Tossing It Out

Showing posts with label Respect. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Respect by the Numbers: Do Pageviews Matter?

back side of High Roller roller coaster ride at Cedar Fair's Valleyfair! amusement park in Shakopee, Minnesota, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What's Going on with my Blog?

An interesting thing happened on this blog over the past couple of weeks: The Tossing It Out posts have been decreasing in page view numbers. Through an analysis of the situation I have determined the reason. I can blame it on President Barack Obama, the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), and the disastrous HealthCare.gov website and I have the evidence to back up my claim. In this post I will explain what has happened.

Yes, this post is about the dreaded topic of blog stats. You may be thinking of leaving right now, but I say wait and let me present my case to see if I can influence your thinking on this. I'll try to keep it as interesting as one can do when it comes to talking about numbers. Trust me--I truly believe there is an interesting and very helpful story to be told in the blog stats. If you will go along with me and then give me your thoughts in the comment section I think we can learn something that may be of use to all of us. And there is a payoff at the end of the post that will tell you about the wrap-up of this series coming in my next post.

Can Blog Stats Be Trusted?

Many weighed in with the opinion that blog stats are essentially unreliable. Numbers of many thousands of pageviews, thousands of comments, and thousands of followers were cited by some of you. All I can say about that is show me the numbers. I don't have much to say about those instances without seeing for myself so I can make my own analysis. If you want to offer some links for me to follow, then do so in the comments. And even then what we see is not always the true story.

For example, Alex J Cavanaugh mentioned a blog he saw with over 58,000 followers and 5000 comments per post, but as Alex pointed out "it wasn’t someone famous, and the posts weren’t anything out of the ordinary". What else do we know about this blog to tell us why those numbers are there, if they are accurate, or if the blogger is reliable? The real numbers from real stats don't lie, but people do. And people can falsify the stats to come up with false number readings that can lead outside observers to come to the wrong conclusions.

In his follow up post Alex said, "Overall, most of you thought blogging was about community and comments more important than pageviews." I think this is a correct statement. But I don't think that it follows that pageviews are not important. I strongly believe that certain bloggers who have certain goals in mind should be thinking about their pageviews.

Blogging is about community and friends in part. There is a community of bloggers who focus on community and friends, but there is also a world (blogosphere) of bloggers who focus on many different things and the building community bloggers are a portion of that world. Like I said in my previous post, much of the debate (disagreement) arose from the fact that there were different sides talking about different subjects.

Forget About the Content, Let's Stick with the Numbers

Denise Covey left the comment on Alex's post "What Constitutes Quality Blog Content? that seeemed to be the most common concern expressed by those commenting concerning stat numbers when she said, "I read Arlee's post and I'm with you on page views. They mean little and just frustrate you if you see you've had 700 pageviews and only 50 commented."

My question to anyone who is thinking in this way is are you extrapolating relevant observations and reasonable conclusions from the data you have available? The numbers by themselves can deceive and discourage if they are not put into context. If you don't have any idea why the numbers are what they are it can be easy to avoid them or assume they are unreliable or untrue.

Now Back to my Own Diminishing Numbers

Regarding blog stats I can only speak based on my direct experience and observations and come to conclusions based on those things. With this in mind, I'm giving you the stats from the previous six posts at Tossing It Out and explain my interpretation of what happen. The stat page is as it appeared at about midday on Tuesday October 22, 2013. The order below has the most recent post (Oct 21) at the top and descends to the last post on the list which the earliest (Oct. 11). Here are the numbers:

Oct 21 Do You Respect Yourself 33 comment count
41 view count

Oct 18 Defining Respect as a Blogger 41 comments

63 page view

Oct 16 Respecting the Reader +6 37 comments

152 View count

Oct 15 Battle of the Bands +2 34 comments

58 view count

Oct 14 Do You Feel Respected? +13 97 comments

303 page views

Oct 11 Tossing Out. Another.... +1 23 comments

1792 page views


							10/11/13

This is very easy to analyze so I'm glad that the numbers are relatively simple for this string of posts. Here is the analysis starting from bottom and going upwards:

Oct 11: At first I was puzzled as to why my counter was showing 1792 views for a post that had relatively few comments. I was sure that the counter was daffy and in error. But then I realized what I had done and the numbers made complete sense. In this post that I intended to be a flippant filler with rather light content, I mentioned the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, and CGI Group which were all over the news on that day. Some of the hits may have come from search engines, but I'm more inclined to believe that many entities (government watchers, Obama staffers, journalists, and others with an interest) were set up to get notifications of mentions of these terms on the web and my post was among those. When these entities went to look at my post they saw that it was regurgitated material from other sources that was of no interest to them and moved one. I'm pretty sure that is the explanation for that post.

