competitive Advantage

Competitive advantage is a very famous concept of business strategy and management, and it refers to the situation where a company is able to generate returns above the industry average. Returns can me measured in terms of shareholder value, profits, revenues and so on.

If we apply the concept of competitive advantage to blogging we could argue that a certain blog has competitive advantage if it is able to receive more attention than other blogs on the same niche. Noticed that I used the term attention and not traffic because traffic is not the only measure we can use to evaluate a blog’s success. Apart from raw traffic the popularity of a blog could be measure by the number of loyal readers (subscribers), by the number of incoming links and so on.

Now that we have defined competitive advantage we should ask ourselves where it comes from. In the business world competitive advantage emerges from a firm’s ability to differentiate itself or to produce goods and services with reduced costs. What about in the blogging world? Below you will find some sources of blogging competitive advantage:

Exclusive or quick information: many blogs have a competitive advantaged rooted on the ability to provide exclusive news or information. Sometimes the information is not exclusive per se but it is provided before other sources can access it. Examples includes news and technology related blogs, political blogs and gadget blogs.

Original and quality content: the ability to produce original and quality content on a consistent basis is certainly a competitive advantage. Blogs that just replicate ideas or that write about what everybody else is writing will not perform well compared to blogs that create and innovate. You know what they say, content is king.

Resources: there are many resources the can affect the popularity of a blog. Financial resources can help the promotion of the blog. Human resources (i.e. many writers) can increase the quantity and quality of posts. Full time bloggers can dedicate more time to interact with other bloggers, establish relationships and so on.

Brand and reputation: whether you like it or not brand and reputation play a big role on most commercial activities, and blogging is no exception. People are more likely to believe what is reported on CNN just like bloggers are more likely to link to something that was written on Boing Boing.

Those are some examples of competitive advantage in blogging, but there are many others. The important thing is that you identify what competitive advantage your blog has, or which one you want to develop. Once you you that clear you will be able to focus your energy and to defend yourself from imitators.