Blogging is Not a Numbers Game- Or Is It

Congrats on yet another great milestone.

For me the numbers mean everything. I’ve always been a stats man. What I lack is actually using the information I have to help make my audience grow. I need to work on that.

Numbers matter in aggregate. They measure trends. Look at 7 and 30 day moving averages and you’ll know whether your work is successful or not.

I saw some of your twitter about how long it has taken you to do this. Congratulations inspiration for us all.

Hi Chris,

Great post as always and personally thanks for your help in these last few hours :)

I think numbers do matter, but as you state not directly. I think your social proof idea is true…no one wants to eat in the cafe with no one in it.

In the end, I actually think the real wonder of numbers is in the shared succes “we got x number of views!” with the people close to you, and acts as validation that you talk about good stuff.

I’ll also give http://www.poprl.com a plug cause I just found it and it’s amazingly helpful with tracking the impact your fav tweets/outposts are making.

Cheers,

Steve

Hi Chris,

Great post as always and personally thanks for your help in these last few hours :)

I think numbers do matter, but as you state not directly. I think your social proof idea is true…no one wants to eat in the cafe with no one in it.

In the end, I actually think the real wonder of numbers is in the shared succes “we got x number of views!” with the people close to you, and acts as validation that you talk about good stuff.

I’ll also give http://www.poprl.com a plug cause I just found it and it’s amazingly helpful with tracking the impact your fav tweets/outposts are making.

Cheers,

Steve

Great work Chris! You are right in saying that the numbers are social proof and they are also a sign of your value in the community.

You are talking about 10,000 people who has chosen to invite you into their lives & that is, in my opinion, an accomplishment :)

Chris, first congrats, its next to impossible to get where you are in the rankings; second, we have been trying to make sense of the numbers for a long time.

From an marketing perspective, I attribute a great blog with lots of readers to a great billboard with lots of passers by (function, not format). May sound odd, but its hard to measure the effectiveness of either for the Brand in question. The numbers don’t necessarily dictate the effectiveness, just that it’s a great place to integrate your message because there are lots of people around it who may see it, (not everyone clicks their RSS reader daily).

It’s nice to know we have readers, and its nice to know that they click the ad, but there is more to it than that.

We are working on an algorithm that ensures our clients know there is value with or without clicks to their sites. Good old PR metrics in an internet world. Combined with web data, they can quite impressive.

We want them to be good citizens of the web, concerned with conversation and association, not always plugging wares through old style ads.

Congratulations, Chris, on this significant milestone. I’m not so sure numbers matter, but measurement and goal-setting do, and those are both represented by the numbers. So what’s the plan from here? Where do you see chrisbrogan.com in a year, how will you get there, and how will you know when you’ve arrived? These are the questions I ask myself about my social media presence and the social media presence of my employer.

Hey Chris, thanks for the honesty on this one…I too, though a newbie find myself checking analytics daily, looking at my feedburner numbers (passed 10 yesterday!). Where I discovered my relationship to the numbers was with twitter grader. Two weeks ago I ranked in 51%. I had counter attack. It wasn’t good enough for the effort I was applying. So I studied their formula and realized that they were right, without being further out into the stream and connecting to more people, I didn’t deserve a better grade. So now my practice includes inviting and following folks and things have changed dramatically. Last night I passed my goal of cracking their top 1000 and my practice has improved because of it…and visitors to my blog keep growing as well…

Congrats Chris. I think numbers make us feel good, help with paid advertising for those who pursue it and social proof.

I wouldn’t mind going in the empty cafe, you might get quick service when you’re in a hurry. :) But, you never know, at least you’d have a story at the end of it – good, bad or outstanding.

It’s great to see all the content you’ve created over a long period of time and it’s nice to know we have time to shape/grow our endeavors.

Great stuff. Thanks.

Chris, congratulations on the numbers. Also, I like your idea of social proof. I’ve heard a lot of people talking about qualitative and quantitative stats. Interesting discussions. And the other question around that issue is, of course, how do you measure engagement. Your post pushes that discussion forward. Does anyone know of other good posts on these issues?

Congratulations Chris,

Numbers matters, but I’m sorry I’m not one of your RSS readers.. lately I decided to read all my post via Twitter (well get notified when a new post came via twitter)…

So you have to add to your RSS readers the ones that follow you via twitter (like me)

Side note: When a full Cafe can attract visitors, but you need really good coffee and ambiance to keep them inside!!