Oct 14: This was a post intended for a very specific audience in my normal readership. No buzzwords or terms that would attract attention. However this post did contain a plea to share and the readers kindly responded which resulted in many more hits. Visitors were also very compliant in leaving comments as I had requested. Two days after the post Alex J Cavanaugh mentioned it on his site and the post had another significant spike. Thanks Alex! And thanks to all of you who spread the word about the post. I also did a fair amount of networking concerning this post.

Oct 15: This shows a big drop because it is a Battle of the Bands post and these are not my most popular postings. But they are among my favorites and I enjoy doing these BOTB posts. The comments and views are higher than previous BOTB postings but probably because of the tie-in to the "Respect" series.

Oct 16: This was a guest post and probably shows a spike for that reason.

Oct 18: Since this is another very specialized post that is part of the "Respect" series the target audience is very specific and has dropped from the initial post on Monday. It's somewhat deep post material that does not attract many readers. However where Monday's post had about a 33% ratio of comments to visits, the Friday post now has closer to 66% of visits generating comments (intense very good comments) which shows that these readers are more invested in the series.

Oct 21: We see another drop to some of the lowest stat figures I've seen on my blog in a long time. However the comment ratio increases again with high value comments, showing less general reader interest in the series, but more investment by my niche audience for the topic.

The point is that though we are dealing with very small numbers, the stat recording system seems highly accurate and variances are easy for me to find an explanation for. Of course there are not overly high numbers to try to understand, but if there were I think I could find a logical explanation. If I could not then I might believe that stats are inaccurate.

There are many variables in stats as well. Are you counting your own hits to your site? If so there is a setting to change that. Is there something on a page that people are hitting multiple times like a Linky List? Are there highly searchable terms that may draw viewers from outside the community like Brandon and Bryan at A Beer for the Shower experience on their post about Amanda Bynes. And just who is Amanda Bynes anyway?

If there is anything in your numbers that seems to be inaccurate, there is probably an explanation to show that the numbers are not as off as they seem.

Enough Rambling and Back to the Point

Do pageviews matter? Ah yes, that was the original question.

If the content is right when the viewers get there I think the pageviews can matter in a very important way if you are looking for new readers who will keep returning. Once you've got your community loyal to you it's important to keep them interested, but if you want an even broader audience then the content has to capture the interests of both new readers and established readers. Maybe not such an easy task!

It's the same principle of the Blogfest or other audience outreach events. You want to attract more readers. Then once you have gotten the readers there you have to entice them to come back.

Here's an experiment for anyone daring enough to try it. If you regularly get a lot of comments, try going for a month without commenting on anyone elses blog or doing any social media notifications. Watch to see if anything different happens to your comments and pageviews. I've somewhat done this and seen the numbers drop. I'm not foolhardy enough to do it completely because I don't want to hurt my standing in the blogging community that I've been a part of, though my blog has seen the effects of some of my cutting back.

Blogging Is Marketing

We can consider that all aspects of blogging is marketing to some degree even if you are trying to sell your personality and wit to get more online friends. Yourself, your beliefs, your books, or your business or whatever other reason you are blogging, you are also marketing in some sense of the word. Marketing is sales (not always literally selling a product for money). Successful selling comes with numbers. I realize I'm losing some of you now who I didn't lose early on in this post. But that's essentially the way I see things

Community is great. Friendships are valuable. And I respect every reader out there. I imagine I could have made this post more clear, but my brain is roiling with ideas. This post--this series could go on and on if I let it.

