I don’t eat many fried items in my diet since I became vegetarian (most places fry meat, seafood, and vegetables all together).

I only eat fried items at a few selected family members places and my own. A few weeks ago @lucymfel decided to make some homemade onion rings. Oh my God I can’t even start describing how awesome they where. Then I realized I had been eating frozen onion rings all of my life. I had never eaten a freshly made Onion Ring.

The experience and taste that each and every Onion Ring offered me was a once in a lifetime experience. (you might feel I am exaggerating but that is who I felt).

This made me think why so many restaurants locally I visit are always looking for the easy way to serve you food by cutting corners and expenses.I have been to many places where I really like something and later find out I can buy it at bulk in Costco or some other supermarket.

The whole reason of visiting a Restaurant is to get a unique experience out of something, an experience tied to something important as eating the food you love prepared in a unique way. I think the same thing can happen with websites and blogs. When the content is not original or is a regurgitation of what someone else said or wrote somewhere else, it can be disappointing. It stops being inviting.

So here are the 5 Reasons Why Homemade Onion Rings Are Like Original Content:

Picking the Onion. The same way you get to pick your onions or produce and pick the best before preparing them. By creating original content you get to pick and choose which ideas, words, phrases, videos, and images you can use to communicate your message. If you picked a good onion the probability of getting a a good onion ring increases, the same with picking the great simple items that make up a paragraph or post it can turn into an awesome post.

Choosing complementing ingredients. To create an Onion Ring you have to choose other ingredients that complement it and make it one. By having the opportunity to choose the breading you prefer (in my case panko, makes them crunchier and less oily), healthier oil to fry them in, in some cases your favorite beer, and any other ingredient that gives it a touch of you. When you create content it is important to give it a touch of who you are. Give it a taste of your interests and your point of view. You can complement your point of view with that of others that help you with dispersing the message you want to convey.

Preparation of Onion Rings. You decide how much salt or pepper to include. How long will let you let them fry? You have full control of what you are creating and have no restrictions on how it should be done. When using content that comes from somewhere else there are many restrictions on what you can do depending on the rights attached to the content.

Distributing the Onion Rings. If your Onion rings taste great you decide who to share them with. If they did get the right flavor  you can easily discard them and start a new batch. When content is original and created by you its your decision if you are  going to distribute it and you establish the rules. If you wish to share the content make sure you can get your Creative Commons License at http://creativecommons.org. If it did not come out like you wanted it to you can always edit and modify until you get exactly what you wanted.

Receiving Recognition. If you where successful in creating awesome tasty onion rings (like @lucymfel) you will get recognition by people talking about how great they where ( I even created a blog post about it). You might have people trying to find out when the next batch of Onion Rings will be made so they can come visit. When you create great content people will stick around, spread the word, and want more.

What content are you feeding your audience? Is it Fresh? Is it Original?

What other benefits do you see towards creating Original Content?

I recommend a great book to read on the importance of original and overall content is Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series) (affiliate link).