I was invited (well, not personally, but still) to Fandango’s Friday Flashback!

Fandango scrolls back, every Friday, and gives a second chance to a post he had published on the same date, years before. I thought it was a great way to remember some of the stuff I did a while back, and I decided to participate…

So here it is!

Written on April 28th of 2018, here is  a little piece of thinking on the concept of success in the Bloggosphere. I have to say, even after more than seven years on WordPress, I still feel as a newbie. At the same time, looking back on what I wrote five years ago, I still agree with what I shared.

I hope you’ll enjoy it (again), and I wish you’re safe and well, wherever you are…

P.S. I will probably be skipping the next four weeks. Next Friday, I’ll be flying over the Atlantic Ocean… And the next three will be spent in Denmark, enjoying the present moment. So, my guess is that I won’t be in the mood for retrospection. But I’ll be back. Maybe…

Ja, måske!

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No, no… Not sex. I’m not a Salt-N-Pepa member!

Following the interest for my first two posts regarding blogging ( you can catch up with The fine art of commenting & Between bloggers ), and the long and insightful conversations they provoked, I thought I’d keep sharing my thoughts about our common hobby.

As I mentionned number of times, I am not a pro, and these are just my opinions, and some ideas you might find useful, especially if you are new to the blogging game. I am also doing this because I enjoy the chat that follows, and the things I can learn from you in return!

So this time, I am thinking about something naturally embedded in hosting a blog.

Success.

Let’s face it. In all honesty, we all seek some kind of success. Otherwise, why post things for the whole planet to read and/or see? If we didn’t want other people’s attention, approval, feedback, we’d keep our art and our work to ourselves.

I think the first thing to realize, is that success is a slow process. Some of us get lucky, and their blogs will attract the crowd’s attention quickly, but these are exceptions. And if, like me, you don’t ask Mom, Dad, your sibblings, your friends and your colleagues to follow you in the beginning, building a readership should be a long run goal.

But what is success to you? Having a lot of readers? (I really don’t like the term “followers”) Getting a lot of views? Getting a lot of “likes”? Getting a lot of comments? Of course, some of these things are somewhat connected, but I don’t think anyone blogging as a hobby, can focus on all these points. And certainly not worry about all of them at once.

I’ll try to cover this later…

What I really wanted to point out, is how you can look at your blog differently than simply staring at the statistics’ page and looking at the numbers, which can get depressing at times.

Set yourself a personal goal

Go for something original, and something you can’t compare yourself to others with. My goal is to get a reading from every country on the world map! My quest is going pretty well, and I still check every once in a while if a new flag has joined my collection. When it happens, I do my happy dance! It might be just one reading, which doesn’t impact much my stats per say, but it is a step towards a fully colored map, and it keeps me away from numbers.

Blogging is not a competition

Don’t bother comparing your “views”, your “likes” and your number of readers with other bloggers. Ok, I say that, but we all do it from time to time. The point for me is not to focus on wanting to be like a fellow blogger. So many things can affect statistics, I prefer to work on slowly getting better at what I do best. I am glad for those who “do better” than me, and I try to help newcomers.

Know your strenghts

Very few are the bloggers that win on all counts. You might be impressed by some people’s numbers, but look more closely, before you get down. For an example, let’s say you follow a blog that has 10 000 readers, and you only have 100. Reaching the same number of followers might seem like climbing a tall mountain, but if said blogger gets an average of 100 likes per post, and you get 20… Do the math, that’s something to be proud of! (ooook, I’ll do it for you – I’m nice like that –  it means this “big” blog gets an average of 1% of “likes” from their readership, and you get 20%… See?) In the same way, a newcomer with less readers than you might get a better average of likes for their posts, but never get people to leave feedback, when you have tons of interaction with your own crowd… We are all good at something. Gathering people, collecting “likes” or attracting feedback. Enjoy your strenght, when the other numbers are not as high as you’d like them to be!

Remember that you don’t control the Bloggosphere

The only things you control, are what you post, and how you manage your blog. You can’t control readers and force interest. Some days, no matter how fantastic your story or your artwork is, people just won’t be there. The opposite is also true. Some days, you’ll post something silly and break records, statistics-wise. It has nothing to do with you… It’s just like that. Just stay away from your stats page when it happens. It’s no use getting disappointed because the odds are against you… Believe me!

Well, as usual, I hope this will be helpful for at least one of you… Please share your own thoughts about the concept of “success” in the comment box below 🙂 What do you aim for? What motivates you? What works for you?

I’ll be close by, as usual!

Happy blogging, Lovelies…

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You can visit the original post here.

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