The Blue Man Group Secret to Blogging

The Blue Man Group has a secret.

It allows them to make just as much money as the other top Las Vegas musical acts and comedians, while working way less.  While Siegfried and Roy and Celine Dion were working night in and night out, the guys behind the Blue Man Group got to take it easy.

The Blue Man Group using their secret (via Wikipedia)

What's their secret?

Simple: The blue face paint isn't just a costume gimmick to make you say "This music is awesome, but it's even better because they're blue!"

No, that blue face paint does a lot more than that—it allows anyone who knows the moves to step in and perform, freeing up the guys who invented the group to manage, not do shows every night of the week.

While people paying to see Siegfried and Roy want to see, well, Siegfried and Roy, people at a Blue Man Group show just want to see blue men.  Any will do, as long as the show is good.

The Copyblogger model

We bloggers can learn a lot from the blue paint idea.  The first point is obvious: If you set up your blog business so that it doesn't depend on YOU, you'll be a lot better off down the road when it comes time to lessen your workload or even sell your business.

Look at Copyblogger, one of my favorite blogs.  For the first two years the founder, Brian Clark, was the main contributor.  But during those years, Brian focused on building the brand.  He was careful not to make it about himself, so that when the time came, he could hire other writers to provide most of the content.

Today, Brian only writes about one post each week, yet there's insanely valuable content on Copyblogger every day of the week.  And while readers like me are kept happy with all the fresh, daily content, Brian can spend his time on the bigger projects that bring in the money.

The first rule of marketing is 'It ain't about you'

There's more to this little nugget, something that's particularly applicable to us as health bloggers.

Our subject matter is such that it's easy to write about ourselves.   You can create content (maybe not good content, but content nonetheless) by simply writing about the food you eat and the exercise you do.  This is safe—nobody's going to criticize it, and the well will never run dry.  And a few people might actually like it.

But here's where that first rule of marketing can help us.  It reminds us that if you want to make your blog into a business, you need to make it about your reader.

Sure, you can entertain people by writing about yourself.  But with so much competition for attention, entertainment doesn't get you far (and it's notoriously hard to monetize).  You're far better off making it about the reader, and rather than simply giving her a way to kill two minutes, providing that reader with valuable information.

The blue face paint is a built-in reminder to the Blue Man Group that it's not about them.  When the show ends and the paint is washed off, nobody recognizes the Blue Man Group.

The best they can do is provide one hell of an experience for the audience during the time they have their attention.  And that's exactly what we need to be doing.