Pumpjacks are part of my landscape. I live in Alberta which is a resource rich province. The other day our premiere said that a lot of our resources are just waiting to be developed. Developed is a great word to use. We wouldn’t want to say those resources are just waiting to be ripped, guzzled or burned out of the earth, leaving a wake of devastation and toxicity. No, no, our non-renewable resources are just waiting to be developed. Just dig deeper, go further and we will find the oil. It will always be there, right?
I was talking to my friend Mark Steadman earlier this week about authority. He felt he didn’t have much because his niche is saturated. Which is interesting. Mark is a brilliant .NET Developer who is currently working on his own CMS, as well as a brilliant podcast and working full-time. How can he not have authority? It’s because there’s a bizillion other .NET developers, all blogging and all using up authority in that area. Authority is being shared and can Mark, can I get a piece of that pie?
If you want to be an authority, at anything, you have to develop, dig deeper, go further and you will find an undiscovered niche. A gem waiting for you to exploit. That’s where your authority lies. There will always be another niche, right?
I think you could argue and say that I am just not imaginative enough. If I were truly engaged I would find a niche. Or I did the unthinkable and dive into a heavily developed niche, like metablogging, and try to yank some authority from my, would-be, competitors: Darren, Chris, Liz, and so on. And if I want to get authority I need to link to my competitors so that they will notice me and hopefully take pity on me and spare some change. In real life, I am a normal/weird, happy person and online I am a panhandler for authority.
Even Seth noticed this the other day:
It’s tempting to use a medium to write about the medium. It works for a while, but there’s a limit.
Sooner or later, our niche runs out. The well goes dry. It’s all used up. We have nothing else to say or someone else says it better. So we go back to the drawing board and start again. Develop, dig and go further. This method hasn’t lead us astray yet, has it?
Yes, it has. It has in the real world and it has online. Global warming is real, just as much as our desires to mine the internet for every last dollar. But, at the risk of pushing this analogy to it’s breaking point, there are other ways to develop authority. We don’t have to use coal to make power and we don’t have to exploit niches for authority.
And the answer is the exact same thing I have been saying all along. We have to reassess how we approach the net. We need to start with a renewable resource. Something that continues to grow without running out.
Let me suggest to you that you (or your “people”)—yes, you—are that renewable resource. When you come before the subject, when you bring yourself into the equation, that your niche, your content and your authority grows through your vitality. We when approach the web organically than we have something that will only run out if we let it.
Photo by Amanda
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One Comment
Interesting thoughts, but i do think there`ll always be niches as the web , the users and the way we use it will evolve