Michael Grey recently posted a video blog entitled SEO Bloggers Step Away From the Keyboard. Despite being in a format I can’t stand (unless your name is Ze Frank or definitely-not-a-man-da Congdon), it makes a very needed point (one I will save you the trouble of working out): you are not adding to the converstaion if you don’t say anything unique, original or new.

I ‘m glad I’m not the only feeling this way, as not just Michael Grey but also former Cre8 Tech admin Dave Child (aka ILoveJackDaniels) feels this way, with Dave’s brilliantly funny post “Dear Blogger” I Resign as your reader summing up exactly how I feel.

If you visit Grey Wolf’s blog, you will see the case for the defence, presented by Barry and Chris (both also in the annoying video format) that both claim all this blogging is great. Unfortunately, neither were very compelling, as Barry argued that he liked monotonous repetition, and Chris offerred only that not everyone is an A-list blogger (as if that was a defence of unoriginality) and blogger-centric rational (growing a business being one). The problem with is that a true conversation conducted via blogs should, in my view, be reader-centric.

As the web is full of blogs (SEO more than any other topic), I think it helps to imagine the interweb as one giant, ongoing conversation. If you are standing around repeating what the dude in the middle just said to people behind you, you aren’t a part of the conversation, you are just background noise happenning somewhere near the real conversation. To be a true part of the conversation, you need to say something no one else in the conversation has said, or offer some new insight on what was already said.

Lets use a practical example: Yahoo release the NOYDIR robots meta directive, and you blog about it. Why? What are you going to say that Danny Sullivan didn’t (and notice how his post asked questions with followups which is a, yes, conversation)? What can you add to Danny’s analysis to firther the conversation meaningfully? Can you add anything to what Danny wrote? If the answer is no, then simply don’t blog. Instead, point to Danny’s Blog.

That is why I am officially announcing Proposition 301 (as in permanent redirect, get it?), that aims to stop bloggers regurgitating what others have said without significant (and unique) commentary. We need to save people the hassle of deleting yet another link from their RSS reader that doesn’t do anything more than repeat someone else’s ideas and discoveries.

Despite the overly negative overtones of Proposition 301, I don’t want it to be seen as a demand that bloggers give up. Not at all. Rather, I want Proposition 301 to be a call to do better, to find ways to increase the breadth and depth of the conversation, because if saying what everyone else has already said is the problem, the solution is delightfully simple: say what no one else has.

Rather than aiming to be “the next Danny Sullivan”, the “next Rand Fishkin” or “next Jeremy Zawodny”, I want, I need, you to aim to be the first YOU, a blogger with something unique and interesting to say. Like my good friend Bill with has patents, Barry and his machine like consitency, Lisa and her swimfan-SEO-stalker-SOAP-opera-fights-with-Susan Vibe, isos’s wackiness and Rand’s rediculous openess, you need to find something you can do / be that makes your blog worthy of being part of the conversation, your own blogging raison d’etre.

If you can’t describe the “soul” of your blog as succinctly as I just did (Lisa excluded) for the bloggers above, then please, stop blogging untill you can. Whatever it might be, you need to find a niche that allows you to add an interesting tidbit to the growing online conversation.

I want to leave you with a positive example of not just good blogging, but extraordinary blogging: Kathy Sierra. Kathy’s Latest post is precisely what a great blog post should be: original, thought provoking, unique, different and passionate about a topic no else has covered, written in an informal, corporate-spin-free Way that not only entertains, but engages. Even better, Kathy uses the whole page to convey a message, with images and diagrams not just there to add visual highlights, but as integral parts of the post.

No one else, and I mean no one, writes, no, constructs a better blog post than Kathy, and whilst you and I may never reach Kathy’s level, we can all, collectively, raise the bar and have a proper, inclusive conversation if we all stop yelling the same thing, and instead start offerring something compelling and unique.