I don’t know if I’m a scientifically valid sample, but recently I had an a-ha moment recognizing my own behavior with my blog and the implications it might have in the media business.
I’m a data geek and WordPress enables this compulsion by giving me access to who has clicked on which postings, where they came from, what search terms brought you to my blog, what links readers have clicked on. It’s all in the aggregate so it’s not Big Brotherish in terms of spying on individual readers but it does give considerable insight into what appeals to people.
It didn’t take long for my thinking to pivot from “What do I consider the mission of my blog to be?” to “What can I write about that will bring in the most eyeballs?”
There’s obviously nothing wrong with wanting to generate traffic. For commercial ventures, that’s typically the first step to paying the rent.
It’s also important to know your content and to stay true to what differentiates you from the gazillions of other sources out there. Otherwise, pretty soon you’re just one of the dozens of paparazzi chasing Brittany on her way to or from the hospital, hoping it will sell papers.
Somewhere in there is the delicate balance of paying attention to what readers want and need, in the interest of serving them well, and maintaining focus on your core mission.
How do other bloggers do this? How do you strike that balance?
A focus group of one and the dangers of data
6 Comments
H.T. Riekels
This is not only an issue on my bog, but also the website I used to work for. I prefer to write about more obscure musical artists, because they really need the promotion. However, having content about more widely known acts does better to draw people in. So, I pick some better known items that I really love, and want to talk about. It still fits in the mission I have set for myself, and acts as the necessary lure. From there, hopefully, people will start exploring some of the ones I really want them to check out.
However, since I have started my blog, it is one of the more obscure artists I have featured that gets the most traffic.
http://riekels.wordpress.com/
Colleen
Great way to balance, HT — sort of how an Italian restaurant might first get you in with spaghetti and meatballs, then once you’re there and you like the place, maybe you’ll try something more adventurous because you trust the chef?
H.T. Riekels
Yes, but you have to make sure that it is good pasta, quality meatballs, and delicious sauce. The same as Olive Garden just won’t do.
Lara
I’m no expert, but I shall opine anyway, as we writers (and bloggers) tend to do.
Some days my blog is just a ramble of whatever — Battlestar Galactica, dinner, the dog — but most days I try to focus it on the one thing I can talk about that no one else can. Which in my case is my writing. And I try to shine a spotlight on the process that no one else is talking about. Translation = I try to bring it at least a little bit real. About advances, about editing, about submitting to agents. Lots of writers talk about this stuff, but they don’t really TALK about it. Like the nitty gritty. That’s at least part of what I try to do. And shameless book promotion, of course.
Colleen, your post is a good reminder that I have to offer meaty info a bit more frequently — I can’t just always offer dessert (i.e. links about Lolcats). But garsh I do love Lolcats.
Colleen
LZ, I think you do a great job of balancing the funny/silly/entertaining with the insightful and educational. If it was all heavy and serious, it wouldn’t be you.
I like your idea of talking about topics no one else can. That’s a great way to distinguish your blog from the 5 gazillion others.
That and a hilarious video?
http://www.larawrites.com/blog/
Edward Vielmetti
When I try too hard and watch the stats, my writing suffers – I tend to overthink things.
It has been handy to look through the search logs to see which particular terms are trending, and in particular to look for unusual terms that signal that there’s either some news happening or some seasonal event on its way that’s bringing people to old pages. And so I know when it’s strawberry season in Michigan when people search and find last year’s picking report, and I know when there are fires in a few places because of past postings I’ve written about them. (burnt over areas in the UP are good for blueberry and morel picking the following year).
Aggregate numbers matter less to me than the very fine grained detail of the words people use.
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