For 16 weeks now I’ve posted twice a week. I am considering myself a real blogger. It’s time to reflect on the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I have 42 blogger followers. I pick up one or so a week now. They are “real people” followers. The spam filter does a great job of weeding out the junk followers. I’m happy with that number. I’m not in this game to make money or to become famous. I like to write, but I like someone to read what I write too. The number of potential followers is huge, but I don’t need all that many. I like conversing with Jim from Indiana, Trang from California, and Robin who is from the UK but recently moved to Germany.

I post on Facebook and LinkedIn also, so that’s another potential 550ish readers.

Viewership is weird. You never really know how many read a particular post. If your blog followers read your post from their Reader (the personalized list of posts they get based on who they follow) it doesn’t count as a view. Why not? I don’t know. Seems like it would, but it doesn’t. Also, best I can figure, linkedin readers don’t count either. LinkedIn told me that I got 38 views on my post “Workplace Bravery” but WordPress says I had 15. I chatted up with someone at WordPress about it and she said, “they must keep their stats differently than we do ours.” So, not very helpful. You just kind of have to realize that you aren’t going to get to know how many readers you actually have. I have to admit, viewer counts are nice!

Likes and comments are nice too. You can get them on WordPress or Facebook or LinkedIn. But only the ones you get in WordPress count in the stats. It’s fun when other bloggers like my blog and very nice when they take a moment to comment. I always answer them. I guess writers are like any artistic, creative types. We have egos that do like feedback of some sort.

I’ve had 957 recorded views, 477 visitors from 10 countries, including China, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, and Mexico. I’ve had 127 likes and 73 comments.

The three posts with the most recorded views are: win, “Fiberglass Sales; “place, “Face lift;” and show, “Play Ball.” I haven’t learned to predict what readers will like and what they won’t. I wrote one recently that I thought was pretty funny. “The Spark Package” got very low viewership. I think it had to do with the name and the picture. Maybe people thought it was actually a personal romantic story. My readers don’t know me well enough yet. I’d never write about something so personal.

I write about very personal things. But not about things that “I” think are very personal. For example, I don’t mind telling the world about my facelift, but I’d never reveal a truly personal story about me and my spouse. That’s off limits. Does that make sense? I don’t mind talking about myself, but I’m not going to reveal intimate details about another person. I don’t mind making fun of me, but I’m not going to make fun of my friends and family.

But really I don’t write so much for others. I just kind of write whatever I feel like writing about. Let the stats fall where they may.

Anyway, I enjoy the world of blogging. It’s not what I thought it would be. It is better. If you’re thinking about giving it a whirl, I recommend it. Thanks for reading!

dmzh