Death by Traffic Trends
Copyblogger recently drew connections between Zen and blogging (really ... and it's quite a good post, too), and one particular segment really hit home for me:"When you focus on the outcome you expect from your content, you are almost invariably failing your readers."Sounds simple, right? Just keep your head down and crank out great content and the rest will fall in line.
But it's not that easy. Staying on-target requires an enormous amount of diligence and, oddly enough, confidence. I encounter this struggle all the time. When I feel good, I crank stuff out and the simple acts of writing and collaborating and discussing are all I need to feel shiny and happy about the world. But when other things go on -- both in my own little blogging world and in the far-more-important aspects of my work and family life -- I can't help but look for salvation in my "numbers."
And often, that salvation isn't there.
When I'm down, I try to find pick-me-ups through Google Analytics (sidenote: this is the most pathetic sentence I've ever written, and I can't believe I'm admitting such a geeky/ridiculous thing in a public sphere). I try to find a confidence boost through traffic trends or through a link from a popular site or some sort of statistics-based revelation that I am, in fact, a worthy blogger/writer/journalist/educator/etc.
But somewhere deep down I know this is wrong. I know numbers are important for advertising and metrics and analysis, but I also know numbers are not why I write, or teach, or research, or edit. I know traffic trends are not why I started my first site ... or my second ... or my third.
I'm not sure what the answer is -- maybe I need more Zen in my life ... or fewer stats? -- but sometimes the realization of a problem is the key to overcoming that problem. Maybe that's enough.
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