Instead of going any further with my thoughts, I will end my portion here today. There is still one more installment to this series which essentially started with the concept of creating that exceptional post that goes viral with consequence and possibly big benefit to the blogger who created that post. So next we will touch upon the concept of the viral blog post.

On Friday I will have a very special guest interview with a blogger who did go viral in a very big way. She has an interesting story to tell and some thoughts about viral blogging that may make you give the concept a bit more consideration. Please be here on Friday for this very special blogger interview.

Do you have any stats you'd like to share? Have you determined why some of your posts have gotten very large numbers of page views without the comments to seemingly justify it? Do you purposely add key words and phrases that you think will score high on search engines? Do you keep track of things like Alexis Rankings, Klout, and other blog evaluation sites? If you actively promote your posts other than commenting on other blogs, what methods do you think work best?

Monday, October 21, 2013

Do You Respect Yourself?

Respect (Photo credits: www.mysecuritysign.com)

My posts of the past week (here and here) generated some excellent debate on the topics of respect for bloggers and the importance of page views, comments, and community. In order to further clarify my position I will continue with these topics this week. Short posts work best for the attention span of the typical blog reader so I think breaking the topic down is less apt to lead to confusion. Even my attempt at simplification in my posts last week seemed to lead to complications in the feedback and debate that appeared in my comment section as well as in the comments Alex J. Cavanaugh received in his posts (here and here).

Part of the problem is that there were several points of view clashing in an arena of debate. I don't think we are all talking about the same things. My points were in reference to marketplace potential for one's product (in the case of most of you that is probably books) and building platform. I'm envisioning platform to be like an oil rig platform that is full of activity with many workers contributing to the final production as opposed to the platform upon which stands a statue where pigeons come to roost and strollers through the park stop to admire the artwork. I hope this metaphor does not offend anyone. To put what I'm saying in less metaphorical terms I'm thinking in terms of big versus smaller.

If a writing or product platform is to be most effective then it must service a wide field while serving multiple functions. Community is an essential and possibly the most important part of the platform, but should not be the sole element in ones platform. Community is wonderful and reassuring and I would never want to let go of the security I have in being a part of a community. But I know there is a bigger world out there and I should try to tap into that world as well.

Andrew Leon put it bluntly: "Many people who say they want to be "big time" do not actually act like it." This is a small part of one of the excellent comments he left on the post "Defining Respect". If you missed his comments on that post or any of the insightful comments left by others on that post, by all means read through them. There are some excellent observations made in many of these comments.

If we as writers are composing a blog post and we are thinking in terms of using blogging as part of a platform, then we should firstly direct our posts to our community whom we hope is listening, but always keep in mind that there is a broader base who could potentially be listening (including agents, publishers, future readers, and media representatives). Even if that audience is not there I think it is important to respect yourself and your product enough to believe that you are important enough to address that audience just in case any of them do happen upon your blog.

Your blog is a reflection of you and the work you do. If you are expecting to sell your books then the blog writer should appear to be professional and worthy enough to be read. If you aren't respecting yourself and your platform enough to believe that you can extend beyond your community and reach thousands or even millions of people then you have placed limitations on your own potential. You can think big even when you are small. If you are not doing that then you are apt to stay within the confined area that you have set for yourself.

I do understand that this post may not apply to all of you reading it. If this does not apply to you then go ahead and take yourself out of the equation, but please feel free to add your thoughts. You have important things to tell the rest of us. Some of you may be intentionally blogging for a small niche or even for yourself. That's just fine. Most of you doing that do it very well and I'm glad you are there. You are good blogging friends and I respect you. However, still give the concepts I've laid out here some deeper consideration in order to evaluate yourself honestly. You may be limiting yourself with your own doubt, fear, or insecurity.

There is a lot of talent in the realm of our blogging community and I think the world needs to know about it!

Do you respect yourself as a writer (or insert other vocation)? Do you limit yourself? Would you be resigned to sell 10,000 books if you could sell a million? Do you let yourself dream big while understanding the parameters of reality? What kind of book makes it to the big best seller lists?

