Sorry, Nobody Reads Your Blog: Get Over It and Get On With It!

I tell my friends and clients all the time. "Nobody reads your blog. Or mine either."

I’ve been blogging my ass off for over three years and what do I have to show for it? Well, I’ve got some traffic. I’ve got some followers. I’ve got some authority, KLOUT, PeerIndex love. But what do I have, really?

I’ll say it again, so you don’t miss it: Nobody reads your blog. Nobody really reads anyone’s blog. Perhaps blogs are dead.

Okay, here’s the converse truth. This is not a blog. [Bear with me, I’m not just toying with you.]

What is a blog?

From the above Google search we see a blog is three things.

1. A free platform from Google "for sharing text, photos and video." And Google should know.
2. Wikipedia says a blog is "a personal journal published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries ("posts")"
3. A place where Seth Godin generates the riffs and content for his future books. He writes and writes and writes and every now and then packages up his posts/categories and tags and violá, he’s got a book. A good book. And he’s about as famous as you get at this social media and marketing stuff.

But Seth Godin isn’t writing a blog. Heck, HE doesn’t even allow comments. How bloggy is that? But there he is, #3 under def: blog on Google Search.

Okay, back to me for a second. If you are on uber.la reading this, you are not here to read my "personal journal." I can point you to that if you’re interested, but it’s a much less focused and driven place.

So, in order to understand what THIS is, I have to answer several questions:

• How did you get here?
• What were you looking for?
• Did you find it?
• What else can I do for you?

And my Google Analytics should make that pretty clear, if we know what we’re looking for.

Here’s my 30-day overview.

Main GA Observations:

• 80% of you are first-time visitors [WELCOME]
• 76% of you left without visiting another page
• 1:56 time on a post is about right, skim some/read some

And now referral traffic stats, how in the world did you find uber.la?

Major referral observations:

• 1/3 of you found us through a direct link [bookmark, typing the url in]
• 1/3 of you found us through google search [we don’t do any ppc at the moment]
• 1/3 of you f0und us through my incessant social media work [twitter.linkedin, facebook,google+] or via RSS subscription

So that about answers the initial questions of how did you find uber.la, but can we answer the others?

Did you find what you were looking for? Answer: 1.62 pages is a pretty good average, considering that includes the immediate bounces, people who stay for less than 5 seconds. And a 2 minute average, means you were at least reading most of the page you landed on.

The final question, "Is there anything else I can do for you?" is really the crux of the matter. And unfortunately the overwhelming answer is NO.

The secondary answer is a little better: Three referrals in the last 30-days are going to get me moving on some pretty significant projects.

Summary: Nobody reads your blog, if you are actually "blogging," you might be doing it for some other reason than business. Of the people that do arrive here, a good portion of them stay around two minutes and visit several pages. The referrals I am hoping for, via my "Work with me" page and free offers, are virtually non-existent.

The big big big client, that I can’t talk about yet, doesn’t read my blog at all. The CEO could care less about my Twitter followers or tweets. What the "focus of my next few months" client cares about is my history of success in online marketing. He doesn’t want to READ my blog. He wants me to show him numbers, show him ideas, and chart a path for growth of HIS BUSINESS.

I’m guessing he has never read my blog and won’t ever see this post. That’s fine.

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)

permalink: https://uber.la/2012/04/nobody/

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Most people don’t really enjoy being mean; they do it because they can’t help it. (from Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement)

Tags: blog as resume, blogging, blogging for business, experience over expertise, google analytics, nobody reads, nobody reads your blog, professional blogging, referrals, social media marketing