{"id":1230,"date":"2009-11-30T10:00:11","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T17:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=1230"},"modified":"2018-04-03T08:17:49","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T15:17:49","slug":"people-dont-want-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/30\/people-dont-want-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"People Don’t Want Experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CampfireStory\"<\/p>\n

They want stories they can connect with.<\/p>\n

I wish someone had told me that when I started blogging. It would have saved me a lot of energy and internal doubt.<\/p>\n

You see, I\u2019m definitely not an expert. I love writing and I\u2019m incredibly opinionated. But when it comes to giving life advice, I\u2019m just another 21-year old kid.<\/p>\n

I was 17 when I started this blog, and my deepest fear was being rejected on the basis that I was too inexperienced. I knew I wasn\u2019t an expert of any sorts, so starting a website around getting more from life seemed a tad arrogant.<\/p>\n

It took me a few years, but eventually I realized that my fears were completely unwarranted. Not because I was actually an expert (I\u2019m not entirely sure what that word means anymore). But because I realized people don\u2019t actually want experts.<\/p>\n

How a 17-Year Old Can Create a Top 5000 Blog<\/h2>\n

There was a point where this blog was briefly in the top 5000 list of blogs on the internet. Of course, this blog has continued to grow, but as more blogs enter the scene maintaining that position gets harder and harder. I think I\u2019m around 14,000 according to Technorati\u2019s ranking algorithm, but that\u2019s besides the point.<\/p>\n

This success defied my \u201cexpert hypothesis\u201d. I clearly wasn\u2019t an expert, yet I was actually getting a decent volume of traffic to my website. What was up with that?<\/p>\n

I had two theories:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Either I had confused people into believing I was a guru, when I was not.<\/li>\n
  2. Or people didn\u2019t actually care that I wasn\u2019t an expert.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Considering the emails I occasionally get, I don\u2019t doubt that I did the former in a few cases. That\u2019s a big part of the reason in my shift of writing style to acknowledge my weaknesses as much as possible, to avoid a distorted representation of myself.<\/p>\n

    But, for the most part I don\u2019t believe readers here have any delusions of who I am.<\/p>\n

    The truth, I later discovered, is that people didn\u2019t care that I wasn\u2019t an expert. It wasn\u2019t my expertise they were linking and visiting this blog for. It was the story. The enthusiasm of someone sharing something they are deeply interested in, and spending a lot of time thinking about.<\/p>\n

    What People Actually <\/em>Care About<\/h2>\n

    I recently ran a reader survey where I asked them what the major advantage this blog has, over other blogs in the lifestyle design, self-improvement, productivity niches. The main answer, surprisingly enough was: me<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    It wasn\u2019t that my advice was always better. Instead, it was that I was like many of my readers. I was a student, pursuing self-improvement in an often cynical world, and trying to cross the chasm between university and full-time entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n

    It was the story, not the ideas themselves, that people wanted to hear.<\/p>\n

    I believe the expertise-wave of information is dying. Newspapers are being replaced by amateur reporters. YouTube is toppling regular television. Blogging is replacing traditional published books as a source of non-fiction.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m only a minor example of the storyteller model of information. Some other great bloggers that have won, in my opinion, more because of the stories they create than the expertise they offer:<\/p>\n