RSS FeedSat 25 Oct 2008
This post was inspired by Damien’s recent post Can one be enough? when he is talking about trying to keep his daughter from taking all the cookies and only eating a few of them and relating it to his own obsession of trying to get more readers (cookies) to his site.
Just as his 1½ year old daughter has recently discovered that one cookie is good but more than one cookie is better, as bloggers we know that having X number of readers is good but having more than X is better.
However, there is more to this analogy. Just as Damien often faces the difficult task of telling his daughter “No” when she wants more cookies, bloggers could often do well to tell themselves “No” in regards to trying to attract more visitors. For many of you, this may seem counterintuitive, but read on dear reader and it will all make sense.
If you have read Damien’s post, you might already know where I’m going here. What happens if you give a small child an unlimited number of cookies? You will find cookies lying all around the house, and in the end only a very small portion of them will be fully enjoyed and consumed. How does this translate to blogging? Bloggers are the small children, the blog is the house, and the readers are the cookies.
Given an unlimited number of readers, a blogger will have people viewing nearly every page and post on the site, but only a few of them will actually be fully utilized/attended to/etc. Just as Damien’s daughter can only eat so many cookies at a time, a blogger can only attend to so many readers in a given period.
While most bloggers do a great job at responding to comments and taking part in the networking aspect of blogging, I think that perhaps sometimes we forget about this basic positive aspect of blogging and worry too much about growing our traffic. In these cases, you as a blogger need to get your hands out of the proverbial cookie jar and be sure to fully enjoy the readers that you already have. Be sure to give them the attention that they require/deserve rather than worrying about marketing your blog and growing your traffic.
By keeping this philosophy in mind, the quality of your blog and loyalty of your readers will increase. Remember the cookies that you find all around the house? Most people wouldn’t put those back in the cookie jar and likewise, a reader that does not get attended to is not as likely to come back. In both of these cases, the result is waste. Just like you should only take the cookies that you are going to eat, only work towards the number of readers that you can adequately attend to; save the rest (in both cases) for another time. Take that other cookie or attract that other reader on a day when you are able to fully give the attention that is deserved.
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Nick, you got my point 100%. I would adjust just one thing, and you may disagree here but, you mentioned
“a reader that does not get attended to is not as likely to come back.”
That may be a true statement but I think if we as writers are not focusing on numbers, our writing and focus will simply be more attractive. So, the irony is that if we take our eyes off the need for growth, we will have a better chance at growth. I don’t believe that we have to put a cap on the number of people we entertain. We should however not seek that as it is a moving target.
I really liked this article thank you so much for referencing my post.
I think we are on a similar page here, what I was kinda thinking of there was this: How many times have you gone to a site that was in no way geared towards the reader? How likely are you to voluntarily go back to that site?
The other thing I was thinking of was if you go to a site and use the contact form to ask the author or site owner a question, or ask a question in the comments and the question never gets answered and you never get responded to. This again makes you less likely to come back.
I definitely see our logic. The larger the blog grows, the more difficult it becomes for the blogger to keep tabs on each and every visitor. As SEO improves for certain posts, you could wind up with visitors commenting on several different posts on the same day. Maintaining a blog with many readers is probably a lot of trial and error. Great post!
That’s a great point Nick. I’ve been finding myself getting so frustrated with traffic, when if doesn’t give as much as I wanted to, and in the mean time I’m losing the readers I already have. But not replying to comments and emails… nobody will want to read your blog. Thanks for the reminder.
Jonathan Muller