Admit it — you think I am crazy for dogging two most common judgment blogger objective – traffic and good content. Let me explain before you roll your mouse on the screen, please.
Blog traffic is very important. With no traffic, how will anyone see your masterpiece on writing blindfold for improved focus? Your blog needs traffic.
But traffic is not a valid measure for success. If traffic is a valid measure of success, would be every bloggers starting point an immediate failure for months if not longer.
Success metrics must be applicable to persons at all levels of experience. High traffic is later a major challenge to you is successful (which ProBlogger has), but it is simply not relevant for new bloggers who want to know how to do.
Traffic compared to the experience and time online is also an outdated statistics, because it has more to do with luck and marketing than anything else:
Better marketers need to better traffic – especially in the beginning.I have seen horrendous Blogs (messy layout, weak content, horrible grammar, etc.) with thousands of subscribers.I have seen great blogs that are virtually invisible online because they don't know how you, or to gain exposure.Time separates the wheat from the chaff (unless you market never your blog, what goals, good luck).For a beginning blogger, it's hard to see the big bloggers pull in thousands of visitors every day while you are reaching 50 on a good day. It takes time and effort to get your name out there so you can get a chance to be judged fairly by Web users. I know that many quality bloggers have simply quit because they equated low traffic with error.
63,494 Blogs started in the last 24 hours (according to blogpulse.com at the time of writing), and many of these bloggers will end during the first few months. The first months is important.
We have all heard classic "content is King ' point of view as well as the opposite," unseen content is useless "perspective. In fact both have some truth – you need a lot of content and you must ensure that people know about it.
But to say that content is King gives the author the wrong focus.
So, what is the best measure of success?
Success is measured by what the readers think about your content.
I have just Blogging (on my site) for a month, and as such, my traffic is hilariously low. However, I am very hopeful for retain and gain new readers because of how I measure my success.
When I read articles about content as King, I get the impression that we should write the best content we create. The problem is that the author's opinion of "best content" doesn't matter too much.
Content isn't King, nor traffic: readers is King!
Some would say that this is what "content is King" really means, but it is for interpretation. To say that your audience is King leaves no doubt.
Readers decide what they want to read, how much and when. They determine which Blogs and what incredible popularity soar Blogs bite the dust. The King because they control all bloggers fate. So how do we satisfy their interests? How do we know what they want?
You want to shape your content for your readers. Okay, but how do you get it?You do this by listening to what readers said.You listen by measuring the number of concrete positive responses (Facebook fans, tweets, comments, new subscribers, etc.) compared to the number of people who showed a record (individual posts views can be seen with Google Analytics, but make sure you block your own IP address views to prevent skewing the statistics).This approach is mainly targeted at people beginning to like myself, but it is relevant for all bloggers.
Once you've "made it" and get lots of traffic, the positive responses in relation to your traffic (and increased traffic yourself via readers share) quite obvious indicators of how your posts are received. You have a much larger sample, in this case, and accurate calculations needed for prompt text cannot. But I'm sure you'll do them anyway because of how funny it is.
I think I will be a successful blogger. It is not because of my traffic — last Saturday, I had a whole six unique visitors (AJ, weekends).
My readers, not my traffic, prefiguring my success to respond positively. The first week, I told a couple who are friends with my blog was changing their lives. I take that over 1,000 visitors.
My last post was seen as only 22 unique visitors that day I posted it, but from that it had seven Facebook likes. My subscriber count doubled from seven to 14. Approximately 32% of the readers liked it enough to share it with their Facebook friends.
If I were to attract 2,000 visitors a day and maintained that 32% share rate (unlikely, but interesting), would that mean 640 Facebook like the post, which of course would be able to increase my traffic significantly.
I have had other posts was seen as a much larger number of people with a much lower response — it is a huge statement by readers. I would be a fool to ignore it and write what I want.
As a blogger, you need to have a willingness to customize your vision and substance on the market. Let's face it: blogging is a business. You have to promote your product (blog post), and network with other companies (blogger), and create value for customers (readers).
It is important to note that there are many other factors come into play here – the time the post was published, the length of the post, topic of interest, marketing, statistical variations, influential power that share your entry, and so on.
It is not an exact science due to the variables involved, but it is still the best measure of success for a blogger at any level. That is why I recommend allow comments on your posts or at the very least, add social sharing options to bloggers starting point. Disabling comments because it looks bad that have no comments, and you'll miss out on a chance to gain valuable feedback.
Even at low traffic levels, I found you can still get a good feel for your winners and losers. For example, the abovementioned entry with fewer views a much bigger response than any other entry with more views on my blog. The readers have spoken.
Note that different posts will have different reactions. The popular posts that I mentioned has zero comments, but people were sharing it and subscribe to because of it.
Another post I wrote the deeply thinking was shared less, but have more comments. Both records were successful based on the number of views.
I would like to hear from you about your experiences and get your thoughts and comments on this idea. If you are reading this, your feedback is King!
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