I am going to confess that I am no blogging expert. Sure, I have been blogging longer than most of you have been able to legally imbibe, but I am no expert. When I moved to the Blogger platform, I thought it would be a temporary stop on the information super highway and that I would be building my big, beautiful WordPress masterpiece within months. A little over a year later I am still here. Since I thought it was temporary I never really investigated the ‘stats’ option. I don’t really care, I don’t monetize this blog so as long as I get comments I am a happy camper. I have peeked under the hood (so to speak) a few times, mainly at the ‘key word search’ because I like to know how people find my blog. The few times I have, the search words have always amused me and I have thought to myself I should take a screen shot. I am a professional level procrastinator so that hadn’t happened, but today I did. For the record, the last search word combo, I have never had on my blog, although, I am a fan of babies-huge fan. I often wonder if the people looking for these search words are disappointed when they finally arrive? It’s one of the reasons I stopped doing my Cute Monday’s, because I didn’t want to lead anyone on that this was a mecca for cute; when it was really only a mecca on Monday’s. I also didn’t love that I couldn’t find the source of the cute any longer, it made me feel guilty and I have enough guilt being born Roman Catholic and married to a Jew, it’s like guilt on steroids here already. Speaking of guilt, I can dole it out as much as I can stew in it and I can not take it when people unfollow my blog, it ruins my day/night/month/life, if you follow it you know what it’s about and when you unfollow I lose my mind (and my self-esteem). So, please don’t follow me unless you are sure you like me, because I have a whole highschool thing I thought I got over, but the blogosphere has brought it out of me again, sigh. Does anyone else feel the same way or am I the sole neurotic on the web?
You are definitely not alone! The social networking world can totally feel like high school: round 2 for me. The cold, hard data tends to freak me out. It is so hard to stop my self-esteem from going up and down with my Google Analytics report.
I have to constantly remind myself that it is the real life things — that someone is inspired or motivated by my blog to change or do something — not all the crazy stats and numbers, that really matters.
Thanks for this post! It is refreshing to read honesty in a world where everyone wants to have it all figured out :)
That’s really quite comical! I never knew there was such an area where you can view the top word searches. Thanks for enlightening me :)
Not the sole neurotic, no. I don’t use Google Analytics much, but I check how many followers and subscribers I’ve got, and I get a low self-esteem if I lose one (although unsubscribing might just be stress-related; when I returned from my Easter vacation I had some 200+ unread entries in my reader, which totally made me freak out).
Thank you Rachel, your note made me laugh. Rosy, if you are on blogger check your stats on the lower left for ‘key word search’. Dear Demoiselle, okay, I am going to believe it wasn’t me, hah!
Definitely not crazy!
In fact, I don’t let myself look at my numbers more than once a month because otherwise I get OBSESSED and it affects everything I do. So I don’t look at it, because it shouldn’t really change how I write.
Oh, and if you need help with your WordPress site, let me know! <3
Thank you Kathy! I wish I lived closer so you could sit down an d teach me, I would really love to learn WP!
hello there,
just wanted to say that I’ve been following your blog for quite some time and I follow a whole lot of blogs. so, when I haven’t had the time to check my RSS feed for a couple of days, there are like a thousand unread posts I flick through – BUT, out of all those posts I always take the time to read yours because, well, they do deserve it!
Oh, that makes me feel better. I’ve often felt that the whole blogging world is a lot like high school. :)