My good lady wife always says “It’s not the size but what you do with it” – not quite sure how to take that… ;-) But what I think she means is that while numbers are important, the quality of these numbers are more so.

In a nutshell, congrats Chris – you have the numbers because you deserve them for all your ongoing sharing with the community. So in that respect they’re both important and quality-led. :)

Know what’s funny about the empty cafe thing? I’m writing this in an empty cafe. Know why it’s empty? Because the new owner is a goof and has NO idea about community.

Congrats – not only are rising numbers an encouragement that people are appreciating what you do, but some stat tracking is also good to see which articles etc appeal to people, and which ones might not be good enough in quality or appeal.

And by that, I don’t mean you necessarily have to write to appeal to the lowest common denominator, but it can provide a prompt to see if there’s a reason people aren’t enjoying it or commenting on it – maybe there’s not enough quality linking or resources included, or perhaps the end question isn’t open enough etc.

It’s easy to get seduced into constantly watching stats, but unless it’s just for fun, or for a defined reason, it can be a bit dangerous….particularly when stats like Technorati can vary wildly at times!

Funnily enough, I’ve finally started getting a list together on my blog of all the free and paid-for stats and monitoring tools.

Congrats – not only are rising numbers an encouragement that people are appreciating what you do, but some stat tracking is also good to see which articles etc appeal to people, and which ones might not be good enough in quality or appeal.

And by that, I don’t mean you necessarily have to write to appeal to the lowest common denominator, but it can provide a prompt to see if there’s a reason people aren’t enjoying it or commenting on it – maybe there’s not enough quality linking or resources included, or perhaps the end question isn’t open enough etc.

It’s easy to get seduced into constantly watching stats, but unless it’s just for fun, or for a defined reason, it can be a bit dangerous….particularly when stats like Technorati can vary wildly at times!

Funnily enough, I’ve finally started getting a list together on my blog of all the free and paid-for stats and monitoring tools.

I agree with what you said, I think anything worth doing takes time to cultivate it. I compare my blogs and one is apart of a large network so the traffic comes a lot easier where the other one, I have had to build it up. It’s nice to know that if you keep plugging away and learning that you can get there! Thanks for the encouragement.

Thanks for the post Chris. Very encouraging. Everytime I get a little discouraged, I read posts like this from the “big guys and gals” and it keeps me going. That and the fact that I LOVE blogging and I don’t want to give up! :)

It’s funny how relative numbers can be; I’m up to averaging about 17 readers per day, but that’s up from the zero readers I had for a long time, so I personally consider it a triumph. The cool thing about blogging is the way you can literally create something from nothing. I’m not a professional writer, consultant, marketer, author–yet in the eight months that I’ve been blogging, I’ve had comments from David Meerman Scott and Penelope Trunk, and my blog just got selected for inclusion on Alltop’s social media category. Not a bad deal for basically talking to myself about social media.

Two points:
Explicit value
1. I think that advertisers are somehow behind here.
Can they “see” how successful this blog is? Can they tell how supportive the community around it is?

Can a “big” sponsor find Chris’s blog?

I’m not sure. I think that advertisers don’t have the full picture.
In my opinion if advertisers sees ChrisBrogan.com blog’s success measures they should bid using this stage for their message and pay for it, more than few cents a click.

Implicit values
2. Chris, you are having a great stage here reaching a lot of us through your blog. When your book is out there, I’m sure that it will be way easy to hear and find it. I heard and bought Gary Vaynerchuk’s book only because of his vast web presence.

I think that blogging has a lot more implicit values that we don’t always see now. The numbers only helps us to track if we are making general progress.

Let me join the chorus of “congratulations!”

@Keren- you have, of course, made a vital point. The implicit is the heart and soul of things. It’s not cash in pocket: it’s opportunities to get even closer to better situations. And then, there’s cash over there. : )

call it an accomplishment or something else, it’s still a milestone, so congratulations. Your blog and otherwise ubiquitous virtual presence are guides to people like me who are starting to find their own way.

The numbers themselves may not mean much, but as one who is new to this social media, simply knowing that many people have been impacted by your work does. we have just passed 90 followers on Twitter after just about 6 weeks, and I feel like that is huge. I am a big fan and devotee of you and a handful of others that inspire and inform. Your willingness to share what you know and spotlight others so they can become more well-known is the main reason you are so popular.Congratulations!