***************************

Battle of the Bands Results
for October 15, 2013

My Battle of the Bands entry for last week consisted of two versions of the song "Respect".

I'm a big fan of Otis Redding, but I'm a bigger fan of Rotary Connection. Psychedelic music is one of my favorite genres and I enjoy intricate arrangements that have big production values. As is so often the case I'm going against the grain and casting my vote for Rotary Connection. But even with my vote cast, Otis Redding gets the most respect and most votes from you who joined in the fun for this round of BOTB.

Otis Redding --21 votes!

Rotary Connection-- 5 votes...

Another round of Battle of the Bands will come up Friday November 1st. Be here to see the amazingly strange match-up I have in store.

Friday, October 18, 2013

Defining Respect as a Blogger

"Can I please get some respect here?"

What Hath I Wrought?

"If you open a can of worms you might as well make spaghetti." "When you bust a beehive you'd better run like hell." Maybe you've heard those sayings before. I never have and I think I just made them up for this post. You're welcome to use them whenever you want to. Be sure to link to this post if you do use them (so this post can get more hits).

In any case, my Monday post Do You Feel Respected as a Blogger? did a little of both of these things. I sure busted the beehive and got swarmed, but I ain't runnin'. I'm gonna face the swarm and the stings and try to calm the buzz that was created by that post. The spaghetti thing sounds disgusting but that probably is the best solution to the controversy stirred by the post in question.

I'd planned on taking the respect issue to a different level today and tie everything together neatly into a compact little post. Fat chance of that I guess. First there were your comments. Thanks to all who left such fantastic comments on my "Respected Blogger" post. I know I can usually count on my readers to provide great comments, but this time you outdid yourself. Did you ever! That threw one monkey wrench into my short sweet Friday post idea.

Then Alex J. Cavanaugh went and threw a hornet's nest into the bee fray with his response to my post. Time to be afraid! We had bees and hornets and earthworms all over the place and everybody running like crazy. I will say that most everyone was running to the same place but I won't get into that today if I'm going to have a relatively short post that more than a dozen people will read. Today I just want to define some of the terms being used and elucidate what may have been misunderstood in my Monday post.

A Clarification of What Some Wondered

In answer to the question "Did your blog post go viral?", the answer is no. Nor did I expect my Monday post to go viral. The content for virality wasn't there. My Monday post was an information gathering post and I think it was pretty successful in that respect.

My ratio of comments to page views was 50% which is way higher than I normally get. That was until Alex's post drew more traffic and the ratio dropped to just under 40% which is still not bad. On a typical post I get an average of 25% of those who stop by leaving a comment which I find acceptable. As the page view numbers increase the comment ratio decreases. On my posts that have surpassed 1000 views the comment ratio goes down to about 1% --and that's getting into the realm of more comments than I can handle comfortably so 1% of the high numbers is fine by my estimation.

However let's save the stats issue for another post as it gets a bit more complicated--too complex to get into on a short Friday post. Alex and many others brought up the stat issue and it's an important one for bloggers to address. There were other issues mentioned as well that will be examined in a later post. As it is, today's post is getting too long if I am to take into account what some of you indicated in the "Blogger Respect" post comments. Likewise, I will examine in a later post the subject of viral posts--what they are and why we would want them.

Here's the Point I Was Trying to Make in my
"Blogger Respect" Post

For me--and I think for many of you--the act of writing a blog post includes an intrinsic desire for someone to read what we have labored to produce on our little sites. We read each others blog bits and say nice things and hope that they in turn will come see our site and say nice things in return. It's all nice with feelings of love and friendship and, yes, respect within the community in which we blog. There's nothing wrong with that and I thought I clearly indicated that in my "Blogger Respect" piece. I cast no condemnation or disdain for the concept of blogger community.

The respect question that I was asking had more to do with how those outside the community look at your or my blogging activity. Are we respected as bloggers beyond our own limited community?

When I first started my blog I was so proud and excited to be a blogger. I told my friends and family about my new blog. I put up my blog link on Facebook. I even printed up business cards with my blog address so I could give them to the people I would engage in conversation about my blog. I was excited, but I was about the only one. People I'd talk to about my blog would politely listen and then change the topic a soon as they could. No one cared. Business cards probably ended up in trash cans. I wasn't getting any respect for being a blogger.

