Ian M Rountree

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Forget the Niche – Identify a Craft First!

November 18, 2010 by Ian 18 Comments

Longing for Summer - FlickrAll kinds of people are creating these days. Bloggers are getting book deals, recording fantastic videos to post online, becoming speakers… Consultants are becoming brand advocates, agency leaders are going freelance – in addition to moving business online, individuals are also moving, across not just subjects and genres within their industry, but across entire industries.

But there’s something missing.

Where are the authors? The writers? The journalists are in the caravan, playing sheepdog as they always have. Some would argue the writers are there, that we call them bloggers now.

They’re wrong. Bloggers aren’t necessarily writers.

Everywhere I look, bloggers are publishing books. But are they authoring them, or concatenating ideas?

I had a good chat with Dan Perez during this past Sunday’s #blogchat, and for once we agreed (I know, I know, I immediately looked for horsemen in packs of four) – the writer, the author, and the blogger are not always the same. Increasingly, the same platforms (words, public presentations, etc) are being used in more diverse ways than they have been traditionally. A video producer on YouTube may not be able to make a feature film pitch to save her life, just as a big name director may not be able to properly leverage YouTube’s power for making content human.

Who’s to say there’s one best way to create?

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a writer, but not being a blogger. Similarly, not every YouTube phenom needs to become a major motion picture actor/actress. It’s not always in the cards – and that’s not a bad thing!

Bloggers talk about niches all the time – what’s your take on a subject, where’s your perspective, what’s your unique value proposition. What if part of that is the kind of media you create, as well as the way in which you create it?

I say, stick it to the blog. I say, stick it to the book. I say, don’t cross the streams!

We’re not all meant to be multiplied-media superstars. Some of us are meant to be the puritans of the blogging world, others use journalistic savvy to cross the boundaries and write columns for newspapers.

Some of us? Are just bloggers. And that’s ok, too. Do what you do best. Go ahead – get on it.

Image by Per Ola Wiberg.

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Filed Under: Communication Tagged With: Blogging, blogs, the-web

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