There’s nothing wrong with being the best, wanting to be the best and striving for it. However, sometimes I think that people get caught up with the idea that you have to be the best to be worth anything. While that may be the case in some fields, that is most certainly not the case when it comes to online communities.

Online communities are about people and different people have different needs. What someone may not get from one community, perhaps the largest community in the niche, they may be able to get from another, smaller community.

You can be number 2, 3, 4 or… whatever and still be important to the people who utilize you. It’s about knowing your niche and pursuing it. It should be about your goals and ideas and about who you are as a community, not about having the most posts or traffic at any cost because if you have to sell out who you are to get there, it’ll be a hollow “victory.”