Even after I'd become fairly established as a blogger and known in the community of bloggers with whom I interacted, I didn't get any real respect for my blogging from most people outside that community. In the writers group I attend they gave me the floor to talk about blogging and then moved on without much of a word more. Blogging is apparently not real writing to most of them.

"Blogger" is almost like a joke in some circles. Other than a few high profile bloggers, the press looks at us with disdain much of the time. Even President Obama referred to "bloggers" in an almost derogatory fashion in a speech on Thursday October 17, 2013. Most of us are just wannabe journalistic types, people yakking about some niche they're absorbed with, or small time authors trying to get their books noticed--not what I think but I'm speculating that this is along the lines of what a good many people probably think when they hear the term "blogger".

LET ME REITERATE!! THAT LAST THOUGHT IS NOT THE WAY I SEE IT. I am one of you (those of you who blog for whatever reason)! I am a blogger and I'm proud of what I do and I respect what you do. I am glad to be a part of such a special community of humans. But I want blogging to be more respected than it is. The world doesn't have to read our blogs, but it would be nice if they considered blogging to be just as viable a means of communication as other forms of journalism and writing.

I hope this clarifies my position on what I consider respect as a blogger. Perhaps I did not express myself well enough on Monday. Or perhaps some were not reading closely enough or misconstrued what I had said. Or maybe I was misinterpreting the signals I was receiving in the response to what I had said. Maybe one of you who is more precisely analytical than I (Andrew Leon or Jagoda for example) can tell me what happened.

I want respect as a blogger just as I think you would like to be respected for the life accomplishments of which you are proud. But there is more to this than what I've touched upon in this post. Upcoming posts will explore the concepts of the viral blog post and community. And I will also take the issue of respect to the next level as I have been promising. I hope you stay with me and continue to provide me information that can be helpful to all of us.

And to think that my post about respect was just a tossed out lead-in to my Battle of the Bands post on Tuesday! You can still visit that post and cast your vote if you'd like. And you can see what song inspired my "Blogger Respect" post. Thanks to all of you who do that.

Did I clarify what I mean by respect as a blogger? Do you think that a lot of non-bloggers just don't get what blogging is about? From a professional standpoint, do you see blogging as something that is worthwhile or mostly a matter of being a part of a community in a hobby-like fashion?

**FREE PROMOTION**

This weekend only you can get a free download of FAR OUT: The Hiidden Truth by Elbert Derryberry. The "sales" number went way up on Wednesday when I first announced the giveaway. Give this one a chance. Read my review at Amazon to get my take on this e-book.

A search for the Hidden Truth! A Futuristic Science Fiction adventure with a Christian slant. The hero travels through both space and time, to challenge the reader to question conventional wisdom and to look for the Hidden Truth.

I know the author through the Writers Workshop West, the writing group of which I am a member. This is Mr. Derryberry's first book. I encourage you to download the book and give it a read. It's short so it will be a small investment of your time. And while it's free the monetary investment is nothing for you. If you read the book, please don't forget to review it on Amazon. Support this new author!

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Battle of the Bands: Respect

BOTB Time Again!

It's time for another Battle of the Bands! Once again I'm joining Far Away Series and Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends to present faceoffs between two versions of songs that you may or may not know. After you've voted on my site visit the other sites to leave your votes on theirs as well so you can increase your chances of winning a prize. Yes there will be a prize awarded! You can find out more at Stephen T. McCarthy's site.

Since the Battle of the Bands (BOTB) posts are supposed to appear on the 1st and 15th of each month, today's post is a special post on a day when I normally do not show up on this space. My future participation in this blog event will most likely mean I will sometimes post on off days when the BOTB falls on them.

And now for today's contest.

"Respect"

If you didn't guess the song from the hints I left in my post yesterday then this song must be a new one for you. If you are familiar with this song then you most likely know Aretha Franklin's hit version. In today's battle Aretha is not in the running. Please don't vote for Aretha! Vote between the two versions that are doing battle.

