by 
Today marks a milestone in my RSS subscribers. I just crossed 10,000 people reading me (or at least getting my feed in their reader) on a given day. I’m flattered and excited at the same time. No matter where you are on your journey with making media, if part of your goal is to reach more people and have more conversations, then you DO watch your numbers. You might not talk about it, but you do. They day TechCrunch crossed 1 million RSS subscribers, a bunch of us knew before Mike Arrington posted about it. We watch those things.
I mentioned crossing into the Technorati Top 100 last week (or the week before; I’m losing track of days). That’s another one of those milestones that I was pleased by, but also mostly silently counting. A year ago, at the first Blog World Expo, I went to the Technorati booth, where they were handing out stickers for your blog rank. I was 3,274. So, it took me a full year of blogging my head off and getting mentions from other bloggers (that’s how Technorati decides rank) to move up.
I’ve been complaining for days that Compete.com hasn’t updated their stats for month-ending September. Of course I watch, and so do lots of people who want to know if their message is gaining wings.
Do the Numbers Matter?
Not in and of themselves, or not directly. I’m not making any more money today then when I had 3,000 readers or was ranked 4,598 in Technorati. Nothing directly changes when the numbers go up.
I guess if I had paid advertising all over my site, it would be good. Lots more impressions or whatever, but that’s not how I chose to roll.
What happens instead is this: I think the numbers are social proof. I think that they act the same way seeing people in a cafe makes you feel that the cafe is a decent place to eat. If no one was in there, no one would “go first” and start it off. I think that by reaching these accomplishments (is that what they are? I’m still not sure how to talk about them), it just means that you’re in good company (you, not me).
But, I’m happy about them. I’m proud. I’m glad that you’re all part of the game. Your comments, contributions, riffs, and expansion on my themes makes it all worth doing.
It STINKS when you don’t get comments or when you feel like you’re putting your heart out there and no one’s really picking it up. If you follow my twitter stream, I love pointing out people doing great work, because I want them to get attention, and I want their amazing ideas to be found, too.
So, in the end, thank you everyone. Thanks for coming here all the time.
Something more useful to you coming up later. I have work to do on the New Marketing Summit, and then I’ll get back to filling your heads.
Last chance to tell me if you want to come. Drop me a line: cbrogan at crosstechmedia dot com.
Photo credit, Robbie1
