• Numbers for the sake of numbers

    Posted on December 21st, 2009 by and currently 9 commenting.

    Hypothetical question for you: Let’s say you’ve been writing a blog for years now. And you’ve got a pretty good readership built up. Not off the charts, but you regularly get comments from new voices. Same thing on your Facebook fan page and Twitter. You’ve got greater than the average number of “followers,” and things are growing at a steady pace.

    But then you wake up one day and everything has changed. You check Twitter and you have 10 followers. Your Facebook fan page has 15. Comments are scare on your blog.

    Here comes the question: Would you keep being as active on social media as you were when you had impressive numbers? In other words, would you make as much of an effort to talk with 20 people as you would to talk with 20,000 people?

    Once again, it comes down to the numbers. Would you rather have 20 deeply passionate people who love to talk about you or 20,000 that really don’t care all that much about you?

    Just thinking out loud.

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  • http://thatsacorker.com Matt Corker

    I always get uneasy when people start talking about the numbers around social media. The number of page views, followers, subscribers, etc doesn’t show the amount of influence you have on those people. And even if what you publish influences them, who’s to say they pass it on or comment?

    Numbers are important to paint a part of the picture – to start the process of asking more questions to uncover the story behind the numbers.

    Well written. Keep thinking out loud.

  • http://www.socialmallard.com Kevin

    It depends. If you rely on your blog as a primary source of income – via ads, affiliate links, etc that depend on high volumes of convertible traffic, and those 20K were in fact converting well enough – then you’d probably go hell bent on trying to rebuild that follower base. 20 passionate followers in that scenario are unlikely to pay the bills. Though again, it depends.

    If you blog for passion, enjoyment, professional reputation, research, or things along those lines, the 20 deeply committed followers might just be perfect, with the 20K representing empty vanity. Which I believe was the point of the last part of your post.

    Either way, it’s a great question to ask yourself, as it helps clarify why you’re blogging.

  • http://hyperarts.com/social Analisa

    Interesting question. I imagine that I would work harder in response to losing followers, trying to regain my footing as a blogger with an audible voice.

    But that means that I was probably writing less and putting in less effort before I lost the followers…why? Complacency must be a by-product of fame and notoriety. If I was capable of giving more to my followers before, and didn’t, no wonder they left!

    I notice that some big-name bloggers (like Chris Brogan- whom I observe but don’t really learn or benefit from) maintain a very steady and prolific flow of content, most likely to maintain advertising revenue.

    I think that I would feel successful as a blogger as long as I still had good conversations in response to my content, even if it was from the same 20 people, versus a new 200 each day.

  • http://www.14four.com Ryan Moede

    It’s a solid question to ask and to be continually evaluating your motivations for what you’re doing. While I’d be concerned that somehow I suddenly lost most of my readership, I gotta say that if it’s the right 20 people coming back each day, then that’s what matters.

  • AJ

    I was going to post basically the same thing as Kevin, so I’ll just say I agree with him.

  • http://mandyvavrinak.com Mandy Vavrinak

    My blog hasn’t been around for years… And I don’t get hundreds of comments or tweets about each post. I do work hard to figure out what posts the small community who I’m beginning to see regularly via blog, Twitter & Facebook seem to respond to… What they want from me. If 20 people passionately commented on my last post & tweeted about it, I’d be thrilled.
    Maybe I would feel differently coming back here if my blog grows…But probably not. I believe complacency breeds contempt for your audience. It was one of my first posts.
    No matter how large or small your audience is… If you have a committed one, they are worth doing your best work. Phoning it in for the few is just ego on display. Thanks for giving me a chance to talk about this subject by asking the question :)

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  • http://dontcompromise.askeurope.com Don’t Compromise

    I think I’m somewhere between Analisa and Ryan on this one. If you’re communicating, it’s the nature of your audience that should get your first attention. Likewise, if you’re ‘marketing’ (however softly or indirectly), it’s the targetting that matters.

    I’m sitting here comparing blogging with AdWords campaigns that I run in a different capacity for a range of clients: some of them want big impressive numbers on clickthroughs, and never look at conversions, bounce rates and the like. (Along the way, they be attracting the fleeting attention of a large number of people who aren’t really interested in what they’re doing.) Some are more interested in the percentage of new visitors, clickthrough percentages and spending limited advertising budgets to maximum effect (avoiding the ‘big ticket’ keyword that might drive large, vaguely targetted volumes at considerable cost and picking far more precise phrases that give the best CTR they can achieve.)

    It also depends why you’re blogging. If it’s to generate dialogue, comments matter. If it’s to drive sales or maximise brand exposure, numbers matter. If it’s to demonstrate thought leadership or explore knotty issues aloud, it’s being read by the right people – and, like anything else on the web, it’s the right people who define themselves. If anyone can be somewhere else at a single click, every read you get is a positive elective choice.