Otis Redding wrote and recorded it first, but Aretha made it hers. Otis hit the charts with the song in 1965 when it peaked at number 35 on the Billboard Top 100. Aretha's less gritty but still full of soul version charted at number one in the United States and became a hit worldwide. This is the song most commonly associated with Aretha.

The version by Otis features the signature Muscle Shoals sound with a prominent horn section, solid rhythm section, and no backup vocalists like Aretha used in her version. Starting off the battle I give you Otis Redding:

Otis Redding "Respect" (1965)

And now taking a completely different spin on Redding's classic is the song bending group Rotary Connection. This group was known for taking familiar hits songs and giving them a very different sound with complex vocals and intricate orchestrations woven into a psychedelic musical tapestry.

Rotary Connection featured the vocals of Minnie Ripperton who later had a successful solo career that was cut short when she died from breast cancer. Ripperton was a major influence on Mariah Carey's vocal style.

So now experience the psychedelic soul of Rotary Connection:

Rotary Connection "Respect" (1969)

What's your preference between these two choices? The original by Otis Redding or the unusual take by Rotary Connection? Did you know that this was originally Redding's song? Are you familiar with the music of Rotary Connection?

Be sure to visit the other participants at:

Faraway Series
  Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends
Your Daily Dose
   DiscConnected

   If you've done your own BOTB entry please let me know so I can add it to my list.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Do You Feel Respected As A Blogger?

Arlee Bird at the Sinks in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee

What are your blogging goals?

Like I do, many of you diligently post content--often good content--to your blogs. And if you're like me, you hope that your post will be visited by a few who will hopefully leave a comment and that your post will generally be well received and perhaps even be helpful to some. If we're lucky our visitors will click on one of our share buttons or pass the link to our post on through social media channels.

If this is not the general intent of your blogging efforts then you are blogging for a different reason than I and I am not addressing of those kinds of bloggers. The bloggers I am addressing in this post are the ones who are looking for what might be considered a certain sense of professional respect in their blogging niche or at least as much recognition as they can garner for their communication efforts for whatever reason they may be communicating.

Think about where you stand on being a blogger. My efforts are acknowledged to some extent in the form of a repayment for my own social media interaction. If my media presence is active then I see an uptick in page views and a good number of comments. If I am not making rounds and leaving comments then I have fewer visitors and typically experience a drop in my comment section. I wouldn't say this has as much to do with respect as it does merely being an aspect of blog science. Presence yields attention.

Most bloggers are probably secure in knowing they are part of a community and respected by the other members of that community. We have a circle of friends whom we can drop in on when we are available and they will stop by to see us when any of them has the time to do it. Some bloggers are on a visiting schedule and we can count on them being there for nearly every post we put up. That's comforting to know, but is it enough?

Since blogging has a potential to reach millions and millions of people throughout the world, it does seem like it might be nice to know that a few thousand are reading my blog on a regular basis. So far this is not happening for me and I would daresay for most of you. Once again I can't say that this is much of a respect issue as much as it is a lack of visibility issue. If I don't have wide ranging respect as a blogger then it's primarily because most of the world doesn't know I'm here and considering the millions of blogs that are out there I can see why my blog is like a grain of sand on the seashore. Getting noticed by many is partly due to a blogger's own marketing ingenuity in promoting their blog and a wide cast social media net that gets posts promoted by others.

Going over the top

Then there's the viral blog post. Making the big time with a blog post is usually a fluke that comes as a result of well-written or unique content that is timely and of interest to many. Virality may be that once-in-a-blogger's lifetime event that provides them a fifteen minutes of fame that amounts to little but bragging rights in the end. Or that one episode in the public eye might be the beginning of something bigger. Anyone who is using a blog as a promotional platform should be covetous of a blogger who gets catapulted off that springboard to recognition or even fame. Or we might even say respect.

You've probably heard about the blog post Thinking the Unthinkable (I Am Adam Lanza's Mom) by Liza Long at The Anarchist Soccer Mom. I'm not sure how many page views that post got but the comment section numbers over 3700. Can you imagine having that kind of response to a blog post? This post was publicized in just about every media outlet you can think of and that made a huge difference in the number of readers who visited Liza's blog, which by the way is a Blogger blog with "blogspot" in the URL.

