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Vanity, me and the chase

Recently a few people have asked me how many readers this blog site has, so I logged on to check the details. What I found was a mix of varying data that didn’t make sense. I ran tests and most social network views (using the links from LinkedIn etc.) aren’t registered through my WordPress analytics, so I signed up to google analytics.

That was yesterday and google hasn’t gathered its data yet.  WordPress tells me I get triple digits at times, that’s not many! I hear you say? Well, I’m pretty stoked given I started in October last year, a little under 4 months ago and I don’t focus on Search engine optimisation.

My motivation is to share what I write (I love the activity of writing), learn from others and maybe inspire and be inspired along the way. There’s enough negativity on the internet, so I’ve created this space for myself and anyone who wants to visit, away from it all.

“We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.” –Michelle Obama

Seth Godin said in a recent interview that he no longer looks at his readership numbers, it’s not why he writes, he advises others do the same. Like any good product, if it’s great then people will find it.

As humans we’re hard wired to love the chase, that feeling of trying to get something we aren’t sure we can have, like that person you feel an attraction towards, or that fast car you’ve dreamt of. We’ve all chased and many live for that chase. Lots of people that blog are no different. I’m trying to be, as if I chase anything then it’s with good reason not vanity.

Vanity metrics are things like readership numbers. Metrics that mean something are things like the number of people who made a positive change in their life by being inspired through a blog post. That isn’t something easy to measure..

So the best I can do for now is not to completely ignore my readership numbers,  I’ll look a few times a year. If they go down or don’t increase in anyway perhaps it means my writing and the subject matter isn’t interesting to people? It would be terrific if anything I write created positive change for just one persons life, I doubt I’ll ever really know, in fact I rarely tell someone when they’ve inspired me, I’m going to change that from now on.

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