In 2009 Tiny r(E)volution was born. It started out as just a free WordPress.com blog with the purest of intentions. It would be an online journal where my wife and I could document our “ahead of the trend” tiny house build. I had been keeping some sort of blog since 2004 when I literally had to hard code the text and use an FTP to upload the images. I really did love every second of those days though. I posted our first post in August 2010 (yes, it took that long to even touch our site) out of more frustration than anything. For months we had been trying to research these tiny house on trailer things with virtually no success. Save the Tiny House Blog and a now-relic of a site, Evan & Gabby, there was almost nothing to help out other potential tiny housers. With a background in marketing, advertising, and writing, I took to the keyboard with a vengeance, committed to offering help to others through our blog.
According to a recent poll, 94% of people who share posts do so because they think it might be helpful to others. (source) This statistic illustrates the importance of creating blog content that is actually useful. Things haven’t changed all that much it seems. Or have they?
Evan & Gabby began blogging about their tiny house, choosing to focus on the components of the build. They laid out system requirements, materials they were interested in, process, procedures, and timelines. It was 85% formal and 15% informal. The informal part allowed their readers to get a sense of who they were day in and day out. A blog I read recently (now seven years later) was so very different. It was 10% formal, 55% informal, 30% nonsense, and 5% political ranting. It seems that we have entered a time of over-sharing where everyone feels as if an unspoken requirement of building a tiny house is to host a blog, have an Instagram feed, create a Facebook page, draw up Pinterest boards, and otherwise give out TMI. As I read more and more blogs these days I usually stop after a few sentences and ask, “How is this enhancing my life? How is it helping me understand this person and their build? What am I learning? Will I ever get this 8 minutes of my life back?#8221; All too often the answers lead me to click the X and go back to reading about Kim K or flat tax systems. There just doesn’t seem to be any value.
Please don’t misunderstand this post. It is not a rant. Rather it is a true “call to arms” as to why so many feel they should create a blog when there are already 1,028,942 blogs out there asking the same question about which IKEA chair is better than the other for a tiny house. And I am not just talking the talk. In late 2014 and all of 2015 Tiny r(E)volution went silent. We felt as if we had nothing else to say, no help left to offer, and, to some extent, that we just weren’t relevant any longer to the modern tiny house movement. So we wrote a quick explanation, and went silent. I fully believe that one day we will do it again and one day we will even retire from it altogether.
I think we all just have to be real with ourselves and ask why we keep a blog. Is it to feel important or to feel like a cause célèbre, if even for a moment? Or is it because we realize that our words are far louder than our actions and we have more fun talking about it than doing it? Whatever the case, I sometimes feel like the noise of TMI blogs far outweigh the valuable information that so many of us crave. That is the point of this blog post. I am not trying to get down on those that want to share and want to be relevant. I am just challenging us all to rise above and to be more than just hack auto-biographers. Let’s create content that truly helps each other. Let’s dig deep into our own stories and pull out some truths that can shape a stronger and more educated community.
If you have a blog and you want to meet me on this challenge I offer these first question examples:
- By writing about this product am I saying that I did the proper research and I am willing to put it in my own house first?
- Why do I think propane heaters are better than wood burning? Did I confess prior to my statement that I am scared of flames and just don’t feel comfortable with a fire in my house and therefore didn’t properly vet the two against each other?
- Will anyone find real value in my words or am I writing them just to put in my two cents?
- The title of my blog involves the phrase tiny house. Does this post have anything to do with tiny houses?