The comments for the blog posts after that one famous entry have mostly reverted to the 10 or so that she was getting before her viral post on a hot topic of the day. Many of the most recent comments on her most famous post are primarily rather strange attempts at promotion that would essentially amount to spam that is somewhat in reference to the original post. Still, that one blog post brought Liza Long scads of attention.

Did Liza Long gain much respect from her Newtown blogpost? Sure she got a lot of attention--a whole lot of attention. A brief Google search will reveal that Ms. Long has intermittently been in the news throughout this year. I also ran across a few announcements that say she landed a book deal with a respected publisher as a result of her blog post. That's nothing to sneeze at. I know I'd be pretty thrilled to be offered a book deal based on something I wrote on my blog and I think that would command at least some modicum of respect from at least a few people.

How do I compare with viral?

According to my Google stats my typical post on Tossing It Out gets an average of around 250 page views. This is nothing earth-shaking by any means, but I think it shows a certain amount of respect from my regular readers. And I thank every one of you for being here so faithfully. This especially in light of my cutting back on my own visiting rounds and not making my web presence as obvious as it used to be. I try to be a good social networker, but I've got other things to do sometimes as I know most of you do.

Beyond that average per post range of 200-300 page views there are the anomalies. For example my post this past Friday Tossing Out Another Throwaway Post strangely had gotten over 1600 page views when I last looked. My most viewed post is nearly 20,000 for one of my A to Z announcements. That number kind of makes sense for that particular post, but my second most visited post seems somewhat odd. That post is How Important Are Music Programs in the Public Schools? with over 5200 page views. I've gotten comments on that post as recently as just the other day. People are finding that link through Google. Apparently it's a topic that interests a number of people.

Do the page views equal respect? I think I can confidently say that a number of you who are reading this respect me as I likewise respect you. I appreciate you for that respect you give me. I would never want to lose my inner circle of wonderful readers that I now have. But to gain recognition beyond that circle is an exciting prospect. To have one of my blog posts mentioned in national or even international media and draw large numbers of new readers would be an amazing experience. To acquire new readers who actually continue to return to my site might be an indication of respect.

What is real respect in blogging?

Sometimes it can difficult to define what respect really is. In a way I suppose it's not unlike the old argument of blog followers. Some bloggers say they don't care about having a lot of followers, but would those same bloggers reject additional followers so they could stay small? That would be similar to an author telling people not to buy their books. What author in their right mind would say, "I hope my book sells a few copies, but I hope it doesn't make any best seller lists"?

That's the way I look at blogging. I'm doing something that's a public activity so I'd like to see it go public in a big way--at least one post if nothing else. A viral blog post would be okay with me. Keeping new readers who respect me and my work would be even better. A book deal because of something I posted on a blog would be beyond incredible.

Fifteen minutes of blog fame would be pure exhilaration. Respect after that would be the most I could ever ask for from blogging.

Have you ever had a post that went viral? What has been your most visited post? (feel free to leave a link to it!) Would you like to see your blog posts receive thousands of readers? How would you handle a thousand or more comments? Do you feel respected as a blogger?

...And before you go...

Please do leave a comment on today's post. I want as many opinions on this topic as I can find. The success of my research on this topic also depends on a big favor from you: Please click on as many share buttons below as you can in order to reach a wider audience. Please tell others about this post in every way you can think of. I think the information I receive from comments will be very telling. I will share what I learn here in my Friday post when I take the questions in today's post one step further in a direction that might interest some of you even more.

Another reason that I want you to pass the link for this post on to others is that today's post is a lead-in for my mid-month Battle of the Bands post. Since today's post will be the current post for today only and be replaced by another tomorrow, this post will be more easily lost without your help. Please share the link!

Incidentally, my post today is also a hint for the song I will be using in my Battle of the Bands face-off tomorrow. Can you guess the song? Be sure to be here tomorrow to find out the song and to vote on your favorite version.

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This Is Me--2024 A to Z Theme

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Respect by the Numbers: Do Pageviews Matter?