You’ve launched your new blog, crafted some content and you are feeling good that you have finally got off the ground. You tweet, facebook and use whatever means possible to get your posts some exposure. You have followed what the pros say and install Google Analytics and probably Wordpress Stats. You will most likely do what I did and get into a routine of checking these stats on an almost hourly basis. Here is where things start to go wrong! The stats aint moving, your traffic is low and your bounce rate is through the roof. Panic sets in and you start to wonder why you bothered and before long you will start to hate your blog and blogging. Yet you keep checking those stats daily, willing them to move in right direction and they dont! Sound familiar?
This is basically the trap that I got myself into during early days of this blog and frankly it it throws your blogging/writing way off track. I spent so long pouring over stats, getting down and despondent because they were not moving in the direction I wanted that I lost the will to write. Net effect? I was at best posting once a fortnight and that kills your blog stone dead.
Now I am not suggesting that traffic is not important but you can get into an obsessive state over traffic to the point where you lose all focus and your writing suffers and you end up in this vicious circle of no content, no traffic.
One of the many things that I have learnt is that blogging is a patience game. It takes time, effort and energy to get content and then traffic to a site. In my case some 8 months to even start to get a sniff of visitors (And its not huge volume) and in reality only since I have stopped looking at my blog stats every day have I manged to get traffic. Use the time that you would normally spend looking at a traffic graph that is not moving, to get out and promote yourself and your blog. Focus on the content and getting your name out. Its time well spent and will certainly help in the long term.
I did this a lot too. I think it’s my direct marketing background (I always want to see the numbers). I recently decided that instead of checking my stats, I would step away from the computer, turn off the mail alert sound, and write posts with pen and paper. It worked!
Thanks Jodi for the comment. Glad it worked for you too! thanks again simon