Blogs are broken...

"REP-RE-SEN-TA-TIVE!"

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“I want to speak to a person!”

I’ll admit, I’m not the best version of myself when dealing with automated customer support. I just... want to talk to a person.

I want to feel like someone there has their finger on the pulse. That they care enough to try and connect and relate.

I want humanity.

Last week I decided to go through a ton of industry blogs, mostly in the B2B SaaS and services space. (For science.)

I came away with the same feeling.

There’s no discernible voice. There’s very little perspective. There’s no humanity.
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You can copy/paste a blog post from most companies, hand it to a competitor, and no one would know the difference.

"Is there anyone alive out there?!"

That's actually a line from a Bruce Springsteen song called Radio Nowhere. He wrote in in the early 2000s when satellite radio was overtaking your local radio station for listenership.

Rather than hearing DJs local to whichever area of the country he was in, he'd hear...nothing. Just the music. DJs were gone. Replaced by pre-recorded transitions and the occasional ad read.
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"It's an end-of-the-world scenario," Springsteen told Rolling Stone. "He's seeing the apocalypse. All communications are down. That's my business, that's what it's all about––trying to connect to you."

Connection should be our business, too.

Except when I visit a company blog now, the connection isn't there. I can't tell who these brands are. What they believe in. What experiences color those beliefs. And most importantly, how they're different.

I remember blogs used to feel personal to the company that published it. (Like a local DJ felt personal to the community surrounding them.)

Remember Rand Fishkin's blog posts on seoMoz back in the day? It was more like a diary. Uniquely him/them. (He and Amanda Natividad are also nailing it with the SparkToro blog.)
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The blog post can still work. But it needs a different starting point than what most are using now.

That starting point isn’t secondhand strategy, i.e. looking at what competitors publish, pulling from the same reports and tools as everyone else, or letting AI stitch together something passable.

The starting point has to be you.

I think of it in terms of the Five Ps (yes, it sounds like a lesson from a college textbook, but I like alliteration, okay.)

1. Problem: Are you naming the problem in a way that only you could? One rooted in your experience and your audience’s reality and not just a recycled industry talking point?
2. Positioning: Does your perspective clearly show how you see the world, and the solution, differently than competitors?
3. Principles: Are your values and beliefs visible, or could anyone else have written this?
4. Premise: Is there a clear, memorable idea that feels distinctively yours rather than another generic "how to" or listicle?
5. Packaging: Does the message live on? Does the blog post have a second life, fueling LinkedIn posts, newsletter editions, or conversations that reinforce your differentiated narrative across other channels?

So maybe the real test is simple:

When someone reads your blog, can they tell there’s someone alive behind it?

Behind the words. Behind the ideas.

Does it help them understand what you stand for, what experiences shaped that, and how you’re different from everyone else?

Does it carry forward into other channels so your message keeps showing up, not just once, but again and again, in ways that feel unmistakably you?

Or, will you leave them asking to speak with a real person?